When Nothing Else Can Help
Commentary
When I was a little boy, my dad would sometimes sing me to sleep at night, and he would usually sing hymns. I wonder, in retrospect, how many hymns I learned before I ever saw them printed on a page, for they were first imprinted on my young heart by the hearing of them. And one of the favorites was James Rowe’s “Love Lifted Me.”
The song is written as a first-person testimony. “I was sinking deep in sin, / far from the peaceful shore, / very deeply stained within, / sinking to rise no more; / but the Master of the sea / heard my despairing cry, / From the waters lifted me, / now safe am I.”1 Then the chorus goes on to revel in the affirmation that “when nothing else could help, love lifted me!”
The poet is drawing on an episode from the New Testament — an episode, in fact, that is recorded in our assigned Gospel lection for this week. It is the familiar story of Peter’s failed attempt to walk on the water with Jesus. It did not begin as a failure, we recall; Peter evidently did walk on the water at first. In the end, however, it seems that his faith faltered, and he began to sink. He cried out to Jesus in his desperation, and Jesus caught hold of him and saved him.
Rowe takes that familiar scene from the gospel and makes it a metaphor for himself — and, indeed, for every sinner. We are hopelessly drowning in sin. We cannot save ourselves; all that we can do is call out for help. And the Lord, in his mercy and love, “heard my despairing cry.” He reaches down to us, and he saves us.
In that scene from Peter’s life, and in the hymn that makes it illustrative, we have the themes for our consideration and proclamation this week. There is, first of all, our predicament. Then follows our cry for help. And then, mercifully, there is the response of the one to whom we cry, and we are saved by him.
We mustn’t be glib, of course, about this drowning imagery, as though it is trite. In a good-sized congregation, chances are that someone there knows a person who has drowned. Perhaps still others have had a “close call” experience themselves or with someone they love. Drowning is a terrifying business, and it is right for us to treat it with proper seriousness when telling the story of Peter.
And then, of still greater consequence, there is the principle that the poet expresses. Every soul is drowning apart from the salvation offered in Christ. Some may not be sensitive to it. But for those that are, they need badly to hear the Good News that, for as helpless and as in-over-their-heads as they feel, there is a Savior. When nothing else can help, they may cry out to him.
Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28
Words and concepts like “dysfunction” and “family systems” were not in vogue three-thousand years ago, but we surely see the dynamics at work. The biblical writer begins this episode with a geographically detail that could well be a metaphor for a larger reality. Jacob, we read, lived in the land where his father had lived. And, indeed, we see that Jacob truly did follow in his father’s footsteps. Isaac, we recall, created trouble and brokenness in his home by clearly favoring one son over the other; now, a generation later, one of those sons brings the same tragic dysfunction into his home. Jacob’s favoritism toward Joseph is so overt, in fact, that his older brothers find it impossible to be civil toward him.
Of course, beyond the scope of our assigned lection, we know that the dysfunction within Jacob’s household began even earlier. For before his preference for one of his sons was known to all, his preference for one of his wives was. And the competition that was lived out between those two sisters ended up bringing innocent bystanders — Bilhah and Zilpah — involuntarily into the mess.
In the end, as we know, Joseph’s hurt and angry half-brothers engage in some ancient human trafficking, selling Joseph as a slave to traveling merchants. And this unthinkable business is actually the result of cooler heads prevailing, for the original plan was to kill him. Such is the level of ugliness that had been reached in that unhappy home. But such, too, was the level of animosity between Esau and Jacob a generation earlier.
That the brothers sat down to a big meal together is a telling detail included by the narrator. Perhaps we have said — or heard someone say — “How can you eat at a time like this?” The idea is that some situations are so disturbing and all-consuming that a person is apt to forget or lose his appetite. Yet Joseph’s brothers occupy the opposite end of that sensitivity spectrum. They are apparently altogether unbothered by their own cruelty or their half-brother’s misery. Rather, in a scene of contentment and even celebration, they are stuffing their faces and licking their fingers, while Joseph cries out for mercy nearby.
The concocted plan to use Joseph’s distinctive coat as a way of covering their tracks is full of irony and ugliness. The irony, of course, is that that coat was the visible, intolerable symbol of their father’s favoritism. The coat is not incidental to the plot: it is central. And so, the symbol of Jacob’s favor is turned into a symbol of Joseph’s death, and what was meant to be an elegant covering for him became a sinister sort of covering for his brothers.
