Walking on Water

For the past few weeks, there has been an image from the Gospel stuck in my head. It is Peter, walking on water, suddenly sinking, desperately crying out, “Lord, save me!” Jesus, reaching out his hand – “Why did you doubt?” We wonder at Peter’s lack of faith in Jesus, but we also wonder, “What made Peter think he could walk on water in the first place?”

What kind of friendship is this that draws us out into the deep, that calls us to ask, “Can I walk with you, Jesus?"  What made us think we could walk on water in the first place? Why do we feel called further into the deep? What kind of friendship pulls us into the storm, onto the water – and then seems to ask us to remember who we are, to know ourselves for the first time? We cannot walk on water. Suddenly we become aware of our vulnerability, aware that we are in space and time and subject to the laws of gravity – and we call out to Christ to save us.

About a week ago, I was walking home from work on my usual route from the metro stop. I have passed a certain tree every day for the past six months. It’s an ordinary tree, and underneath is a faded picture of a teenage boy with the words, “We will miss you, John.” When I first saw the sign, I wondered about John and then forgot about him.

But on this particular day, I saw two young girls under the tree. I ignored them at first, thinking of the rent that was due and the bills to be paid and things I needed to do. I heard one of them say, “I don’t really cry anymore…” And suddenly I heard something – not her voice, which I had barely noticed, but the silence that followed, which seemed to call me out of my daily routine and into their moment. I recognized that silence – it startled me because I recognized it as clearly as if I had recognized a friend’s voice. It was a silence bursting with meaning and vulnerability. In a flash I saw it – the tree, the conversation, the boy – it must have been the anniversary of his death or his birthday, and the two friends sat there alone, remembering together. I turned back, as if out of my daze and into reality, and saw her placing flowers by the tree.

There was this silence between these two girls that seemed to wake me from my daily routine and call me. A silence that calls – that sounds contradictory, but that’s the only way I can describe it. I could do nothing but pass by in silent awe and say a prayer for them. And in the silent awe I became aware of a deep longing, a strange desire to walk on water, to pass the invisible membrane separating strangers from each others’ woundedness. I couldn’t, of course. But the longing for something more was there, even as I wanted to look away from the suffering.

And I wondered at it. And it got stuck in my head so that days later, I still wondered at it. Why should such an experience make me feel a longing for something more? Something more than my house, my job, my family and friends? What more could there be? I wondered again “What was it that made Peter think he could walk on water? And this time, thinking of all that I had, I wondered, Was it a lack of gratitude for what he already had that made him think he could walk on water?”

I don’t think so. It might have been ungratefulness if he were asking for something concrete – a new house, a new job – but what he asks Christ for is something more than safety, more than security, for a closeness to Christ’s love that goes beyond space and time. And it might have been ungratefulness except that I don’t think it was really Peter that was asking. He does ask, of course, but Christ is the one on the water, pursuing Peter. Have we ever thought of the love of Christ in this way – not something that we grasp for and earn, but something desperately pursuing us, beckoning us to desire more than safety and security, showing us that we can ask for and long for more? Something beckoning us to reach beyond our safety and silence and into the presence of strangers and truly encounter them?

I wish I had a nice, tidy ending to the story – I realize that these are very unfinished and unpolished thoughts – but maybe some thoughts take a long time to be polished and maybe I'm just arriving where I started and knowing the place for the first time. I find that maybe all I have is what Peter had – a small, vulnerable, weak voice that cries in the middle of the storm – Lord, save me as I realize that alone I can’t walk on water. And maybe the response is the same for us as it is for Peter – an outstretched hand and a gentle voice, “Why did you doubt?”