Focus for Faith

by Robert Hamerton-Kelly

"O man of little faith, why did you doubt?"

-- Matthew 14:31

After the account of the how Jesus fed the multitude from five loaves and two fish, Matthew tells how Jesus sent the people home, launched the disciples back across the sea, and went alone into the mountains to pray. In the fourth watch, sometime after 3am –and you remember that the author F. Scott Fitzgerald said that in the “dark night of the soul” it is always 3 o’clock in the morning, that is, the time when the despair of melancholy is at its nadir – Jesus approached the laboring boat walking on the surface of the sea. The drowsing disciples thought it was a ghost and were terrified. Jesus assured them it was he himself and not a ghost, and Peter with characteristic brashness demanded that the figure prove that he is he, by enabling him to walk on the sea also. Jesus commands Peter to step out of the boat, which Peter does, and successfully walks until he takes his eyes off Jesus and looks at the wind whipped waves. Then fear awakens and he sinks, crying out to Jesus, “Lord save me!”  Jesus gives him his hand with the words, “O man of little faith, why did you doubt?”

When we compare Matthew’s account of this miracle with the two other NT accounts in Mark 6 and John 6 respectively, we discover that only Matthew reports the incident involving Peter. In Mark the amazing fact that Jesus walked on the surface of the lake serves to reveal the disciples’ incomprehension, “They were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened (Mark 6:51-52).” In John the disciples take it in stride, “Then they were glad to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going (John 6:24). Thus we see how each gospel interprets the event differently. Today we want to understand Matthew’s interpretation.

It might be useful to start by comparing it with Mark’s account because the two are probably dependent on each other. We usually assume that Mark is the earlier, so it seems that Matthew in rewriting Mark specifies the “incomprehension” of the disciples as lack of faith, by introducing the figure of Peter and the account of the floundering of his faith. It is this matter of faith and its focus, faith and its floundering that Matthew wants us to think about today, so we shall leave Mark and John and concentrate on Matthew. Our second reading, from Romans 10, confirms the decision to focus on faith. “For with the heart one believes and so is justified, and with the lips one confesses and so is saved (Romans 10:10).”

What does the gospel of Matthew teach us about faith? Chiefly this, that faith is a primary and privileged focus of the eyes of the soul and the desires of the heart on Jesus himself; not on oneself, not on one’s personal resources and ambitions, and certainly not on the wind and the waves. I said at the close of last Sunday’s sermon on the feeding of the multitude that all the channels of communication in the NT converge on the message that Jesus is the one, without doubt, without reserve, without compromise. In today’s lesson Matthew repeats that message in narrative terms while Paul in Romans 10 states it prosaically, “The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart (that is the word of faith which we preach); because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved (vs. 8-9). Note the absolute exclusivity of faith’s attachment to Jesus. Faith is only ever faith in Jesus as God with us.

This statement of Paul’s is probably a fragment from a baptismal service in the earliest church. We know that Paul quotes hymns every now and then (e.g. Phil. 2:5-11; Col. 1:15-20), and here he quotes a liturgy. This is what a NT pastor would say to someone being baptized, “Believe in Jesus and confess his name! Engage both your will and your word to attach yourself to him!” Matthew, however, tells us a story, and in these most intimate matters of faith stories are worth a thousand definitions, indeed, stories are the only adequate way communication can be carried on at this level, except perhaps prayer.

So, Jesus walks on the water and the disciples think he is a ghost, that is, they classify the event in a category they at least think they understand. They know what a ghost is and how to respond to ghosts, fearfully; but we are told emphatically that this is not a ghost but the real Jesus himself, flesh and blood defying the known laws of physics. We in our time are more likely to categorize the story as a myth, like the stories of the gods from many cultures whose supernatural powers defy the known limits of nature, but only in imagination not in fact. Myths are accounts of “once upon a time before time” when the creation took shape, stories about the origins of worlds and cultures, rituals and cults, items that emanate meaning. Myths are perhaps even narrative counterparts of deep psychological states and structures, and by retelling these stories we make emotional contact with them. The category of myth is the bag into which we who do not believe in ghosts would probably stuff this strange story. Nevertheless, when the gospel says he is not a ghost it means also to tell us that Jesus is not a mythic figure but rather in a category of one. There is no conceptual bag in which to put him; Jesus is unique, absolutely without peer, the one and only creator moving within his own creation. For that reason it would be absurd if his own beloved water did not serve him.

