Saved
By Doubt
The
|Pastor Roy B. Grubbs
17th Sunday After Pentecost
Matthew 14:22-33
There is something so appealing about Peter:
the brash, passionate disciple who is always rushing into things, saying
what others are only thinking, and doing what others would not dare.
It is Peter who asks Jesus to explain his parables, Peter who understands
Jesus’ true identity but fails to understand what it will cost him, and Peter
whom Jesus calls the foundation rock of the church, one moment before he also
calls him Satan, who is not on the side of God.
It is Peter who swears he will never deny
Jesus, and Peter who does; it is Peter whom Jesus asks to pray with him in
It is hard not to love Peter.
Sure he is one of those enthusiastic types who talk a better game than
they play, but still there is something so sincere about him, and so achingly
familiar. He is full of faith one
minute and full of doubt the next, riding high on his confidence in Jesus one
moment and laying in the dirt the next. He
is not a fake. Through all his ups
and downs, all his great moments and his awful ones, Peter’s heart is on his
sleeve. What you see is what you get
with him: an impetuous, outspoken
man who both loves Jesus and lets him down, who richly deserves Jesus’
judgment but who also receives his grace.
No wonder Matthew likes him.
At the beginning of today’s story, Peter is just one in the crowd.
Weary after the feeding of the five thousand, Jesus has sent his
disciples on ahead of him and has gone by himself into the mountains to pray.
By nightfall, Jesus was still at it, while the disciples had their hands
full trying to steer their tiny little boat in the middle of a terrible
windstorm.
They are all, presumably, soaked, their
teeth chattering and their hands blistered from their efforts, when Jesus comes
to them. It is early the next
morning, Matthew says. No one can
sleep, even if he wants to. They are
all watching the horizon, looking for land, measuring the distance they have
come against the distance they still have to go when someone spots a shadowy
figure walking towards them across the stormy water.
“It’s a ghost!” someone cries, but
immediately the figure speaks to them, saying, “Take heart, it is I; have no
fear.” His voice must sound
strange to them, or perhaps he is still too far away to see, because Peter does
not trust him. Scared to death,
putting into words what the others hardly dare think, Peter says, “Lord, if it
is you, bid me come to you on the water.”
Now that is a strange thing to say.
Why not say, “Lord, if it is you, make the storm stop right now”?
Or, “Lord, tell us what we had for supper tonight.”
But neither of those is the test that Peter proposes.
Lord, bid me to come to where you are; let me join you on the water.
Show me what you can do, what I can do, if only you tell me to.
Take away my doubt; make me have faith.
“Come,” Jesus says.
So Peter swings his legs over the side of the boat, and, while the other
disciples watch with their hearts beating in their mouths, he places his feet on
the surface of the water – the waves still crashing against the side of the
boat, the wind whipping his hair into his eyes – he puts his feet flat on top
of the water, takes a huge, trembling breath, and stands.
Then he takes a few hesitant steps toward Jesus across the rough surface,
like the first steps he ever took in his life, and he is doing fine until a gust
of wind almost topples him, and he gets scared, and feels his feet sinking into
the black waves below, and he goes down like a stone.
Even if you have never tried to walk on
water, you know how he felt. Maybe
you were crossing a stream on a fallen log, inching your way across its rough,
rounded surface, doing just fine until you looked down at the rushing water
below and got frightened, lost your balance, and had to drag yourself the rest
of the way by the seat of your pants.
Or maybe you were learning to ride a bike,
and had gained enough speed so that suddenly you stopped wobbling and started
flying, the wind in your hair, the scenery whipping by, when just as suddenly,
you lost your confidence. Dropped one foot to the ground, and brought the whole
experience crashing down on top of you.
“Lord, save me,” Peter cries out, and
Jesus does, reaching out his hand and catching him, hauling him out of the cold
water like a big, frightened fish and dragging him to where the other disciples
can pull him back into the boat. And
then the awful words: “O man of
little faith,” Jesus says to Peter, “why did you doubt?”
They are the words none of us ever want to
hear addressed to us, and yet they are the same words many of us ask ourselves
every day. Why don’t I have more
faith? Why can’t I trust God?
Why am I afraid to let go and let God care for me?
Why do I doubt? I believe I
am in God’s hands and that they are wonderful hands, but then I lose my job
and cannot find another, and as the interviews go on and on and my savings
disappear, my faith goes with them and I begin to sink.
I believe that God is present and active in
the world, but terrible things keep happening.
I read the newspaper headlines, the crime statistics, the obituaries, and
it seems like the storm will never end. I
believe in life after death and a bright future with God, but then I get sick,
and the doctor says six, maybe nine months, and I pray for a miracle but no
miracle comes, and I pray for a reassuring voice from God but no voice comes,
and the waves rise, and I begin to sink.
Why do we doubt?
Because we are afraid, because the sea is so vast and we are so small,
because the storm is so powerful and we are so easily sunk, because life is so
beyond our control and we are so helpless in its grip.
Why do we doubt? Because we
are afraid even when we do have faith.
We do have faith you know. Not
none, but some. Like Peter, we have
a little, and a little is better than nothing, even though there are times when
it does not seem like enough to save us. Like
Peter, we have faith and we have doubt, we try to walk with Jesus and we do, and
then we fail. We take a few glorious
steps and then we sink. We cry out
“Lord, save me!” and He does.
The truth about us is that we obey and fear,
we walk and sink, we believe and doubt. But
it is not like we do only one or the other.
We do both. Our faith and our
doubt are not mutually exclusive; they both exist in us at the same time,
buoying us up and bearing us down, giving us courage and feeding our fears,
supporting our weight on the wild seas of our lives and sinking us like stones.
This is why we need Jesus.
This is why we would not be caught dead on the water without him.
Our fears and doubts may paralyze us, but they are also what make us cry
out for his saving touch, so how can they be all bad?
If we never sank – if we could walk on the water just fine all by
ourselves – we would not need a savior. We
could go into business for ourselves. Our
doubts, fearsome as they are, remind us who we are and whose we are, and whom we
need in our lives to save us. When
we sink, as Peter does, our Lord reaches out and catches us, responding with
grace and judgment, but never rejection: “Why
did you doubt?” He returns us to
the boat, knowing full well that they only reason we are in the boat in the
first place is because we believe, or want to believe, and because we mean to
follow Him through all our doubtful days.
He returns us to the boat, where our
companions grab us by the scruff of the neck and haul us overboard, where we are
grateful and exhausted on the slippery deck.
All at once the wind ceases, and the waves hush, and in the awesome
silence of that night becoming day, all of us who are in this boat together
worship Him, saying, “Truly, you are the Son of God.”
Amen.
*BBT
- Seeds of Heaven- 2004