The great ugliness of the moment, meanwhile, is in the brother’s heartlessness toward their own father. Their plan to deceive him will maximize his pain and grief. But it will serve to minimize their apparent culpability, and that is evidently good enough for them. These patriarchs of the twelve tribes are an ignoble bunch, indeed.
Yet we remember Paul’s affirmation that God works all things together for good. He did for Joseph, in spite of the cruel unfairness of these (and subsequent) events. He did for Jacob, in spite of the seeming tragedy and grief of the moment. And he did for Israel, in spite of all the dysfunctions and wickedness of their ancestors. God’s working all things together for good, therefore, is a testament not only to his providence and his power, but also his grace.
Romans 10:5-15
The assigned passage from Romans 10 comes under the heading of a New Testament reading. As one studies it, however, one begins to wonder. For rather than being simply a New Testament reading, we discover that it is actually seven Old Testament readings rolled into one! In this brief but remarkable text, the Apostle Paul skillfully knits together excerpts from Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Psalms, Joel, and Isaiah in order to make his point.
Let us set aside for just a moment the point that Paul is making overtly and consider instead the points that he illustrates subtly by his handling of material. First, at a minimum, we see that the apostle is a man who is marvelously conversant in scripture. Absent the sort of digital tools and devices that you and I can use to find the texts that we’re looking for, Paul clearly has God’s written word deeply ingrained in his mind and heart. He is able with great facility, therefore, to move freely from law to prophets to writings as he makes his case.
But beyond what is remarkable about Paul, this excerpt from Romans serves to illustrate a part of what is remarkable about the scriptures. We have a pretty good sense in our day for the variety of authorship, dates, provenances, and historical contexts that lay behind the books of the Old and New Testaments. Yet the very sort of weaving together of disparate strands that the Apostle Paul does here in Romans 10 reveals the oneness of the book. Like Solomon’s temple, which was composed of fine stones from one place, cedar timber from another, and precious gold from yet another, so, too, the writings of scripture come from many people, places, and times, yet are constructed together to form a unified whole. And so, the apostle is able to draw from every section of the Tanach to speak a truth about the gospel of Christ.
In this particular section of the Romans epistle, the apostle is exploring the nature of the righteousness that is available to us in Christ. He contrasts the righteousness that comes from the law with the righteousness that comes from faith. The former proves to be hopelessly elusive for sinful human beings. The latter, however, is near at hand, for Christ has come to us.
The quote from Deuteronomy 30:14 — Moses’ affirmation that the message is near, that it is in your mouth and in your heart — prompts Paul to assert the role of our mouths and our hearts in our salvation. For we believe in our hearts, and we confess with our mouths. It is a connection in which we hear echoes of Jesus’ earlier expression of the relationship between what is in our hearts and what comes out of our mouths (e.g., Matthew 15:10-20).
Once such salvation by faith is established, the law ceases to be the issue, which allows the apostle to make the dramatic claim that “there is no distinction between Jew and Greek.” Rather than being a demotion of the Jews, as some would have heard that message, however, it is an exaltation of God. For he is the Lord of all, his grace is available to all, and everyone who calls on his name will be saved.
That affirmation, then, brings Paul to the final point of this section. Having declared that anyone — Jew or Gentile — can call upon the Lord and be saved, Paul acknowledges that they will not call on him if they do not believe in him. And they cannot believe in him unless they have heard of him. And they cannot hear of him unless someone proclaims the gospel to them. That brings him, then, to the final of his citations from the Old Testament: how beautiful are the feet of him who brings good news! The saving truth that culminates in the mouth of the believer, therefore, originates (humanly speaking) in the mouth of the preacher.
Matthew 14:22-33
Over the course of the stories recorded in the four gospels, we see Jesus working a wide variety of miracles and in a rather wide variety of ways. This episode from Matthew 14 — and especially with a nod to the preceding scene that is hinted at within the first verse — offers a small sampling of miracles.
