Wisdom of a Teenager

For this story, I’m giving you my sermon. I invite you to place yourself within the story and write your own sacred narrative. What was Peter thinking? What was Peter feeling? What was the narrative going through his head?

This story is told in three of our four Gospels. In John 6:16-21, Mark 6:45-52 and here in Matthew 14:22-33. Each of these Gospels came out of different faith communities at different times after Jesus' death, resurrection, and ascension. Each of these Gospel writers employs literary techniques to help this story reveal the true nature of Jesus as the only born of God, the pre-existent Christ, one with God. Because each of these authors uses a slightly different lens to tell us this story of the Good News of Jesus, there’s really beautiful diversity in this individual story and how this story fits within the larger narratives that these writers use to teach and preach the story of Jesus as Christ and Promised Messiah. In John, this account is one of many other miracles told as sort of an accumulation of signs that Jesus is the Messiah, and for John specifically, that Jesus is one with God and the embodied presence of God on earth. The Ego Emi. The very same Ego Emi, “I am” from our stories in Exodus. In Mark, this story is part of a crescendo, revealing the identity of Jesus, to Mark chapter 8 where Peter receives “full sight” sees, and reveals Jesus as the true Messiah. Matthew goes to lengths to show his audience, his congregation and community, and us that Jesus is the Messiah. Matthew seems to methodically go through every single prophecy of the Messiah and spell out how Jesus fits as the promised Messiah. For Matthew, Jesus being the fulfillment of God’s promises to God’s people is important. Matthew spells out Jesus’ lineage from King David, “a sprout from the stump of David.” In the miracles Jesus performs, Matthew deliberately makes references that point us back to prophecy and wisdom about the promises and presence of God, urging us to make the connection that Jesus is the Messiah, the promised one. But until this story, Jesus as God’s presence on earth has not been explicit. For Matthew, this story is important for us to see the nature of God, and Jesus as God.

In our text, Jesus stayed behind to pray and mourn the loss of his cousin John the Baptist who had recently been beheaded by King Herod. Jesus sent the disciples away, probably to ensure himself some solitude. Jesus gets his time in prayer and it’s late into the night.

The disciples experience what the Greek translates to as “contrary wind.” The Sea of Galilee was known for its violent storms that would quickly develop and quickly dissipate without warning.

Jesus had called 4 of these disciples on the boat, while they were fishing. They knew the water, knew how to operate a boat, and crossing the sea was familiar. These disciples had experienced a storm on this sea before. Maybe because they had experience in this before, they thought they could handle it and then after hours of battering by choppy waves and trying to sail into the wind, they were tired. Not close to shore, not close to where they came from or where they needed to go. They maybe were regretting thinking they had all the answers when they look up and see a man walking on water, in spite of wind and waves and physics. Their first thoughts were, this is a ghost.

Peter, ever the gregarious, calls out to the ghost and Jesus answers, “Take heart, it is I.”

This answer is important, the specific language of this answer is important. Jesus doesn’t just answer, “it is I.” “I’m your friend Jesus, the same guy you’ve been following around for months.” Jesus evokes an ancient title. Jesus uses the same name and language for God that God gives to Moses in the burning bush. Jesus answers “ego eimi,” In ancient Hebrew, that is translated to Yahweh.

When Jesus invokes this name here, this name carries with it all of the power and promises, and weight of the relationship that the Israelites have had with their God. The God that delivered them from Egypt, the God that gave them the promised land, the God whose presence, the Shakina, dwelt in the temple. The reason that these Israelite disciples had shaped their lives around, all of the traditions of Passover, circumcision, religious holidays, and food restrictions, the reason these children of Israel celebrated the sabbath every week was walking toward them on the water.

To our Gospel writer, Matthew, this moment is the moment. When these disciples, are tired, scared, and not close to their departure or their destination, this is where Matthew tells us these disciples truly see Jesus as God. This man walking on the water has just declared himself, more than their friend, he is their God. This moment is it.

They realize that all of these amazing things that Jesus has been doing are more than the works of the prophet. These works are works of the hand of God, Adoni, the only God their people have followed, in covenant for thousands of years.

