Life as an Apostle of Jesus was certainly very eventful and even dangerous at times. One minute John the Baptist is executed, right after that they are feeding the five thousand and before much longer Jesus hustles them into the boat and they find themselves out on the lake in a very rough sea. And then, lo and behold, Jesus comes walking on the water to rescue them! That?s to say nothing of the incident with Peter also attempting not very successfully to do the same thing!
We can look to this quick succession of extraordinary events and try to make sense of them one by one and that would be a very good approach. Indeed it is something we really ought to do. But I?m also very struck by the first reading today, the story of Elijah on Mount Horeb and how it shades our view of the Gospel reading. What that story is about is the presence of the Lord and how he is not to be found so much in the great events as in the stillness, the gentleness of the breeze.
Jesus walks toward the boat in the heavy sea. He beckons Peter to come towards him also amidst rough seas. But when they return to the boat the wind drops and the Apostles make their great profession of faith: ‘Truly, you are the Son of God.’ I suppose what strikes me about these two readings is that it is in the calm that faith comes. I?d go so far as to say it is among the ordinary things that we find faith. Some people think that it is only when we are going through great crises that we discover courage and faith. Ordinary life seems too boring for them. These are foolhardy and shallow people.
If you don?t have faith on an ordinary day then how on earth will you find it on an out of the ordinary day? The truth is that we find God not so much in great events but in stillness and silence. And every Christian must find room in his or her life for silence. One may be involved in a great whirlwind of activity, one might have a high pressure job or be caught up in the hectic life of childrearing; but whatever it is we do there really does need to be a certain stillness at the centre of our lives. Prayer is a complicated thing, it has many aspects and comes in all sorts of varieties and yet it is essentially very simple. It can be summed up as ‘Being with the Lord’. And this requires a certain amount of stillness, quiet, and peace.
Not necessarily in copious quantities but sufficient. I know people who spend hours in prayer each week but are still a mess. Their prayer is just as pell-mell as the rest of their lives. There is also a lesson here for our celebration of the liturgy. It needs to be celebrated with a certain decorum and in an unrushed way. There shouldn?t be too many extraneous things to distract us and lead us away from God. We ought to take special care that there are sufficient pools of silence in the mass to give people the space to just be with the Lord. Mount Horeb is another name for Mount Sinai where God revealed himself to Moses and gave him the Ten Commandments. It is without a doubt a holy place. It is also certainly an isolated place; you can?t get more isolated than on the top of a mountain in the middle of a desert! But even here the winds rage and the storms blow; yet, if we wait, silence comes.
The reason Jesus took off in the first place in a boat with his disciples was to seek solitude. He had heard of the death of John the Baptist and wanted to be alone in order to pray but the people figured out where he was going and went there on foot. Jesus still needed to be alone to grieve and pray; so as soon as the people are fed Jesus hustles the Apostles away and he himself disappears. But then when they get into difficulties Jesus comes to them walking on the water. This is an important moment of revelation. Jesus reveals himself to be the master of the wind and the waves, the Lord of the Elements.
This is power far beyond what any human possesses; it is, without a doubt, divine power and authority. The disciples immediately respond with their profession of faith, ‘Truly, you are the Son of God.’ In the face of these incredible events they acknowledge his undoubted divinity. Christ walks towards the boat on the waters. Peter?s instinctive response is to step out on the water to meet him half way. There is a lesson here for us too and it is a lesson about prayer. Christ comes to us but we also have to go to him. We walk towards him on the waters of our own life, our own particular situation and experience.
We may well, like Peter, be floundering but Jesus reaches out to help us, to rescue us. What better image of salvation could there be than Jesus reaching out to Peter to save him from drowning. What better analogy could there be of our own lives and relationship with Jesus. We live messy lives, we doubt and we lack faith but nevertheless we are still moving towards the Lord. And when we flounder and start to sink he is there for us, reaching out with his saving hand ready to raise us up.