« Nothing Separates Us from the Love of God | Home | The Woman Who Wore Red »
Take That, Physics!
By Laura Arico | August 10, 2008
I am a victim of Newtonian physics. I have a problem with the notion that an object, when dropped, will accelerate at a rate of 9.8 m/s/s toward the center of the earth until it smacks into the first thing in its way. More specifically, I have a problem with my body being that object and the thing in my way being the ground. I have a problem with gravity. Especially when I’m hiking with my husband, who seems to have no problem with physics. He doesn’t have my gravity problem. So while he darts along narrow cliff edges and shimmies up trees without a care in the world, I am left behind testing each foothold with my toes, whimpering, teetering, and if I’m feeling stubborn, refusing to go a step further. My gravity problem often makes me look ridiculous. But I can’t change the cold hard facts. If my foot slips, I will fall, and it will hurt.
I’m not alone. There is one in particular who shares my gravity problem, who is also a victim of Newtonian physics. That is the intrepid, ever-gullible Wyle E. Coyote. You know the routine. The roadrunner, no doubt using some Acme product, manages to lure Wyle E. Coyote into running full-steam off the edge of a cliff. And miraculously, off the edge of that cliff he keeps running, on nothing but air! Until he looks down. That’s when he remembers physics. He pauses, waves goodbye, and falls. Boom. Plume of dust. If only he hadn’t looked down.
I suppose that Wyle E. and I are not so different from Peter in this passage from Matthew. Peter must have a gravity problem, too. Brave as he was to try and even succeed at walking on water, his knowledge about the way the world works eventually, inevitably, kicked in. Right then when he was standing in the middle of a very angry sea, the properties of liquids and solids, relative densities, and gravity itself reasserted themselves in his mind and he started going down. Like Wyle E. Coyote off that cliff, or me when I’m thinking too hard about how to step from one rock to the other to cross a creek. It’s inevitable. Once you start thinking about falling, you’re going to fall. That’s not physics though. That’s just irony.
This encounter on the Sea of Galilee was an important moment for Peter. One that he would relive a number of times in his ministry. We learn in this passage that Peter is capable of great faith, a faith that will compel him to step off of his boat in the middle of a stormy sea and walk out to meet his savior. But we also learn that Peter has trouble going all the way. When the rules and norms of this world creep into his head, Peter falters.
That’s when Jesus’ question, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” comes in. Jesus doesn’t say, “Why did you doubt ME?” Just “why did you doubt?” That’s an important distinction. Peter was not suddenly thrown into a state of theological doubt there on the Sea of Galilee. In that moment, he did not question who Jesus was. Indeed, as he was sinking, he called out, “Lord save me!” An affirmation that Jesus was lord of his life, the only person who could save him in that moment. Peter was not undergoing the kind of doubt that Dr. Chance was talking about in his sermon last week–the kind of doubt that challenges theological assumptions. That kind of doubt, if we deal with it intentionally and with great care, ultimately leads to greater understanding of God’s nature and will, and it drives us to a deeper faith.
Instead, I believe that when that harsh wind blew and Peter felt the spray hitting his face, he panicked, and he began to doubt himself. He was jolted back to reality as he knew it, to a world in which a human being cannot possibly walk on water, where wind and crashing waves can be deadly, where he was just Peter, and he doubted himself. He had stepped out in faith, and then he realized the absurdity of what he was doing, and he started backtracking.
It happens to him here on the sea. Without asking questions, without asking Jesus for a tutorial first, he gets out of the boat and steps out onto this stormy, swirling, deep water. And he begins walking toward his savior, learning more in that moment about the universe and faith and God than any of us could ever dream of knowing. Walking on water! And then the wind blows especially hard, and you can almost hear him say to himself, “Wait a minute, am I crazy?” And then like Wyle E. Coyote, having remembered the world’s rules about what is possible and what isn’t, he starts to sink.
It happened to him again on the night that Jesus was arrested. That was a dangerous night for Jesus’ disciples. As Peter paced the streets that night, waiting to hear word about Jesus’ fate, three people took a good look at him and exposed him as one of Jesus’ disciples. Three times that evening, Peter denied association with Jesus in order to avoid persecution and possibly even death. He had come so far, given up everything to follow Christ, but in this critical moment, he could not bring himself to follow Jesus to whatever fate awaited him. When he recognized that, “he wept bitterly.” On the sea it was the rules of physics that had kept him from walking all the way with Jesus. On this night, it was the rules of human interaction that kept him from walking to the cross with Christ. Following Christ on this night would have meant giving up much more than his possessions or his family ties. It would have meant giving up his life. Something Peter was still afraid of.