Peter is beside himself, maybe he doesn’t believe it and needs proof, maybe he is so eager to embrace this holy presence that he has spent his whole observing in creating separateness, holiness, and reverence through keeping himself not quite a part of the predominate culture or community. The holiness that he has observed through separation is right in front of him, maybe he wants to reach out and touch this friend that is the embodied presence of God, embodied presence of Wisdom Sophia, the presence he would never be able to touch in the holy of holies in the temple.

Peter, of course in disbelief, nearly leaping out of the boat says, If you are the I am, let me come to you. There was going to be no separating him from God in front of him. Jesus invites him and Peter comes, his enthusiasm overriding his logic, and walks on water, with his eyes firmly fixed on one thing, closeness with his God. When Peter’s brain catches up to his body, he is smacked with the wind and waves and laws of physics, and he sinks. He cries out, now, having experienced the presence of Yahweh, in ways that so few had experienced in thousands of years, “help me,” and Jesus, his friend and God embodied, reaches back and lifts him, out of the waves, out of the wind and into a world where not even the laws of space and time and density can constrain the works of God.

Peter is lifted for a few seconds into God’s kingdom. Jesus, ever sure of who he was, and what his mission was, maybe not understanding the personal crisis that Peter has undergone in these few seconds, but with compassion, “you of little faith, why did you doubt?” As if to say, “Of course, I’m Yahweh, I’m the pre-existent Christ, I’m the promised messiah. I was there in the beginning of the world. I was there when you were created, knit together in your mother’s womb. I’ve known you and loved you and seen the plans for your life since we first met in person, since before you existed. There’s no need to doubt me, I’m one with God, I’m the presence of God, I’ve never actually left you, I’ve been here all along. There’s no need to doubt I will save you.”

One of my professors, who is a bible scholar, she can read and speak the original languages the bible was written in. She thinks that many of the 12 that we see as Jesus' disciples are young, she proposes that they’re teenagers at the time of their call. I’m not a bible scholar but in this story, let’s imagine Peter as a teenager.

So many times I’ve heard this story, Peter sort of gets a bad rap. But I relate to Peter. I relate to his emotional responses; I relate to his impulsivity and enthusiasm. I relate to all the times Peter has to be humbled to get the point.

But here’s the thing about Peter, he always gets there, he always, even though sometimes dense, sees God. Sees God’s will. And Peter, bless him, once he sees it, he is relentless and enthusiastic. Peter is called the rock on which the church is built.

Peter, here in this story, I think is so overcome with the presence of God, he immediately worships. When he is smacked across the face with reality, he reaches straight to God and is lifted back into a kingdom mindset. A mindset that sets him free from his immediate constraints, maybe not the laws of physics, but the constraints of his culture and customs and the empire in which he lives.

If Peter is a teenager, it invites us to see our children and youth as the rocks on which our churches will be built. Our children and youth, not just as the future but as the present. It invites us to remember the sense of awe and novelty that is present in childhood and adolescence that we tend to lose to skepticism. It invites us to see both the willingness to be reverent and irreverent of what is holy or perhaps not really holy. It invites us to see there’s sometimes wisdom to getting in over our heads and stepping out of the boat, maybe we won’t just sink. Maybe it's only when we are in over our heads that we can truly see the ego eimi, the God who was and is and is yet to come, the God who is God and we are not. Maybe when we worship, wholeheartedly, with enthusiasm and no inhibitions, like we are young, maybe that’s when we are able to reach out and touch the kingdom of God.

Matthew 14:22-33

14:22 Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds.
14:23 And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone,
14:24 but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them.
14:25 And early in the morning he came walking toward them on the sea.
14:26 But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, "It is a ghost!" And they cried out in fear.
14:27 But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, "Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid."
14:28 Peter answered him, "Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water."
14:29 He said, "Come." So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus.
14:30 But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, "Lord, save me!"
14:31 Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, "You of little faith, why did you doubt?"
14:32 When they got into the boat, the wind ceased.
14:33 And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, "Truly you are the Son of God."