I mentioned the preceding scene. In the first verse of our assigned passage, we read that Jesus sent the crowds away. A curious reader might want to rewind the tape just a bit to see what the crowds were there for in the first place. And by rewinding, we would discover that this present episode was immediately preceded by the famous feeding of the 5,000. That represents one of Jesus’ miracles of provision, and the method is hard to pin down, for it is never revealed when the multiplication of loaves and fishes happened. Did it occur when Jesus touched them? When he blessed them? Or did it continually occur as the disciples were distributing?
Meanwhile, in the subsequent scene, which is our focus, we see evidence of Jesus’ authority over nature. His walking on water and his calming the storm are both stunning events for the disciples to behold. There again, however, the method remains hidden from the reader. The walking on the water seems simply to be something he is able to do. And the sudden calm, as Matthew reports it, is not attributed to either his word or his gesture, yet the narrative — and the disciples’ own reaction — surely attribute the calm to Jesus.
The interaction with Peter represents another sort of layer of Jesus’ work. We reckon that Peter is only able to walk on the water because of Jesus — specifically, it seems, because of Peter’s focus on and faith in Jesus. This is consistent with a truth hinted at elsewhere in the gospels. For on several occasions Jesus tells people, whom he had clearly healed, that their faith had made them well.
Meanwhile, Jesus also rescues Peter from drowning. At first blush, that may not seem miraculous, for people are rescued by others every day. Yet Jesus’ rescue looks different for everyone else’s. He does not dive into the water to save the drowning man. Rather, he stands, as if on solid ground, and pulls Peter up out of the water to safety.
As an aside, we observe that a conversion of sorts takes place among the disciples. We can’t say with certainty what they believed about Jesus prior to this moment. It’s not until two chapters later that Peter makes his famous confession about Christ. Within this episode itself, however, we see that the disciples’ perception of Jesus changes from “It is a ghost!” to “You are truly God’s Son!” I wonder how often that same sort of testimony has been replayed in the lives of people. God is at work in their circumstances, but they don’t recognize him; indeed, they may well misdiagnose his hand for something else, something bad. Yet in the end, they realize who he is.
Finally, when the episode is finished, we have been reminded of some of Jesus’ most famous miracles. They remind us of the larger variety of miracles that he performed during his ministry. And they also serve to remind us of the type of miracle that he never performed: he never served himself, and he never saved himself. Who can fathom the power and authority that he had? Yet it was employed not for turning stones into bread, but for feeding a hungry multitude; it was employed not for saving himself from the cross, but for saving Peter and the disciples from perishing. As we noted above in our consideration of the Old Testament lection, the beauty of the Lord is not found merely in his providence or power, but in his grace.
Application
About the last thing we human beings want to hear — or to feel — is that a situation is hopeless. For as long as there is some reason to hope, we can usually keep going. But when there is no more reason to hope, then we are overwhelmed by purposelessness and despair. Yet a core affirmation of the gospel message is that human beings are in something of a hopeless situation. Hopeless, that is, apart from Christ.
Peter sinking beneath the violent waves of Galilee in the middle of the night is an emblem of the human situation. We cannot help ourselves. And what the hymn writer declares in picturesque language, the Apostle Paul articulates in theological terms. We are all sinners, and the law of God cannot save us, but only diagnose and condemn us.
What, then, is a person to do?
Peter knew instinctively what to do. In perhaps the shortest prayer in the Bible, Peter cried out, “Lord, save me!” It was not a long treatise of a prayer, but it said what needed to be said. In that brief cry, Peter had expressed both his need and his faith, both his desperation and his confidence in the Lord’s sufficiency.
The Apostle Paul recited the Old Testament promise that anyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Peter called on the Lord, and Peter was saved. So, too, the hymn writer.
We notice, incidentally, that Peter’s salvation does not depend in any respect upon Peter except his faith in calling out to Jesus. He is not required to meet Jesus halfway. He does not make any promises. He simply cries out to Jesus, and that is enough. Peter’s story, therefore, serves as a good and helpful illustration of the gospel truths that Paul proclaims.
But what, then, shall we make of our Old Testament lection? We recognize a certain similarity, to be sure. Joseph, too, is in a frightening situation, and he is unable to help himself. We imagine him crying out from the pit as desperately as sinking Peter. Yet the “rescue” Joseph experienced seems comparatively unwelcome. He, too, is lifted up out of his predicament — but only to be sold into a different predicament.