Peter ultimately became one of Jesus’ most faithful apostles. He carried Jesus’ message out into the world in the face of persecution, and legend has it that he was eventually crucified, himself. Upside down. Peter would ultimately die for his faith, following Jesus to the cross. But there on the Sea of Galilee, and later on the night of Jesus’ arrest, his faith in Christ was profound. His faith in himself wasn’t.
Peter knew that Jesus was capable of walking on water. But Peter wasn’t so sure that he could. He knew that Jesus was willing to give his life for this message of unfailing love. But, in spite of what he said aloud, Peter wasn’t ultimately ready to give his own life. Yet. There was a step he wasn’t willing to take, something that held him back.
Peter learned that it is all too easy to allow the rules and norms of this world to break in, even when we have taken that leap of faith and have committed to following Christ. The faith that we profess is absurd by the world’s standards. There’s no way around it. The rules of this world declare that death is the end of life. We proclaim something different. The rules of this world declare that power through coercion is legitimate. We proclaim that love is far more powerful, that love has the last word in this world. We believe we are called to serve others even when serving our own interests makes more sense. The journey of faith in Christ means living a life that is irrational by the world’s standards.
But sometimes it seems that we are so used to the rules of this world, so comfortable with them, that we allow them to keep us from moving forward in our faith journey. Do you ever feel as though you’ve hit a wall in your faith? As though you’re stuck in a rut, living a life that doesn’t look the way you know it should? The way you believe it should? I find that so often in my life, it seems that Jesus is standing right there in the middle of that stormy sea, holding out his hand for me to walk out to him, and I stand there in the boat because I’m not even a comfortable swimmer, and everything I know in this world tells me that I’d be stupid to try. I’m speaking metaphorically here, of course. I’m speaking of those times when growing in faith requires us to challenge our assumptions, to question what we think we know. To give up our security, our comfort, even our lives as we know them, to God. Those times when we know we are called to follow Christ a little farther, but we cling to what we know.
Maybe it’s because we think that we’re walking this path on our own. Maybe we’re afraid to take risks in faith because we forget that God isn’t going to leave us standing out there alone. We forget that Jesus didn’t stand there and watch Peter sink; he reached out his hand and helped him up. I suppose that when we doubt our own ability to follow this path, we are forgetting that at the end of the gospel where we find today’s scripture, Jesus promises to be with his disciples to the very end of the age. We forget that where the world’s love fails, God’s love continues.
It took Peter a few tries to really get that. God gave him the grace to try and try again until he could truly live the absurd and profound faith that he proclaimed. There is a next risky step to which God is calling each one of us. Each of us have that metaphorical stormy sea in our lives that we avoid at all costs, the one we tell ourselves that we can’t step into. We cling to the boat of our own comfort and security, to the rules of this world that we know how to follow. God tells us that we can; we tell God that we can’t.
But we are made for more than this. Through Christ, we are called to challenge the rules of this world. To proclaim with our very lives the message of redemption and hope and love that we say we believe. We can’t do that if we stay in the boat, or cling to the safe side of the creek, or look down for too long. At some point, we each have to take Christ’s hand and take that next step.
I decided to be brave and go on a whitewater rafting trip when I was in college, something I couldn’t believe I was doing because I am a terrible swimmer. I was terrified. Even though I think I looked decently calm on the outside, inside I felt as though I was dragging my own self kicking and screaming to that raft. But there came a point about halfway through our trip down the river that I looked up for a moment and saw the green mountains rising up from both sides, nestling us in, the blue sky framed by trees, the water glistening over the rocks and the sound of the water gurgling over them. And I realized that had I not gotten into the raft that morning, had I stayed at home in fear of my own mediocre swimming skills, I would never have been down in that gorge, feeling so cradled by the world around me. I never would have known what I was missing.
Maybe we don’t know what we’re missing. Maybe if we stepped off of the firm ground we know and into the uncertain waters of a deeper faith, we would encounter God’s love and grace in ways we cannot imagine. If all you can do is dip one toe in that water, do it. God will take care of the rest.
Topics: Sermons |
Comments
You must be logged in to post a comment.
