Disciples Have Faith…Even When They Don’t - Matt. 14: 22-33

A popular song by the artist Jonah 33 has the following lyrics, “I want a faith like that. To see the dead rise. Or to see you pass by. I want a faith like that.” But what is faith really? And whom do you place your faith in today?

A lot of us were raised to immediately say that we put our faith in Jesus and faith is believing in what you cannot see, but know is true. This is all well and good, but it is not the example or the teaching that the disciples have for us in today’s scripture passage. We are told that Jesus insisted that the disciples get a head start to their next location. So they loaded into a boat to head to the opposite shore across the sea. They had just witnessed a miracle, Jesus, their teacher, friend, and master, had just taken five loaves of bread and two fishes and head over five-thousand families who had gathered to hear him. He had originally went their way, not with the intent on feeding these souls and stomachs, but to retreat away after the heart-breaking news that his cousin, John, had been beheaded. Jesus was still seeking solitude to mourn and pray. So he ushered the crowds away, after seeing to their needs and well-being, and sent the disciples off. Night fell and Jesus had not caught up with the disciples. The wind was picking up and the boat was caught too far from either shore to be safe in the midst of a rising storm.

As three am approached, the disciples saw a figment coming towards them on the lake and they were terrified. They cried out that it was a ghost. They did not recognize the one whom they had been following for quite some time now. They did not recognize the one who had just fed so many families and taught on the hillside. They did not recognize their teacher, friend, and master, the one whom they had been with day in and day out. Here, brothers and sisters, are men who saw Jesus in the flesh, yet they could not recognize him when they saw him. They had faith in Jesus, yet could not believe what was right in front of their eyes. Even as Jesus spoke to them words of greeting and peace, in “Don’t worry, its me! Don’t be afraid” only one of them stepped out in faith towards Jesus. Only one of the twelve.

I think we loose a bit of the intensity of what Jesus was saying to the disciples when we say, “it is me” in English. In Greek, Jesus simply states, “It is I”. But there is so much in that statement. For in it there is an inherent question: don’t you know who I am? Don’t you recognize the one whom you have lived and moved with for all this time? Yet, only one disciple recognized Jesus. And Peter’s response of standing up and speaking back to Jesus, asking Jesus to command him, was an act of faith.

Peter tends to get a pretty bad reputation in this passage of scripture. Just like Thomas in the passage about yearning to see and touch Jesus’ wounds from the cross, Peter is labeled a doubter in this passage. But really Peter was the only one who had the faith to get out of the boat. He was the only one who had faith that this one that everyone else was referring to as a ghost, was truly the Jesus he knew. So he made a bold statement, “If it is really you, tell me to come to you across the water.” And when Jesus said come, he got out of the boat and started to walk towards Jesus. It wasn’t until he took his eyes off the Lord and started to focus on the things that scared him, his own inadequacies, the audacity of him walking in water, and the growing intensity of the wind and the waves, that he began to sink. But brothers and sisters, he still had faith in Jesus for he cried out. “Save me!” and Jesus immediately stretched out his hand and he caught Peter.

Here is the part of the scripture that has lead to the miss-creation of the Christian mantra about what faith is. Jesus said to Peter as he caught him, “You have so little faith. Why did you doubt?” A history of Christian interpretation has led us to believe that Jesus is chastising Peter for not having enough faith in him as God’s son. As if he doubted Jesus. But Peter believed in Jesus, friends. He believed even in the midst of not having faith in anything else, because when he started to sink he still cried out to Jesus, the one whom he trusted enough to get out of the boat, to save him, knowing that he would. No, Jesus was not asking Peter why he doubted him, as the Lord, this one whom Peter was so close to. Jesus was asking Peter why he doubted himself. Why he became so caught up in his circumstances, that he didn’t have enough faith to continue his journey to Jesus. He got caught up with the water and the wind and forgot to believe in himself in such a bold way that he could walk across water.

And let’s be honest. Peter had ever right to be afraid. In his culture it was taught that water was the very source that not only gave life, but that which could take it away. When God became angry with the people around Noah, he sent floodwaters to destroy the entire world, all of creation, except what was in the ark. When Pharaoh’s army tried to catch the Israelites as they escaped captivity in Egypt, the waters swallowed them whole. Water had the ability to nurture and sustain life, but it also has the ability to choke away life. Peter started to doubt the authority that Jesus had bestowed in him. The power and freedom to not tame, but move with, the force of nature found in the waters. That was just too much for Peter to trust himself with.

