One of the great joys of my life is serving our community for over 25 years. I hope you noticed the “save the date reminders” in the newsletter and bulletins. We are going to have a wonderful party on April 25, the 25th anniversary of our first worship. I hope you will be there. I’m past my 25th anniversary. I started work on the last week of February. I’m grateful that I have spent the bulk of my career serving one community.  It is a rare blessing for a pastor.

It does mean that there are experiences that I haven’t had. One of my friends, who moves to a new church every five or six years, talks about the difficulty of bonding with existing staff.   It’s a challenge, and it doesn’t always go well because previous staff may be more loyal to the minister who just left.  To explain this he tells a story about a pastor showing up at a new church and deciding that to build a relationship with his music director and youth pastor he’ll take them fishing. It will give them time to get to know each other, just three ministers in a boat.  They rowed the boat out on the water, found a good spot, and reached for their poles. "Oops," said the music director. "We left the fishing poles on the bank."

The pastor said, "No problem, I'll row back to shore." The music director said, "It's not necessary," and got out of the boat, walked across the surface of the water to the river bank, grabbed the poles and walked back.  The new pastor is, needless to say, awestruck. A few minutes later the youth pastor said, "Hand me the bait, please." "Oops," said the music director. "We left the bait on shore." This time it was the youth director who said, "No problem," and hopped out of the boat, walked across the surface of the water to the river's edge, grabbed the bait, and walked back.

Again, the pastor was awestruck. The men baited their hooks and began fishing, but it wasn't long before the youth director said, "Where are the sandwiches?" Again, the music director said, "Oops, we left them on shore." Then he turned to his new boss, and said, "Pastor, would you mind going to shore and getting the sandwiches?"

The new senior pastor, not wanting to be shown up by his inherited staff members, stammered for a moment and then said, "Sure." He took one step out of the boat and immediately sank to the bottom of the river. The music director looked at the youth pastor and said, "When he comes back up, will you show him where the stepping stones are?"

It’s a great story that ministers like to tell, but it is based upon a story about Peter walking on water, our third story in a series on the principles of Peter’s life.

We are walking with Peter and Jesus as they make their way to Jerusalem and looking at the references to Peter in the New Testament, more than any other apostle. John is considered the beloved apostle but he is only mentioned 30 times. At the beginning of their ministry, this would have surprised his peers. Simon Peter was an unlikely candidate to be a great leader. But Jesus saw with the capacity to be rock upon which the church would be built.

Remember the first Peter Principle. God sees in each of us the potential that God placed within us at the moment of our creation. God designed you to be someone special and has a holy imagination about whom you can be. A relationship with Jesus allows you to flourish and grow, to become the very best you. It sends you on a lifelong journey that will clarify and sharpen your truest gifts and identities. That’s the first Peter Principle.

The second principle focuses on call. Peter and his brother Andrew were partners with James and John, the Zebedee brothers, fishing Lake Gennesaret or the Sea of Galilee. It was a thriving business of at least two boats and ten workers, working out of nearby Capernaum. Jesus uses one of the boats as a platform to teach a crowd on the shore and to perform a miracle, the miracle of the catch. Out of that miracle, “Jesus said to Simon, "Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” (Luke 5: 11), He calls them to be “fishers of men.”  Peter and his three partners respond to the call and follow Jesus as he begins his formal teaching ministry around the Sea of Galilee. But they responded to Jesus not as a stranger.  They are friends and have been for at least a year living in the town of Capernaum.  Jesus asked his friends to join him in his ministry. This is the second Peter Principle. Discipleship begins with friendship, expands to apprenticeship then grows into leadership. The path of discipleship is friendship to apprenticeship to leadership.   When Peter and his partners leave their nets and begin catching people, they moved into the apprenticeship phase because they were already friends. It’s how we start our walk with Jesus, we first come to him as friend, but we don’t stay there. This progression is the second Peter Principle.

When the fishermen respond to the call of Jesus, they left their nets but they didn’t leave their boats.  The Sea of Galilee and a fishing boat play a prominent role in the Galilean ministry of Jesus and is an important part of the third Peter Principle which is this:  stepping out in faith requires embracing doubt. Without doubt, faith can’t grow. It lies stagnant, dormant; it holds you back.

Let’s back up and come to the story from the front side. When Peter and his partners answer their call; Jesus’ ministry begins to build steam. He’s not just visiting with friends in Capernaum. He moves up and down the coast teaching large crowds. He also crosses the Sea of Galilee a number of times in one of those fishing boats.  We talked about that boat last week. It wasn’t big, just a little over 25 feet long and about 8 feet wide. It needed four rowers and a helmsman to steer it but it could hold an additional 15 people. So Jesus and his twelve disciples could fit easily in it. They used one of these fishing boats, maybe even Peter’s boat, to reach both the Jewish and Gentile communities which were on opposite sides of the Sea of Galilee. Crossing the Sea wasn’t hard because it was only eight miles wide. But on at least two occasions, it was an exciting, stormy crossing. There are two different stories where storms are calmed by Jesus in order to insure safe passage.

