Peter: Out of Deep, Unordered Water

Will you pray with me? Lord God, through the power of your Holy Spirit and your

word as we read today, open our eyes to recognize you here among us. Give us

courage to step out in faith to meet you and confidence to follow where you lead.

Amen. Our gospel lesson this morning comes from the Gospel of Matthew, the

14th chapter beginning with the 22nd verse. Here now God's word for you.

Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the

other side while he dismissed the crowds. After he had dismissed the crowds he

went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came he was there alone but

by this time the boat battered by waves was far from the land for the wind was

against them. And early in the morning he came walking toward them on the lake but

when the disciples saw him walking on the lake they were terrified saying it's

a ghost and they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said

take heart it is I do not be afraid. Peter answered him, Lord if it is you

command me to come to the water come to you on the water. He said come. So Peter

got out of the boat started walking on the water and came toward Jesus. But when

he noticed the strong wind he became frightened and beginning to sink he

cried out Lord save me. Jesus immediately reached out his hand and

caught him saying to him you of little faith why did you doubt. When they got

back into the boat the wind ceased and those in the boat worshiped him saying

truly you are the son of God. The word of the Lord. Well we're moving through our

fourth week of our sermon series on the disciple Peter. You'll remember that

Peter was given the name by Jesus when he correctly answered Jesus's question

who do you say I am? Peter or Cephas in Jesus's native language means rock.

Peter then was thereby proclaimed by Jesus to be the rock upon which the

church would be built. Bryant ended last week's sermon with the same question that

challenged us to consider who do you say that I am? This week our scripture ends

with the response that we strive to affirm truly you are the son of God. A

lot happens between the question we heard last week and the response that

we're given today. We're gonna navigate that space this morning for at least a

little while by way of an experience that I had when I was a very little girl.

When I was about six or seven and my brother was about 12 my mother took us

on a summer vacation to where we called the Eastern Shore. One afternoon we went

to a then quiet but now quite well-known beach called Bethany Beach. There was

nothing particularly noteworthy about that day. You know we played in the sand,

we played in the in the in the sea, we made sand castles, we laid out, we did

this sort of thing that you do when you're on a family beach vacation right?

Nothing fancy. So like I said nothing particularly noteworthy though until the

tide rolled in. When the tide came forward things got a little trickier and

on that hot summer day a rip current caught me in its grip and my ocean

innocence was gone. There were demons in that water. There were demons that could

grab your heel and whip you around. There were demons that could hold your head so

firmly under the water that you couldn't begin to surface for air. There were

demons that could scrape your knees and fill your bathing suit with stinging

disks of jelly. There were demons in that water and when I finally surfaced by

the strong grip of my mother's extended hand I decided there was nothing that

was ever gonna get me back into that water at least for that family vacation.

Through many life experiences if not from volumes of research I've come to

know that large bodies of water are often a source of fear. From the very

first verses in Scripture and in through several of the other ancient texts we

read of marine spirits and water demons. Through the time of Jesus it wasn't

entirely unusual for people to believe that there were actually demons in the

water. Today we think about chaos a little differently. We look at the water

from the shore and we see that there's a rip current. We know how to identify one

and we know that that could carry us far from safety. We avoid it. We observe

crashing waves and we reason that one could crash on us. Maybe the surface of

the water is nice and calm and we wait along happy as a clam until we step on

that fateful broken shell. Suddenly we feel dragged down in a different way or

possibly as with the case with Peter maybe the conditions are so unnerving

that save for a momentary boost of confidence that we'll call faith. We

might even begin to question the miraculous power of the Lord. I was

introduced to a well-known longitudinal study some years back when I was in a

graduate program studying behavioral psychology. The study observed school

children in high poverty neighborhoods. These kids were at risk of poor outcomes

because they faced social and environmental disadvantages including

neighborhood poverty, low family income status, and other economic or educational

hardships. The conclusion reached was that children who had caring people

walking alongside of them in school and in social settings, educators who believed

in the children's capabilities and potential, children who had mentors to

guide them through the complexities of their disadvantages and remind them that

they are good, performed far better, far beyond the group of school children who

did not receive guidance and encouragement and support. You see faith

goes both ways. Kids rise to the lowest level of expectation theirs and ours.

Adults too we rise to the lowest level of expectation. For the kids just by

receiving persistent affirmation that they were worthy as any child is worthy

that children of the Chicago longitudinal study rose beyond the fear

and the chaos of the known and the unknown. They had newfound faith in

themselves to lean faithfully forward toward a good and favorable outcome. A

plan that the Lord has had in mind since the foundations of the earth were drawn.

Each of us deserves to be persistently reminded that we are loved and supported,

that we are capable, and that we are not alone. We deserve to know that God has

faith in us, that the Lord is with us when we feel ready to sink from whatever

life situation is around. This is just one reason that I'm grateful that we

read a unison statement of faith during most worship services here at Palms. Each

statement of faith reminds us in its own way of God's persistent, gracious,

life-saving involvement in our every day. Studies show that the more we more often

we hear and read these affirming messages, especially when we're affirming

truths in a corporate body, the more deeply we believe it. Specifically today,

particularly in light of Peter's floundering faith, we can joyfully,

gratefully lean into our statement of faith as found in the Apostles Creed

through which we are invited to say with gratitude and with joy, he descended

into hell. Because of these four words, we can claim right before we acknowledge

that Jesus rose from the dead, these four words tell us every single time we bring

them to mind that there is no place on earth or above the earth, and yes even

below the earth, where our Lord won't go to meet each one of us and bring us back

to a place of new life with Christ. Thanks be to God. No matter whether we've

been hurled into the depths of despair or we felt lost in our faith for so long

that we can't begin to see the sunlight through the tide, no matter if we sense

that no one else has faith in us, we can have faith that our God believes in us.