Perhaps no one understood this better than St Francis of Assisi. Recall his “Canticle of the Sun” (1225): “All praise be yours, my Lord, though all that you have made…All praise be yours, my Lord, through Brothers Wind and Air, / And fair and stormy, all the weather’s moods, / By which you cherish all that you have made. / All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Water, /so useful, lowly, precious and pure.” So useful, lowly, precious and pure Sister Water does not balk at bearing up the precious body of her Lord!

We must hurry on so I shall not belabor the obvious points of the story. Peter wants Jesus to prove that it is he out there by making it possible for him to walk on the water too. What indeed does this prove? That Peter wants desperately to be with his lord? That Jesus can empower those who love him to do extraordinary things?  It’s hard to say, but this much is clear, if you trust Jesus enough to get out of the boat and onto the water, and keep your eyes on him and not on the wind-whipped waves, you will defy gravity.

What did Peter doubt? He probably doubted that the person out there on the sea was really Jesus. The view he had of Jesus was not entirely clear, Jesus was a figure in the spray and the dark, nevertheless while Peter kept his eyes on that figure he did on sink. So we must keep our eyes on him, however dim he seems right now, and not on the waves. We must trust his word that it is he out there in the chaos and darkness and keep going towards him.

At this point in our interpretation the story is functioning as an extended metaphor for the life of faith that includes taking risks to obey the command of Jesus, and keeping our eyes focused on him alone, despite the darkness, without any distraction. Peter does well until he begins to be distracted and to   divide his attention between Jesus and the waves. That’s when he begins to sink. Christian faith is walking on water with the eyes fixed on Jesus.

Let me in conclusion make a clear distinction between this Christ-focused attitude on the one hand and the fairly widespread phenomenon of faith in faith on the other, which is like its close companion the love of love. Churches so easily fall into preaching love rather than preaching Christ. We do not love the other so much as we love the experience of love itself, and then we are surprised when relationships go bad. (Lorenz Hart’s lyrics in the 1938 musical “The Boys from Syracuse,“ with music by Richard Rogers, give a sobering insight into this particular mistake and its consequences, “Falling in love with love is falling for make believe/ Falling in love with love is playing the fool/ Caring too much is such a juvenile fancy, / Learning to trust is just for children in school. … I fell in love with love, with love everlasting, / But love fell out with me”).

By the same token, when we make this mistake in the realm of faith, we do not believe in Christ so much as in the power of belief itself to get us what we want. This is the mistake behind most of the positive mental attitude modes of being. To be sure it is healthy to be positive, to trust one’s fellow humans and the institutions in which we live. That is natural faith, a low-key attitude of normal trust, a natural analogue of faith in Christ. There is, however, this third, solipsistic kind of faith, which is a mongrel of the authentic two, a faith in faith itself that mobilizes the same fervor of devotion to Christ and expectation of salvation, with reference to some inner-worldly goal, mostly increasing sales, envisioning financial schemes, and/or fantastic deals.  How much of the current corporate and financial shipwreck is the result of this fantastic faith in faith to make something out of nothing. It’s sometimes called confidence, which can be good or bad.  In the bad sense of faith in faith confidence’s peddlers are called con-artists.

By contrast, those who bring the gospel of Christ, whose feet are beautiful because they run to bring good news (Romans 10:15), give us the opportunity to put our faith not in faith but in Christ, to have faith and not merely confidence. This is as simple as believing with the heart and confessing with the lips that Jesus is the one, the concrete, actual person named Jesus, who reveals his divine identity by multiplying loaves and fishes and walking on the sea.

And who is he? He is God the creator, come into his creation to redeem and renew. That is why the Apostle says, ‘“But the righteousness based on faith says, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend to heaven (that is to bring Christ down)?’ or ‘Who will descend into the abyss? (that is to bring Christ up from the dead).’ “ But what does it say? ‘The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart (that is the word of faith which we preach);’ because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved (Romans 10:6-13).”’ He is very near us because he is God in our human nature or natural humanity, recreating us from within. Confessing faith in Jesus is simply agreeing to let the Lord of all nature get on with that work of renovation in us.