It bears mentioning that Semitic culture of the first century wasn’t a water culture. Even though Peter and his partners are fishermen, it is highly likely that they didn’t swim. They considered bodies of waters to be the source of deep and threatening powers where dragons and demons reside. You may remember that just as they complete one of the crossings, Jesus heals a man filled with demons, the Gerasene demoniac. Jesus is confronted by a man filled with demons and Jesus heals him, driving the demons in a herd of pigs and “the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea and perished in the water.” (Matthew 8:32).  To further this image of the demons going into the stormy abyss, this happens immediately after the first stormy crossing when the storm was so bad that they “woke Jesus up, saying, "Lord, save us! We are perishing!" And he said to them, "Why are you afraid, you of little faith?" Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a dead calm.” (Matthew 8:25b-26).  If this point isn’t clear then consider this. When John describes paradise in the book of Revelation, he sees a “… new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.” (Revelation 21: 1).  The sea is gone. Water was a scary place, not something to jump into and play around it. 

That’s all background but it helps us to understand the power of this story about Peter which begins at the end of a very long day. The crowd on this day was overwhelming, over 5000 men plus woman and children. They were so hungry for the truth that Jesus offers that they couldn’t get enough. They listened all day long. As evening approached, no one had been fed so Jesus took “five loaves and the two fish…blessed and broke the loaves, and …gave them to the crowds. And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full.” (Matthew 14:19-20) 

Feeding that many people would make anyone tired. So, “the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side …while Jesus went up the mountain by himself to pray.” (Matthew 14: 22-23)  Around three o’clock in the morning, the disciples are halfway across the lake when the storm sets in and the boat is battered by the waves. It is starting to feel a lot like the previous crossing only Jesus isn’t asleep in the boat. He’s off on a mountain praying.  Then, Jesus decides to join them in the middle of the lake and walks out to them.  “But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, "It is a ghost!" And they cried out in fear. (Matthew 14: 26).

There is a reason they thought he was a ghost. In addition to being scared to death that the water held demons, first century Jews believed that the spirits of the dead roamed large, wide-open regions such as deserts and oceans, and the folklore of the Galilean fishermen were filled with stories of ghosts and apparitions.

Who steps out on the water in these conditions? Who is courageous enough to get out of the boat when you can’t swim, when you think the water is teaming with demons and there is a chance that it isn’t Jesus you are meeting, it is a ghost.  The one who steps out is Simon Peter. “Peter answered him, "Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water."  He said, "Come." So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus.  But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, "Lord, save me!"  Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, "You of little faith, why did you doubt?"” (Matthew 14: 26-30).

Whenever I study this story, I wonder if Peter thinks to himself, “Doubt. I’ll show you the doubters, eleven doubters in fact. My buddies never got out the boat.” But doubt he did, at least in the purest form of the word that Matthew uses in this passage. It’s the Greek word distazo.   It is only used twice in the Bible, both times by Matthew, once here and the other occasion when Jesus is ascending into heaven. It means literally to waver or try to go both ways, to be caught in between. One of my favorite images of this comes from one of my favorite cartoons, Road Runner. Wily Coyote is always trying to catch the Road Runner, but never does. In lots of episodes, he ends up chasing the roadrunner off a cliff and he gets caught in between. He makes it halfway across, becomes aware that there is nothing beneath his feet, he stops cold, then plummets down. It happened over and over again, and every single time, it’s funny.[1]

Peter gets caught in between the boat begins to sink and Jesus reaches out and get him saying, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?" (Matthew 14: 30b).  “Peter you silly thing. You almost made it. Just a step more but you doubted. You wavered and got caught in between.”

It’s like a toddler learning to walk. They cruise holding on to a finger or a table. But then they take a first step, maybe two and then begin to waver and think, “I’m caught in between” and they fall right on their diapered backside. I’ve never heard a parent say to a child, “Oh you of little faith, why did you doubt?”

This story is about Peter learning to walk, not on water but to walk in faith. And in order to walk in faith, you have to embrace doubt, you’ve got to recognize that there will be times when you waver, when you get caught in between, when you want to go to Jesus but you also want to get back into the boat.  One of major lessons of Christian discipleship is to grasp the fact that God can be trusted, that God is good to His word, that this walk we have with Jesus works. But unlike a toddler, you never get over those moments when you stumble and fall, when you get caught in between, when you aren’t sure of your footing. Followers of Jesus are not people who always have their act together. We are people who fail and fail a lot. We waver, we sink, and we try to go both ways.[2]

If you must know how to swim before you get in the water, you’ll never swim. If you have to know how to walk on water before you get out of the boat, you’ll never walk to Jesus. Faith grows when we embrace our doubts, when we get caught in between and lose our footing and then we take the hand of Jesus and try again.

Peter, the apprenticed follower of Jesus, stepped out, not a baby step but a giant leap of faith. When he began to sink, Jesus was there, ready to catch him, and I’m convinced that there in the darkness, Jesus smiled. He knew then that bold, impetuous Peter had taken the step that was needed for his faith to grow. He had the courage to step out and attempt to do something that only God can support. It is this faith in the midst of doubt that helped Peter build the church. And it is this faith in the midst of doubt that will help each of us move ahead in our journey to Jesus.

It’s your invitation today. You aren’t in a small boat being battered by the waves. You aren’t on a scary body of water with demons swimming around beneath. You are in your own lifeboat, and the waters may be smooth or they may be stormy. But there is an opportunity for you to step out in faith, maybe in study, maybe in prayer, maybe as a witness, or maybe just to begin your apprenticeship walk with Jesus.  

Step out. Jesus is asking you to come. Step out and let your faith embrace doubt. You may sink a few times, but his hand will always be there and eventually, you’ll find the stepping stones and walk on water.

Stepping Out, Amy Hunter, The Christian Century, July 26, 2005, p.19

Walking on Water in Footsteps of the Fisherman, Scott Walker, Augsburg.