Sermon: The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost- August 9, 2026

Matthew 14:22-33

The Rev'd Cecil Patrick Perkins, The Rector 

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I speak to you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Please be seated. I'm going to begin my sermon this morning with a joke. And some of you may not like it, but I do, which is the reason I'm going to tell it. Now Moses and Jesus were sitting up in heaven. They were sitting beside the crystal sea with fishing poles fishing, because that's what you do in heaven, whatever it is you enjoyed on earth. And they were sitting there and they were catching some fish and they were having a good old time. And then they started talking about the good old days. And you know, Jesus said to Moses, he said, You know, Mose, because that's what he calls him Mose. He said, Mose, neither of us have done any miracles late. We used to do them all the time, and now that we're up here, we never get the chance to do them. And Jesus looked at him and said, Well, I figure we probably still can. And Moses said, Let's find out. So Moses took his fishing pole, raised it up over the crystal sea, dipped it in the water, and it was like the Red Sea all over again. The waters parted, it was dry land. Moses walked out in the middle, caught a few fish. It was grand. And Jesus said, Moses, you still got it. So they let the water come back in. And then Jesus said, Well, let's see how I'm doing. So Jesus got out and started walking on the water. And he got out in the middle and turned around, and all of a sudden, he started to sink. And he's like, What's going on here? I'm sinking into this water and I don't know what to do. And Moses said, You didn't have holes in your feet the last time. If you don't like that joke, I'm sorry there's something wrong with you. This is a remarkably good story, though, because when we read the story about Jesus walking on the water, we come to it bringing all sorts of expectations. And in our day and time, in the American Christian experience, we usually see this story as simply one about having enough faith. And there's something to that. But I'll tell you, if you if you go around and look at many of the sermons and even some of the comments that are made of that, you'll find some really funny things. I saw one this week that said that the point of this story is to say that if you want to walk on water, you have to get out of the boat. Have you ever heard that one? That's a great, great turn of phrase, but it had absolutely nothing to do with this story whatsoever. Because in this story, Peter obviously had plenty of faith because he's the one that asked to walk on the water. Jesus didn't invite him out. Peter said, Have me out here. And Jesus said, Come on, and we know how it turned out. Other people take this story and they say, if Peter had just kept his eyes on Jesus instead of looking around at the wind and the sea, he wouldn't have fallen into the water. So we've made it a moralistic lesson about having enough faith. If you keep your eyes on Jesus, all shall be well. And I'm sure that's a true sentiment, but I don't think that that's what this story in its context is really about. And I want to walk you through it and tell you what's going on here because I think in some ways it's far more troubling, but also far more clear as to what Matthew is trying to do with his story. So let's just jump right on in. The first thing that I want you to notice is right in the first sentence. And in this translation, it's kind of muted down. It says, Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side. This language is weak. What is actually said here in the Greek is Jesus compelled his disciples to get into the boat and go to the other side. It's an interesting scene. Jesus has just fed 5,000 people with a two-piece fish dinner and five orders of hush puppies. You remember the story from last week. And then Jesus at the end of that, while all the people are crowding him, goes to his disciples and said, I want you guys right now to get in the boat and start going to the other side. That should occlude them up that something was probably about to happen. But they did so, and Jesus stayed around. It was getting dark. He stayed around and he dismissed the crowd. He was saying, Thank you very much for coming, tip your waiters, whatever it was that he was saying. And then he did something remarkable. He went up on the mountain to pray. It's almost like Jesus wanted these disciples to get out in the middle of the Sea of Galilee and to have some distance from him. Methinks there's a plot here. What happened is while he was up on that mountain, though, something that often happens on the Sea of Galilee, any of you who have ever been there have probably recognized this. The Sea of Galilee is one in which storms can just run up very, very quickly. And so what happened is they were out on that Sea of Galilee trying to get across, and a storm came up. And there was wind and rain and all of this going up. And the disciples, many of who were fishermen and knew how to run a boat, these people were not like me, you know, renting a pontoon boat and then trying to figure out on the day what you're doing. They knew how to sail. But they got out in the middle and the wind just started buffeting so much that they were having a really, really hard time. And then it said, all of a sudden, at about the fourth watch, it says it was early in the morning. It was 3 a.m. He had left, had them leave before dark. They were still on the Sea of Galilee at 3 a.m. They were having a rough time. And they look up, and what do they see? They see this cat walking to them on the water. Now, I don't know about you. I grew up Baptist in the South. If I had seen something like that, I would have said a few words. It would have worried me a little bit to see someone walking on the water, but that's what they see. And we know that it they were terrified and they said, It's a ghost, and they cried out in fear. And the word here is not cried out like shouted. They were crying. They knew something was happening. And then it says, in the midst of that situation, Jesus spoke to them and said, Take heart, be of good comfort. It is I, do not be afraid. I don't know about you, but that would not have been enough for me. I would have started to calm down at that moment. But they saw him and they identified him as Jesus. He said, It is I, ego and me. Now, the Greeks have a really interesting way of saying this, and Jesus was probably speaking Aramaic at the time. It's very similar. But when you say, It is I, what you actually are saying is, I am. Now, in John's gospel, you have all of these I am statements. When I read it here, I have always to this day translated it, it is I, because I don't want to make more of this scene than Matthew is wanting to make of this scene. But the more I read it this week while I was down on the coast and reading it, I forgot to bring my English Bible, so it was working all in Greek. The more I read it, the more I realized is that Jesus is saying something because he says, I am, do not be afraid. And then Peter responds and he says something that's really kind of cute. Our translation