“Save me, O God, for the waters have closed in up to my neck.
I am sinking in the deepest swamp and there is no firm ground.
I have stepped into deep water and the waves are washing over me.
I am exhausted with calling out, my throat is hoarse,
my eyes are worn out with searching for my God...
(Ps 68/69:1-3; cf. also 14-15)
The psalms are full of this imagery of desperation in deep water. To the Hebrew mind, water was a natural image of anything dreadful, terrifying, destructive. The sea especially for them was a reminder of the primeval chaos over which God had triumphed when he created the world. So their poets could speak of the One who brought light out of darkness, and dry land out of the formless waste of waters; as the One who trampled on the back of the sea (Job 9:8). Again at the Exodus, when in a second wonderful miracle over water God saved Israel at the Red Sea, they would sing of his footsteps passing over the waters (cf. Ps 76/77:19). So, precisely when feeling crushed by persecution or oppression or trouble, the Jews loved to dwell on these past acts of power. They knew that the God they called on was able to save, however desperate their situation.
Now, we hear of Jesus doing what God alone does. He walks on the sea: he saves from destruction. He even uses the divine name: to identify himself, he calls out to the disciples: “ἐγω εἰμι” - “It is I!” - or more literally: “I AM”. This strange episode is also recorded by Saints Mark and John: both of them also place it immediately after the feeding of the 5,000. It’s rather like the Transfiguration: a momentary lifting of the veil: a glimpse of the divinity hidden in the man Jesus. Already in chapter 8 of his Gospel, St. Matthew has described the calming of the storm, when Jesus was with the disciples in the boat. Then they asked each other: What kind of man is this, that even the winds and sea obey him? Now, at this even greater manifestation of power, they anticipate Caesarea Philippi, and cry out: You are the Son of God.
The story of Peter walking on the sea is unique to Matthew. It is one of the most intensely evocative scenes in the Gospel. It is as if the noise of the crashing waves and the howling wind suddenly ceases, as all attention is fixed, in a moment of silence, on these two men. Lord, bid me come to you, says Peter. And Jesus replies: Come. One word. A permission, a command, invested with total authority: like so many others in the Gospel: Rise up, be healed, be clean, walk, receive your sight. And Peter steps out of the boat.
Surely all subsequent generations must remain ever grateful to Peter for his loss of nerve and failure of faith at that moment. It is just as we owe so much to Thomas, for doubting the reality of the Resurrection when he did. Thank God Peter sank, and started to drown: thank God he instinctively cried out: Domine, salvum me fac! - Lord, save me! Henceforth all Christians in temptation, or doubt, or trial: when bewildered, hurt, or confused: when on the verge of despair - as if at the bottom of the abyss - with Peter can cry to Jesus, and know He is there: reaching out to support, to console, to save; not without that gentle rebuke: Man of little faith, why did you doubt?
Not only that. Christians of strong faith through the ages have realised that Peter was perhaps never closer to Jesus than when sinking in that sea. So they deliberately choose to be with Peter, utterly dependent on their divine Master; looking up at him from their helplessness, in order to experience his power to save. They realise and joyfully accept that Jesus normally calls his disciples to be with him, not so much in his walking on water, as in his humility and obedience, and his carrying of the cross (Mt 16:24). So St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Edith Stein, whose feast it is today, consummated her sanctity, her union with her divine spouse, not so much through her intellectual work, or even through her religious life, but in freely embracing her end in the death camp at Auschwitz.
So also, one terrible night in 1875, five daughters of St. Clare in extremis called out to Jesus. They were on board the ship Deutschland, when it struck a sandbank off the English coast. Over the course of the night, amid a freezing snow storm, the ship was gradually smashed to pieces by the pounding waves. The nuns all drowned - and survivors testified that their faith did not fail them.
The incident had a profound effect on a young Jesuit priest in Wales, Gerard Manley Hopkins. It made him question the reality of our faith, when confronted by death and destruction. Through the heroic witness of those five women, he arrived at a ringing affirmation. The result was one of the very great poems of the English language.
24
Away in the lovable West,
On a pastoral forehead of Wales,
I was under a roof here, I was at rest,
And they the prey of the gales;
She to the black-about air, to the breaker, the thickly
Falling flakes, to the throng that catches and quails
Was calling ‘O Christ, Christ, come quickly’:
The cross to her she calls Christ to her, christens her wild-worst
Best.
Jesus did not snatch those nuns out of the sea. But they knew he was there - reaching out to them - calling them - with omnipotent goodness and love. And they flung themselves into his arms, not with terror, but with joy.
We believe that Jesus did snatch them out of danger - not away from death, but through it. We believe he calls to all of us, inviting us to pass with him through whatever suffering comes our way, and ultimately through death itself, to share his own eternal life - his own divine sonship - his own intimacy with the Father. And he invites us to come to him in total trust, not just in grave danger, or at the end of our lives, but daily, continually.
Lord, through the grace of this holy Eucharist, help us to cleave unwaveringly to you, so that at last we may enter our promised inheritance. Amen.