After he
had fed the people, Jesus made the disciples get into a boat and precede him to
the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. After doing so, he went up
on the mountain by himself to pray. When it was evening he was there
alone. Meanwhile the boat, already a few miles offshore, was being tossed
about by the waves, for the wind was against it. During the fourth watch
of the night, he came toward them walking on the sea. When the disciples
saw him walking on the sea they were terrified. "It is a ghost,"
they said, and they cried out in fear. At once Jesus spoke to them,
"Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid." Peter said to him in
reply, "Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the
water." He said, "Come."
Peter got
out of the boat and began to walk on the water toward Jesus. But when he
saw how strong the wind was he became frightened; and, beginning to sink, he
cried out, "Lord, save me!" Immediately Jesus stretched out his
hand and caught Peter, and said to him, "O you of little faith, why did
you doubt?" After they got into the boat, the wind died
down. Those who were in the boat did him homage, saying, "Truly, you
are the Son of God."
Matthew
14:22-33
We are
often told that God demands faith - interpreted as belief in God or belief in
Jesus’s status as the Incarnation. But
an easily overlooked detail of this story is that it is Peter who challenges
his own faith - Jesus does not. Peter invites Jesus to command him to walk on
the water. Jesus merely complies and
says, “come.”
That God
would demand belief has always seemed unfair to me. We believe things because the evidence that
has been presented to us is compelling to us.
In a real sense, we cannot be commanded to believe something that we are
not inclined to credit as true. If you
demand that I believe that the sky is purple in honor of some laudable social
concern, I may act as though I believe it in order to mollify you, or to indicate
my allegiance to that concern, but no amount of desire on my part will allow me
to actually believe it.
Abraham Heschel
wrote that in trying to understand God we have to apply ‘first principles’. If God is anything like what we think of Him,
He must be fair. Fairness prohibits Him
from rewarding behavior that cannot be chosen. Whether we believe in God or believe that
Jesus is the incarnation of God really isn’t something we choose. A fair God cannot reward belief or punish
non-belief. In this story, there is an
affirmation of that fact. Human beings
may demand belief from themselves and one another, but we can be reasonably sure
God does not.