Friends, if we would be honest with ourselves for a moment, I imagine that we would see a lot of Peter inside of ourselves, but even more so we may see those other eleven disciples. Jesus had sent the disciples on ahead of him. They had a mission – to get to the other side, presumably to set up for Jesus to arrive later and join them. But when the storm came, they quickly forgot their mission about preparing for Jesus’ coming and simply went into survival mode, and they were so intensely focused on their present circumstances that they could not even recognize Jesus when he came to be with them and could not hear his words of comfort, to not be afraid.

From the eleven disciples who stayed in the boat we can learn an important lesson about discipleship. Faith is not always as simple as believing what we cannot see or trusting Jesus. It is having faith that God will deliver us to the place God has called us to. Where is God calling us to go, Albright-Bethune? What is our mission? Where are we to be examples of the hope and life Jesus has to offer? Where are we making spaces for people to hear and experience Christ in their lives? And are we truly focused on this mission God has given us? Or are we more worried about the day-to-day nature of surviving. Because Church, if we are more focused on surviving then the mission, then we are going to be just as confused as the disciples, unable to see Jesus coming towards us to be our comfort and strength. When we take our eyes off the shoreline of where we are going and who we are called to be, then we are simply stuck in the middle of the lake, with no where to go. But know this. Even if the other eleven disciples lacked faith, they were still able to recognize the immensity of what they saw Peter doing.

They may not had been able to have faith in Jesus as he walked towards them on the water, but they knew who he was after he saved Peter, as they worshipped him and cried, “Truly You are the son of God.” These disciples remind us that to worship is an act of faith, it is an opportunity to remember all the times God has brought us through in the past, so maybe, just maybe, we can recognize Jesus coming towards us in the future, calling to us, and ushering us on in our mission for the kingdom of God. This, my friends, is why we gather here week after week. Not to be entertained, to do the same thing, or even to hear a good word. We gather together to remind each other that we have a mission that is greater then any present circumstances we may find ourselves being distracted by and that even when we loose sight of our faith, God is faithful to us.

But what about those times that we recognize Peter inside of ourselves? The times when we leap forward in faith, only to doubt ourselves or our decisions later. Peter recognized the Lord and wanted to answer the call to discipleship so he crossed the raging waters, he had faith to do what no one else in that boat did. When we have the boldness of Peter in this passage to move outside of our comfort zones, we often start to doubt ourselves. We think that something is too difficult or dangerous. We wonder what others will think of us. We fear for our safety. We wonder if we even heard Christ’s call correctly. We think that we are not strong enough or good enough. That we don’t have enough time or faith. That doubt my friends, is not from the Christ that called to Peter from the waters. Those are the mocking cackles of our own personal demons. And nothing will make us sink faster then to doubt that we are good enough to be the children of God and to be called forth on a mission. For to doubt that fundamental piece of our identity is to simultaneously doubt Christ’s presence along our journeys.

Our faith may waiver my friends, but do not let it be because we doubt ourselves. Do not let it be our lack of certainty about getting out of the boat. And do not let anyone tell you that you did no have enough faith in Christ to succeed. Because at the end of the day, Peter still knew who to turn to when the waves of his own doubt started to pull him under, and Jesus was faithful to catch him, while gently asking why Peter doubted himself.

Brothers and sisters, Jesus asks Peter why he had so little faith. But this is nothing short of an affirmation that Peter did have faith. He had enough faith to start the journey, just not enough to reach his perceived destination. Do we have a faith like that? A faith to get out of the boat. It may not be the faith of seeing the dead rise or seeing Jesus pass by, but it is still faith, friends. It is his act of faith that lead to the others proclaiming that Jesus was Lord. Today as we come to celebrate communion, I would invite you to think about your own faith journeys. Think about if what you proclaim with your lips is true in your hearts. And think about a time when God has been faithful to you. We will conclude today’s service with this act of worship: to share with each other those times of God’s faithfulness, maybe even when we lacked faith, and to remind each other of that. For there may be times when we have a little faith, like Peter, and there may be times when we seemingly don’t have faith at all, like the disciples at the beginning of the passage, or times when we have an abundance of faith that it leads us to step out on the waters like Peter or proclaim Jesus is Lord, like the disciples at the end of the story. But through it all, God is God, the one whom is always faithful, and the one whom has faith in us, as the children of God. Amen.