We are not privy to Joseph’s prayer life. We get some sense of his faithfulness in the episode with Potiphar’s wife and of his faith in his post facto reflections to his brothers at the end of the story. In the midst of all his troubles, however, we can only guess at how often and how earnestly he may have cried out to God — from the pit, from his slavery, and from the Egyptian prison.
And, indeed, the Lord did save him. Make no mistake, the Lord lifted Joseph up — higher than anyone but Joseph’s own dreams could have imagined! But that deliverance was certainly not as immediate as Peter’s.
We are not always equally comfortable with the Lord’s timing. We prefer immediacy over providence. But we may proceed with faith in either case, for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. And, in him, there is no situation — or person — that is truly hopeless.
Alternative Application(s)
Matthew 14:22-33 — “Never Alone”
A few verses into our assigned gospel pericope, we read that Jesus was alone. On the surface, the scene seems immediately understandable. Yet it may be that we will need to rewind the tape just a bit for our people in order for them to fully appreciate this moment.
At the beginning of Matthew 14, we read the story of John the Baptist’s execution. A few verses later, Jesus hears the news about John. John was clearly important to Jesus at several levels, and that fact might be appropriately explored in order to get a sense of Jesus’ mood. In response to the sad news, Jesus and his disciples get into a boat, and they set sail for a deserted place. It seems clear that Jesus was seeking some solitude. We know how that is: we, too, may seek a time and place to be alone when we are processing some grief.
When they arrived on shore, however, Jesus did not find solitude. On the contrary, he found a multitude of people waiting for him. And needy people at that.
Is there anything more exhausting when you’re already exhausted? It’s one thing to want solitude and find yourself in the midst of many people; but the situation is more desperate when it’s not just random people but specifically people waiting for you. Here was a crowd of people wanting Jesus’ attention; people needing something from him. Jesus had needs of his own at that moment, but now he found himself surrounded by people who needed him.
And what did he do? First, we read that he healed them. And then, as the day grew long and late, the disciples urged Jesus to send the crowds away so that they could find food for themselves. How appealing the thought of sending the crowds away must have been; but he didn’t do it. Instead, Jesus continued to meet their needs, this time with the miraculous feeding of the five-thousand.
This is where we join the story. After the crowds have been fed and the leftovers collected, Jesus sends his disciples off across the lake on a boat. And then, finally, after all of that, he sends the crowds away.
How many hours before had he set out seeking solitude? How much time and energy had he expended on people in the meantime? And now, finally, after literally meeting a multitude of needs, we read, “He was alone.”
Alone at last.
Yet the next word in the text is “but.” Immediately after the text reports that Jesus is alone, it turns to the situation of the boat carrying the disciples. And that is where Jesus’ attention turns, as well. The disciples are in distress; they are in need. And what does Jesus do? He goes to them.
It is an easy thing to be fascinated by — dare I say, distracted by — the miracles of Matthew 14. After all, within the scope of just this chapter, Jesus miraculously heals untold numbers of people, he miraculously feeds a multitude with little more than a bag lunch, he miraculously walks on water, and he even seems to miraculously enable Peter to do the same. Yet quietly at work behind all of that supernatural power and authority is a less glamorous but more remarkable and inspiring reality: the love and compassion of Jesus. Long before he went to the cross, we see that self-sacrifice was the nature of his love all along. And Matthew’s brief, subtle observation that “he was alone” may help us to see the larger and deeper beauty of the entire story.
________
1 James Rowe, “Love Lifted Me,” The Cokesbury Worship Hymnal (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1938), #233.
The song is written as a first-person testimony. “I was sinking deep in sin, / far from the peaceful shore, / very deeply stained within, / sinking to rise no more; / but the Master of the sea / heard my despairing cry, / From the waters lifted me, / now safe am I.”1 Then the chorus goes on to revel in the affirmation that “when nothing else could help, love lifted me!”
The poet is drawing on an episode from the New Testament — an episode, in fact, that is recorded in our assigned Gospel lection for this week. It is the familiar story of Peter’s failed attempt to walk on the water with Jesus. It did not begin as a failure, we recall; Peter evidently did walk on the water at first. In the end, however, it seems that his faith faltered, and he began to sink. He cried out to Jesus in his desperation, and Jesus caught hold of him and saved him.
