Sunday 19 We live in a culture which exalts science, and with good reason. Look at the miracles which science has produced for us, making our lives so much easier and comfortable. Look at the possibilities which science holds out for the future, maybe even the possibility of living on other planets. Of course scientists would not call their works, no matter how marvelous and mysterious they may seem to the non-scientists, miracles. No, they tell us, they are the result of careful observation and proof. There are no such things as miracles in the scientific world. And if sometimes things don t seem able to be explained in a scientific way, there must be further observation and testing until the answer to what seems a mystery becomes evident. This way of thinking has been with us for more than two centuries. Thomas Jefferson, for example, read the Gospels but excluded the miracles from his own understanding of them. He wanted Jesus the teacher but not Jesus the miracle worker. But today Scripture scholars tell us that you just can t do that without falsifying the Jesus which the Scriptures present to us. Jesus did perform miracles. That is rock-bed information given to us by the Gospels about him. Nevertheless, many people today have one leg in
2 Jefferson s camp. They say: I believe in Jesus not because of the miracles but almost despite them. But the Church would say to these people: Be more open! Do not limit God s power! Believe that the divine power was present in Jesus. That is how we understand him. He is not simply a good man. He is God among us. That said, let us look at today s Gospel, the miracle of Jesus walking on the water, and ask what this miracle is teaching us about our lives of faith. It is the fourth hour of the night (that is 3 am). The disciples are a few miles from shore and the boat is being attacked by headwinds and waves. And they see a figure approaching them on the water. They do not live in a scientific age. They immediately conclude that it is a ghost, some extraordinary, more than human kind of reality that is coming towards them. They are petrified. But the ghost speaks to them: Have courage. It is I. Do not be afraid. If we put these words into our everyday language, we might say that the ghost is saying to them: It s me, Jesus. Don t be afraid. And that would be correct. But a scripture scholar would also tell us that that phrase, It is I, is the phrase God used to identify himself
3 to Moses in the Book of Exodus. There Moses says to God who has appeared to him in a burning bush: When I go to the Israelites and say them to them, The God of your father has sent me to you, if they ask me, What is his name, what am I to tell them? God replied, I am who am. This is what you shall tell the Israelites: I AM sent to you. Yes, the ghost is Jesus, the man they know, but he is also I am, he is also God. Right here there is something we can learn. Like the disciples in the boat, we often fail to recognize Jesus when he appears in the fog of our lives. We call everything just an accident: I just happened to be in the right place at the right time, we say. Really? No, not really. The fact that we just happened to be there was more than just a happening. It was the Lord acting in our lives at that moment. But we didn t recognize him. Now we can, and now, looking back, we can thank Him for saving us in that moment when we could have hurt ourselves, even permanently hurt ourselves. But sometimes we are like Peter. We begin to believe that the ghost approaching us is Jesus but we want proof. So Peter says to Jesus, If it is you, command me to come to you on the water. Jesus obliges him: Come, he says. And Peter comes. He steps
4 out of the boat and begins to walk towards Jesus. But then the reality of the winds and the waves takes hold of him and he loses faith and begins to sink. But he still has enough faith to cry out, Lord, save me. Immediately Jesus stretches out his hand and grabs hold of him and then says to him: O you of little faith, why did you doubt? Like Peter, we have faith, but it is weak. We are always looking for proof. That is, we doubt our own faith, for faith is not proof. But if there is just a little faith in us, enough to make us cry out to the Lord in desperation, Save me, Jesus will reach out his hand and grab hold of us and save us. This miracle story is teaching us how to live our lives as lives of faith, believing that Jesus is present to us in the storms of our lives and asks us to step out of the boat of our comfort and security and walk to him upon the waters of faith, and even when the temptation comes to give up faith, to cry out to him in faith so that he will reach out his hand to us and grab hold of us and say to us: Why do you doubt, why is your faith so weak? Have faith! It is I. It is me, Jesus. Don t be afraid!
5