Dear Friends
This week we reflect on that famous story of Peter walking on water in Matthew 14: 22-33. When Peter steps out of his boat, he enters a tumult. His motive isn’t to escape from threat, for he goes into a situation where the threats will now look different, into a place where Jesus is defying and reordering the assumed boundaries. I doubt Peter expects a walk on the sea will alleviate all his fears. Rather, his desire to join Jesus on the water expresses a desire for transcendence. He’s not trying to be Jesus, he’s trying to be with him. Peter wants to share Jesus’ unbounded place, to put himself beyond the forces and expectations that determine our usual existence, whether for better or for worse.
Isn’t this what history’s most faithful people have demonstrated? Not all of them were great believers, but they knew that if God might be encountered anywhere, God will be found in places where the regular delineations and predictable endings don’t apply as before.
Sometimes incredibly turbulent places are also “thin places,” where God breaks through.
These heroes of faith find and illuminate God in settings where “the way things are” are reconfigured: where the poor receive support, the sick find comfort, and the oppressed enjoy dignity and freedom.
It is the nature of faith humble, active faith to be willing to throw oneself into a disorderly world and expect to encounter Jesus there. It is the nature of faith, even “little faith,” to want to transcend the normal “rules” and see what possibilities might be brought into being. It is the nature of faith to wonder what other supposedly unalterable outcomes Jesus might want us to take part in messing with. It is the nature of faith even to waver from time to time, when it has stepped into stressful, unfamiliar terrain.
Because, as Peter discovered, Jesus is there where the boundaries are being redrawn, extending lifegiving stability when the chaos gets the upper hand.
Solomzi