God will seek us out. God will help us to believe with complete confidence that

God has gone and will continue to go anywhere he needs to go to offer his

hand and deliver us home. Indeed only scripture promises us that those

sinking experiences of pain and crying and suffering and death will be no more.

Scripture gives us faith to believe that wars and bias and oppression, ill-equipped

hospitals and drug addictions will be no more, because Jesus has reached out to

Peter, signals not only new life for him, but Jesus's outreached hand to Peter

signals new life for you and for me and for all of creation from now in through

eternity. Jesus raising Peter up from the chaotic water reminds us that even when

we're struggling with our faith, even when we've been shaken or stirred, our

Lord is with us still. Even in the darkness we have someone to cry out to,

not simply because Jesus was part of the darkness from the chaotic start of

Genesis through to his light in the darkness as described in the Gospel of

John, but because our Lord has promised to be in the darkness with us. So as the

great pastor and theologian Walter Brueggemann said, that the darkness is

strangely transformed not by the power of easy light, but by the power of

relentless solidarity, particularly when we're feeling laid low or less than

confident or faithless or less than worthy to be called a child of God. Now

I understand that life isn't so easy. Sometimes we can't just recall a few

words from a statement of faith and pop out of pain. There have sure been a few

times in my life where I sunk so quickly that I wasn't sure Jesus would ever be

able to reach me again, let alone raise me up. Maybe you've had some of those

experiences too when a hideous strike of misfortune has landed on you or someone

you love or maybe a bad decision led to another bad decision that left you with

a dull ache that still hasn't gone away. If you have a haunting, nagging memory

and it suggests to you that it is unlikely that Christ will deliver you or

yours from the depths, let me tell you that just because God hasn't erased

those experiences from our thoughts doesn't mean that God doesn't want to

lift us up from the pit. Sometimes, as I've told you, God preserves a bit of the

pain of our past in order that we can remember with joy that God has loved us

out of it. And here we are. This might be one reason why

Brueggemann also teaches us to categorize scripture, to make sense of it

and more effectively apply it, pull it out when we need it. We look at these

texts and reconsider them in a way that allows us to redirect our lives to a

life of faith. He tells us that there are texts of orientation that lead us to

reflect on God's creation, God's universal goodness, God's blessings on

our lives. They orient us to the purpose of God's laws which make the world and

order the cosmos right. Think of the first psalm, happy are those who walk in

the counsel of the ungodly. Their delight is in the law of the Lord on which they

meditate day and night. And there are texts of disorientation that remind us

of those seasons in our lives that are difficult and painful, disorienting,

causing many of us to question the very goodness of God. We're in a state of

despair over something that's been done or left undone, something that's been

said or left unsaid, and we wonder if Jesus is with us still. Think of how you

might relate to the accounts of the beheading of John the Baptist or Jesus

is death on the cross or maybe the Apostle Paul's imprisonment. And there

are texts of new orientation or reorientation, those texts that speak

boldly of God's intrusion into a difficult world where faith can waver

and we can feel surprisingly open to the undercurrent of despair. These texts of

new orientation or reorientation enable us to reconsider the way we see

ourselves and our place within God's created order. And this is where we are

with our reading today. Our text about Peter and his floundering faith, like our

first reading from 1st Peter in his letter to his friends, are prompts for

reorientation as we recall together with great conviction that Jesus went not

first into his glory for all of eternity but into the depths to be with those in

their spiritual prison. This leads us to have faith that Jesus prioritizes each

one of us in our moments of weakness to instruct each one of us in the truth

that we are ones named worthy as children of God who have not been

forsaken in spite of poor judgment, bad decisions, unquestionable sinfulness,

matters of circumstance, or a momentary lack of faith. Like when God waited

patiently in the days of Noah and never stopped believing in the basic goodness

of all people, Jesus never stops believing in us today. So too, when we

descend into the depths of sadness, fear, faithlessness, or pain, our Lord reaches

out to retrieve us and lead us back toward the light. Now, did Jesus actually

descend into the underworld and meet all evil head-on? We don't know. But what we

do know is that the deep, unordered chaos was neither Peter's nor Christ's final

destination. Therefore, it shall not be ours. So may we live as a people of deep

faith who embrace Christ's faith in us in this deeply chaotic world. In times of

deep darkness or despair, may we thank God for Christ's daily walk toward the

horrible pain and the disease of the world. May we thank God that Jesus walks

on water for us, orienting us in this world, acknowledging our occasional

disorientation, and reorienting us to a new way of life. Indeed, may we thank God

for Christ's great descent into hell. So as John Calvin wrote, not because he was

to be engulfed in its abyss, rather in order that he might lay it low.

Thanks be to God. Amen.