here says, Lord, if it is you, command me to come on the water. What Peter really said is, Lord, if you are, invite me to come out on the water. I am, if you are, invite me out on the water. Peter obviously wanted a piece of whatever Jesus was doing. He wanted to be involved with something that miraculous and such. And it isn't that just like all of us. We all, when we think about being with Jesus, we want to experience the highest heights of what spirituality can bring to us, and that's that's definitely what Peter did. But as soon as Peter's feet hit the water and he walked out a little bit, he realized that he was in the midst of a storm. The rain and the wind and all of this was happening, and Peter began to sink. Now, this this is a remarkable thing because we have to understand what Peter had seen within the last 24 hours. He had seen Jesus feed 5,000 people with five loaves and two fish. Not a bad trick. He had also seen Jesus walking across the water unaided. He wasn't wearing floaties, he was walking on his feet across the water. Peter had witnessed Jesus doing some remarkable, miraculous things. But now that Peter is out of the boat and his life is on the line, he began to think, wait just a minute. Here I am sorry. Wait just a minute. I'm here walking on water, and there's nothing between me and the bottom of the Sea of Galilee except my feet. So Peter cried out. Peter was nervous and he said, Lord, save me. Now, Peter, we call him the rock. That was not because of the consistency of his backbone, but it had to do with the content of his head. Peter always talked before he thought, but in this moment he spoke best what he needed because he knew in that moment he didn't need someone to do a trick. He needed someone to save him. He knew that the only thing between him and death was Jesus at this point. So he said, Lord, save him. And Jesus reached out his hand, grabbed Peter, and said to him, Peter, you of little faith, why did you doubt? Peter, you had seen me feed 5,000 people. Why did you doubt? You'd seen me walk out here on the water. You knew it was going to be alright. Why did you doubt? When Peter, when Jesus said this to Peter and asked him the question, why did you doubt? It was a rhetorical question. I'm sure Jesus knew, and I think we all know the issue. It's one thing to have faith in Christ when we're looking for some sort of big religious experience, when we're looking for God to do something amazing in that way. But when the rubber meets the road or our feet meet the sea, as the case is, things get a little bit more critical when the chips are down. In this moment, when the chips are down, Peter was perfectly able to believe that Jesus could feed 5,000 and walk on the sea, but he was having a little bit of trouble believing that he was going to be saved. So when Jesus reached out that hand and granted him salvation, Peter in that moment knew something about Jesus that we all need to realize. And that is that Jesus is not some sort of cosmic Santa Claus that's able to do magic tricks. But Jesus is the one that we can depend on to save us when the storms of life are blowing round about us. And what we see in this situation here is that when Jesus got Peter by the hand and brought him up into the boat, the wind ceased. Jesus having Peter in hand, getting him into the boat, and then the winds and the waves abate. This is exactly what we taught the kids in vacation Bible school. With Jesus in your boat, you can smile in the storm. What we experienced here in this text is the truth of the Christian gospel. The truth of the Christian gospel is you can depend on Jesus not only to do the religious magic tricks, but to be with you and to grant you salvation when the chips are down. Now, I grew up in the South like many of you did, and when I hear salvation, I think about getting saved. I think about the people who would show up at my door on a Saturday morning and knock at the door and said, Have you found Jesus? And I have to tell him I Episcopalian and I didn't know he was missing. But we have that same sort of experience. Salvation in this sense is saving your life from death. But friends, I don't know what all salvation is to you. It's not only about heaven and the afterlife. You may be sitting here with cancer and need salvation and need to trust Christ to save you in that. You may be in a terrible relationship today and wondering how to deal with that. You may need Jesus to save you from that. You may be depressed or downtrodden in financial trouble, facing a new school year and situations that you don't know that you have the ability to face. I don't know what salvation looks like to you today, but I'm telling you here, as a priest of the church, that the same Jesus that was present with Peter on the water is present with you. That doesn't mean that he's going to take every problem out of your life, that the seas are going to go still, but he will be with you in the boat through it. And that's a remarkable thing to remember. In a few minutes, we're going to bring a new Christian into this church. We're going to baptize Jude who's sitting out there just waiting for me to wet his head in church. There's a wonderful image in this text for those who are being baptized and for those who've been baptized, and the ancient fathers of the church recognized. They read this allegorically, and we're not in this day and time very comfortable with allegory, but I think we probably should be because what they said is that the storm, the chaos, represents the world that is going on around us, trying perhaps to harm us, trying to keep us from keeping our eyes on Christ. Jesus is walking out in the midst of it with us, and we can make the attempt to do what Jesus did and walk on the water by our own strength, walk through the storm through our own strength, and we may find out we don't have it. But if we call out and say, Lord, save me, what Jesus will do is that. And He will bring us into the boat, into the ark of salvation, which the church fathers said was the church. And there, while the storm is still blowing around us, we are safe in a place where Christ is keeping us calm and dry. Now, I've worked in the church for a lot of years, and I can tell you it's not always calm here. Sometimes you get wet, particularly when you baptize babies. But I want to tell you the story here is the same for those who are being baptized and for those who are. With Jesus in your boat and with you in Jesus' boat, you can smile through ever whatever storm of life you face. And ultimately, through that experience of life, you perhaps will say the same words that the disciples said. They didn't say what I'm about to tell you when Jesus was walking on the water. They said it when he was safely with them in the boat. Truly, you are the Son of God. On this day do you believe that? Do you believe that salvation can come to you even today? Not only eternal salvation that will get you to heaven, but with salvation through the storms of life. If you do, experience it. Don't think that you can walk on the water on your own, get in the boat with Jesus, and through that experience, you too one day may be able to say, Through it all, truly I have experienced the Son of God. Amen.