Reflections on Water Walking

Think about the last time you learned to ride a bicycle, or watched a child learn. There is that wobbling moment when the parent lets go of the seat and the bike goes forward, three feet, maybe five, before the child actually looks back, realizes their parent isn't holding on any more, and the swerve and fall into the grass.

What does the child remember an hour later? Sometimes the scraped knee. But if the parent is wise, they will point out the win: “Did you see that? You were riding!”

The scrape is not the story. The riding is the story.

I was meditating recently on Peter walking on water, and a question surfaced that I had never thought to ask before. What was Peter thinking when he climbed back into the boat?

Was he elated, dripping wet, unable to stop talking about it?

Or was he sitting in the stern, wringing out his cloak, replaying the split second when he looked away and felt the sea open beneath him?

The Gospel does not tell us. But I suspect I know, because I know what I would have thought. And I know the voice that would have been waiting for me in that boat.

 

The Voice in the Boat

Matthew’s account is relatively brief: "But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, ‘Lord, save me!’” (Matthew 14:30).

The Greek is worth pausing over. The verb translated “noticed” is blepōn, from blepō, to see, to look at. Peter had been looking at Jesus. Then he looked at the wind. The whole catastrophe is contained in a shift of gaze.

Which is precisely the problem for those of us who have been walking this road a while.

It is not that we abandon the Lord. Most days, most hours, the eyes are where they belong.

If I am honest, I would guess my attention rests on Christ ninety-nine percent of the time, or something near it. But there is that fraction, that sliver, that glance at the wind. And it is always there, in that hairline crack, that the enemy finds his opening.

He does not argue theology. He does not tempt with grand apostasy. He simply leans close and says, with a mocking edge, you’re pathetic.

Notice the strategy. The accuser does not dispute the ninety-nine percent. He does something far more clever: he insists that the one percent is the truth of you, and the rest was performance. The glance away, he says, is the real Peter. The walking was a fluke.

This is the ancient work of the one whose very name means accuser.

In Hebrew, satan is a legal term, an adversary who stands up in court to press charges. Zechariah shows him at it: "Then he showed me the high priest Joshua standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him" (Zechariah 3:1).

And what is the Lord’s response to the accusation? Not a defense of Joshua’s record. Something better: "The Lord rebuke you, O Satan!... Is not this man a brand plucked from the fire?" (Zechariah 3:2).

A brand plucked from the fire. Not a pristine vessel. A stick that was burning and got pulled out. That is the divine assessment. The accuser wants you to look at the char marks. God wants you to notice the hand that reached in.

 

Peter Is a Work in Progress

Here is what steadies me most about this story: Peter is not finished. Not remotely.

After the water, he will still misunderstand the cross so badly that Jesus rebukes him as a stumbling block. He will still sleep in Gethsemane. He will still swing a sword at the wrong moment. And in a courtyard, warming his hands at a stranger’s fire, he will deny three times that he ever knew the man who pulled him out of the sea.

The Lord knew all of this when He said come.

He knew the denial was coming when He gave Simon the name Peter, Kēphas, the rock. The name was not a description of Peter’s current reliability. It was a prophecy. It was what Christ intended to make of him, and Christ was willing to work with the raw material for as long as it took.

Which means the sinking was never a surprise to Jesus. It was factored in. Included. Expected.

 

The Actual Miracle

And now the point that has stayed with me all morning as I reflected on this.

We read this story as the account of a man who sank. But sinking is not a miracle. Sinking is what human bodies do in water. Sinking is physics, gravity, the ordinary and predictable outcome of being made of flesh and standing on liquid.

There is nothing remarkable about Peter going under.

The miracle is that he took a step. One step.

"So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus" (Matthew 14:29). Before the wind, before the fear, before the sinking, there was a foot placed on the surface of the Sea of Galilee. And for a moment, he walked. He didn't sink.

That is the impossible thing. That is what should occupy Peter's mind afterwards.

The enemy wants your attention on the water closing over your head, because that is the natural part, the part any accuser can point to with confidence. He works very hard to keep you from noticing that you were walking on water a moment before, and that you had no business doing so, and that it happened anyway because Christ called you out and held you up.

Augustine puts it plainly in a sermon on this very passage: “Peter walked by the same power by which he had trusted” (Sermon 76). The step was never Peter’s achievement. It was Peter’s trust meeting Christ’s power.

Which means when the step happens in your life, when you forgive what you could not forgive, when you hold your tongue, when you show up to prayer on the morning you felt nothing at all, that was not you managing to be impressive. That was water holding your weight because the very One who created you, who created the water, told it to.

 

Living This Out

Three things to carry into the week.

First, name the accusation when it comes. The voice that says you’re pathetic is not the voice of conscience. Genuine conscience is specific and leads to a concrete step of repair. Accusation is global, vague, and leads to paralysis. Learn to tell them apart. When the vague, sneering version arrives, do not debate it. Peter did not argue with the sea. He said four words: "Lord, save me!" (Matthew 14:30).

Second, keep a record of the steps. Not merely the failures. You'll probably remember those easily. Because the enemy will make sure you don't forget them. At the end of the day, name one moment when you walked on water, one moment when something happened in you that could not have come from your own resources. Write it down if you need to. The accuser’s power depends on your amnesia about the miraculous, about God's grace, about His victories in your life.

Third, get back in the boat and get out again tomorrow. The Gospel does not record Peter sitting out the rest of his discipleship in embarrassment. He is in the next scene, and the next, sinking and stepping, denying and being restored, until finally he stands up to preach at Pentecost to the conversion of 3,000 souls. And even then, he stumbles a bit here or there. Paul corrects him once. So he keeps walking. And he walks all the way to a cross of his own.

You are not all the way there. Neither was he. And let's face it. We aren't even Peter. We're just a part of the crowd, trying to follow Jesus. Most of us will not be remembered 2,000 years later by anyone in this world. Jesus will remember us perfectly. Because we'll be, as we've always been, His beloved.

And isn't His remembrance of us all that matters in the end?

The hand that caught him is the hand that catches you, and the step you took this morning—even if it was just clicking this e-mail and reading this far—was real.

 

God Bless,

Judah