Maybe We Could Walk on Water (Matthew 14:13-33)

This week’s text from Matthew 14:13-33 includes two of Jesus’s most memorable miracles: the feeding of the more-than-5,000 and Jesus walking on the water. Taken together, these two stories demonstrate the radical nature of the kingdom of heaven, which stands over and against the coercive power of the Empire. Jesus offers abundance where the Empire trades in scarcity. Jesus acts in compassion where the Empire acts in power. Jesus brings calm where the Empire thrives in chaos.

Yet for all of this, what strikes me most about these passages is that both Jesus and the disinherited (to borrow a phrase from Howard Thurman) seem to embrace from the beginning the alternative reality of God’s kingdom that undermines all pretensions of the Empire. But the disciples—whom I take to represent the Church—struggle mightily, falling back repeatedly into the logic of the Empire—despite the in-breaking of the kingdom right before their very eyes.

Defeated by the Empire

As the text opens, Jesus is sailing across the Sea of Galilee, fleeing from the city into “a desolate place” (Gk eremos) to be by himself (14:13). It has been a hard few days for Jesus, as the two previous stories in Matthew’s Gospel tell us.

Jesus had recently departed from his hometown of Nazareth, where he had gone to teach in the synagogue (Matthew 13:54-58). Yet the townspeople had been wholly unimpressed with him. “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son?,” they asked (13:55) and “took offense at him” (13:57). Met with such disbelief, Jesus “did not do many miracles there because of their lack of faith” (13:58). While Matthew suggests that Jesus had chosen not to do miracles because of their lack of belief, the writer of Mark tells us that Jesus “could not do any miracles there” (Mark 6:5). Whatever the case, it had not been a successful trip home for Jesus. The people did not believe, and the given-ness of the Empire—which insists that carpenters’ sons cannot heal the sick—went unchallenged.

Immediately after this, Jesus had received word from the disciples of John the Baptist that John had been executed by Herod Antipas, the tetrarch of Galilee (Matthew 14:1-12). Herod had thrown John into prison for challenging Herod’s desire to marry his own sister-in-law, Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip. During Herod’s birthday celebration, with many dignified guests in attendance, Herodias’s daughter had asked for John’s head. Not wanting to lose face in front of his guests, Herod executed John and brought her his head on a platter.

So when Jesus sailed across the sea to a deserted place, it may have seemed to him that the Empire had indeed defeated him. The people of Nazareth didn’t have faith in him. He couldn’t perform miracles among them. John had been executed. And Jesus was on the run, headed to a desolate place where no one could find him.

The Kingdom Strikes Back

Yet while Jesus is still crossing the sea, the crowd has figured out where he is headed and has raced around the shoreline to meet him. Matthew describes the crowd as “sick,” using the term arrostos. In Greek, the term connotes sickness in the sense of weakness or powerlessness. It conveys both the people’s physical weakness and also their low position in society. They are the powerless ones, sick not only in body but also in spirit, living with their backs against the wall, as Howard Thurman putw it. These are the disinherited, the marginalized, those who have no place in the structures of imperial power.

But because the Empire has not embraced them, the crowds have no trouble imagining a world alternative to the one on offer by the Empire. Unlike the townsfolk of Nazareth, who cannot imagine the world otherwise, this crowd of the disinherited and the powerless understand immediately who Jesus is. They know he has the power to heal. They know he can raise them up from their lowly state. Where the Empire has dealt them only sickness and death, Jesus offers them life and life abundant. They can hardly wait for him to disembark.

As soon as Jesus steps off the boat, Jesus has “compassion” (Gk splanknis) for the people. He reaches out to the sick and restores them to health. He encounters the powerless and restores their full human dignity.

Now Jesus had not intended to heal the sick. He had not planned to demonstrate the alternative reality of the kingdom of heaven there in the wilderness. He had been trying to escape. But, the crowd, in its fervent faith in Jesus’s healing power, has evoked the kingdom of heaven from Jesus. They demonstrate their faith in him, and he responds with the compassionate healing that characterizes the kingdom of God.

The people and Jesus need each other to bring forth the kingdom. The crowd needs him to restore them to wholeness. Jesus needs the crowd to have faith in the alternative way of life he is calling forth among them. Together, the people and Jesus live out the kingdom of heaven in the midst of the Empire–right there in the wilderness. For a moment, the compassionate reign of God has triumphed.

Food in the Wilderness

So it is that as evening draws near, no one is worried about food. No one—that is—except the disciples. The disciples ask Jesus to send the people away “so that they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food” (14:14). Though they have seen the kingdom bursting forth in their midst, they cannot escape the mindset of imperial economics. Food must be bought. And the people must buy it.

But the crowd consists of the poor and the powerless. They are the destitute and the exhausted. They aren’t carrying extra cash. They can’t just pop by a local restaurant for a meal. “You give them something to eat,” Jesus says (14:17). But the disciples can’t do it. They can see only the limitations of their resources—five loaves and two fish.

But the economy of God isn’t like the economy of the Empire. Jesus, taking five fish and two loaves, asks God’s blessing and begins distributing the food to the crowd. Matthew tells us that “all ate and were filled” (14:20). After all had eaten, they collected twelve baskets of leftovers, represented of the twelve tribes of Israel, indicating that in God’s economy there is plenty for all.

No one in the crowd seems particularly surprised that Jesus could feed them. They had, after all, heard how God had fed their ancestors in the wilderness long ago (Exodus16:1-36). Only the disciples disbelieved. Trapped in the imperial mindset of scarcity, they could hardly fathom the abundance to be found in God.

Stepping Out on Faith

After Jesus feeds the crowd, he sends the disciples on ahead of him in the boat across the sea. The disciples soon find themselves battered by a storm, which blows them off course into the middle of the lake. Seeing them, Jesus sets off across to rescue them, walking on the water. Again he demonstrates the nature of God’s kingdom, which does not succumb to the chaotic forces of the world but rises above them and bids them cease.

Yet what interests me most about this passage isn’t the actions of Jesus, but of Peter. As the disciple upon whom Jesus will found the church (Matthew 16:18), I take Peter to be something of a model for the church. Peter represents us. We are the inheritors of Peter’s legacy.

What strikes me is that when Peter sees Jesus walking on the water, he manages—just for a moment—to live into the alternate reality of the kingdom of heaven. He ceases to see the chaos that renders the people fearful and therefore submissive. He steps out as though the raging storms cannot touch him. For the briefest of moments, the Empire has no hold on him. What he believes impossible has no effect on him. He steps out on faith and inhabits an alternative reality.

For the briefest of moments, Peter walks on water.

Now I know that when we read this story we’re supposed to focus on Peter’s lack of faith. He should have kept trusting Jesus. He shouldn’t have gotten distracted by the storms raging around him.

But instead, Peter gives me hope. The rest of the disciples thought Jesus was a ghost. The rest of the disciples stayed huddled in the boat. The rest of the disciples were so frightened by the chaos around them that they could do nothing but hunker down and pray for the storm to pass.

But not Peter. Peter trusted, if only for a moment. Peter believed, if only imperfectly. He stood on the water while the storms raged around him. For just that moment, the Empire had no hold on Peter. For just that moment, he lived fully into the kingdom of heaven. For just a moment he was free.