2020.08.23 | Should I Stay or Should I Go?
“Should I Stay or Should I Go?
Rev. Pepper Swanson
On Wednesday morning, I woke up coughing around 4 am to the distinct smell of smoke drifting through our house. Having experienced a house fire when I was 12 and having lived through the Oakland firestorm of 1991, I was up like a shot to sniff out every door and window, to check the news, and to close the windows.
It was agony to imagine what another week of excessive heat was going to be like with closed windows.
After months of the outdoors being our only respite from sheltering in place, we’ve been driven indoors by the heat and now, this, our ability to cool the house at night was being taken away.
For months now, and especially this week with the heat and smoke, I’ve been feeling a bit like the other 11 disciples in today’s scripture reading must have felt when Peter stood up in the boat in the middle of a storm and attempted to get off and actually walk on water.
Think about it: in the most placid of waters, the most dangerous moment for any boat, canoe, kayak, sailboat with more than one person is that moment when someone decides to stand up, get off, dive off, or disembark. I was once in a sailing class where the entire class was flunked and told to sign up for another class because we couldn’t properly handle what we should do when an idiot diving off the boat caused it to keel over. More than once, Lia and I exhausted ourselves trying to right our kayak after one of us did a crazy disembark at Lake Tahoe.
Of course, for the eleven disciples, the boat situation and Peter’s decision to disembark was much worse than anything I’ve encountered.
Look at what’s happening from their perspective: they had already had a tough day. After listening to him teach for hours, Jesus had commanded them to feed a crowd of over 5,000 people with just five loaves and two fishes. It worked out okay but it was stressful and scary.
Then Jesus had taken them to the shore and gone off by himself to pray. They had boarded a boat and headed across the sea of Galilee, but found themselves helpless in the middle of an overnight storm with wild wind buffeting their boat here and there.
When Jesus came walking toward them, they rightly thought he was a ghost rather than their teacher, a situation that Peter decided would be best rectified by asking for supernatural proof in the form of his being able to walk on water just like Jesus.
I’m sorry if I sound a little irritated by Peter, but for heaven’s sake, if we’re in a boat, in a storm, looking at what could potentially be a ghost, it isn’t exactly the best time for someone to stand up, get off the boat, and try walking across the water.
And it wasn’t. Though beckoned to come forward by Jesus, Peter immediately gets distracted by the howling wind and starts to sink, requiring Jesus to save him and put him back in the boat. The winds cease and Jesus asks Peter, “O ye of little faith, why did you doubt?”
Not exactly the question I would have asked. As someone in the boat with him, my questions would have been more:
Why didn’t you just stay in the boat with the rest of us?
Why do you always need personal proof of what’s patently obvious?
Why didn’t you stay focused on what was important?
If you feel you know Peter or someone like Peter, you are a) either a parent or b) someone who has been watching a lot of news since March.
The Peters of our time can’t seem to stay in the boat of safety: they insist Churches should re-open, they insist that their celebrations be in-person, and they insist mask requirements are for other, less faithful, people. Like Peter, sometimes their intentions are good, very good — but the number of times they get off the boat of safety each day for good or practical purposes rocks the boat for everyone else.
The Peters of our time are big believers in personal supernatural proof. They believe that if God loves them, if they do enough good, God will protect them. They also tend to believe the opposite: if anything bad happens to them or the ones they love, then there is no God. They engage in the risky business of continually demanding proof of God’s favor in a world dominated by natural forces beyond our control.
And, the Peters of our time are quick to lose focus on what matters. After nearly six months of sheltering in place and now excessive heat, rolling power outages, and smoke from over 20 wildfires burning out of control, their unfocused minds are their greatest enemies, waking Peter-like panic in them each morning. For them, their faith that God will be with us whatever happens is being eroded by endless what-ifing and very real fears of the future.
If you dwell too long on how Peter’s behavior crops up in our own time, you realize as I have that in one way or another, we are all like Peter — we are all getting out of the boat when we shouldn’t, asking for personal supernatural proof instead of using our faith, and being distracted, frightened even by the powerful forces around us at the very moment when a focus on trusting God to be with us might calm the waters and tighten our personal ships.
I should pause here and confess that it is somewhat customary in Church to interpret today’s Scripture reading as if Peter was an exemplary model of faith and fearlessness. In his commentary on this passage, the Bible scholar Clifton Kirkpatrick exudes: “Getting out of the boat with Jesus is the most risky, most exciting, and most fulfilling way to live life to the fullest. Matthew 14:22-33 invites us to do just that!”
I suspect Kirkpatrick’s interpretation was not written during a global virus pandemic nor was it addressed to those older individuals and others who are at serious risk of dying should they contract the virus while living their most risky, most exciting, and most fulfilling Christian life.
The Good News today is that we have three options for how we interpret Peter’s actions and this passage at this time and in this place:
Option 1: If our age and health allows, we can step out of one’s comfort zone and sail under caution for the troubled waters to see what we can learn and give, knowing we are most likely to be successful if we keep our eyes and our minds on Christ.
Option 2: If age and health puts us or the ones we live with in the no-go zone, we can stay in the boat, and opt to provide wise counsel to those making precipitous dives off the edge or to those who are rocking the boat too often. We can explore, instead, new areas of growth such as technology and communications and support the efforts of those who are making valiant attempts to swim through the storm.
As we read later in I Corinthians: “...there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” We do your part, making sure it’s the unique part to which God has called us.
Option 3: Whether you stay in the boat or tumble head first into the stormy waters, you have the option to remember that today’s passage begins in terror and ends in worship and the bridge from one condition to the other for all the disciples is not what they did but what God, in the form of Christ, did for them. From high on a mountain, deep in prayer, God came to them in their time of need, God calmed the wind and the storm and the sea and the men in the boat And God encouraged and then saved Peter when he foolishly tried to be like God. And he brought each and everyone of them to their knees in thanks and praise.
O ye of little faith, do not doubt that our kind and gracious God will do anything less for us in our time of need. Amen.