Rowe takes that familiar scene from the gospel and makes it a metaphor for himself — and, indeed, for every sinner. We are hopelessly drowning in sin. We cannot save ourselves; all that we can do is call out for help. And the Lord, in his mercy and love, “heard my despairing cry.” He reaches down to us, and he saves us.
In that scene from Peter’s life, and in the hymn that makes it illustrative, we have the themes for our consideration and proclamation this week. There is, first of all, our predicament. Then follows our cry for help. And then, mercifully, there is the response of the one to whom we cry, and we are saved by him.
We mustn’t be glib, of course, about this drowning imagery, as though it is trite. In a good-sized congregation, chances are that someone there knows a person who has drowned. Perhaps still others have had a “close call” experience themselves or with someone they love. Drowning is a terrifying business, and it is right for us to treat it with proper seriousness when telling the story of Peter.
And then, of still greater consequence, there is the principle that the poet expresses. Every soul is drowning apart from the salvation offered in Christ. Some may not be sensitive to it. But for those that are, they need badly to hear the Good News that, for as helpless and as in-over-their-heads as they feel, there is a Savior. When nothing else can help, they may cry out to him.
Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28
Words and concepts like “dysfunction” and “family systems” were not in vogue three-thousand years ago, but we surely see the dynamics at work. The biblical writer begins this episode with a geographically detail that could well be a metaphor for a larger reality. Jacob, we read, lived in the land where his father had lived. And, indeed, we see that Jacob truly did follow in his father’s footsteps. Isaac, we recall, created trouble and brokenness in his home by clearly favoring one son over the other; now, a generation later, one of those sons brings the same tragic dysfunction into his home. Jacob’s favoritism toward Joseph is so overt, in fact, that his older brothers find it impossible to be civil toward him.
Of course, beyond the scope of our assigned lection, we know that the dysfunction within Jacob’s household began even earlier. For before his preference for one of his sons was known to all, his preference for one of his wives was. And the competition that was lived out between those two sisters ended up bringing innocent bystanders — Bilhah and Zilpah — involuntarily into the mess.
In the end, as we know, Joseph’s hurt and angry half-brothers engage in some ancient human trafficking, selling Joseph as a slave to traveling merchants. And this unthinkable business is actually the result of cooler heads prevailing, for the original plan was to kill him. Such is the level of ugliness that had been reached in that unhappy home. But such, too, was the level of animosity between Esau and Jacob a generation earlier.
That the brothers sat down to a big meal together is a telling detail included by the narrator. Perhaps we have said — or heard someone say — “How can you eat at a time like this?” The idea is that some situations are so disturbing and all-consuming that a person is apt to forget or lose his appetite. Yet Joseph’s brothers occupy the opposite end of that sensitivity spectrum. They are apparently altogether unbothered by their own cruelty or their half-brother’s misery. Rather, in a scene of contentment and even celebration, they are stuffing their faces and licking their fingers, while Joseph cries out for mercy nearby.
The concocted plan to use Joseph’s distinctive coat as a way of covering their tracks is full of irony and ugliness. The irony, of course, is that that coat was the visible, intolerable symbol of their father’s favoritism. The coat is not incidental to the plot: it is central. And so, the symbol of Jacob’s favor is turned into a symbol of Joseph’s death, and what was meant to be an elegant covering for him became a sinister sort of covering for his brothers.
The great ugliness of the moment, meanwhile, is in the brother’s heartlessness toward their own father. Their plan to deceive him will maximize his pain and grief. But it will serve to minimize their apparent culpability, and that is evidently good enough for them. These patriarchs of the twelve tribes are an ignoble bunch, indeed.
Yet we remember Paul’s affirmation that God works all things together for good. He did for Joseph, in spite of the cruel unfairness of these (and subsequent) events. He did for Jacob, in spite of the seeming tragedy and grief of the moment. And he did for Israel, in spite of all the dysfunctions and wickedness of their ancestors. God’s working all things together for good, therefore, is a testament not only to his providence and his power, but also his grace.
Romans 10:5-15
The assigned passage from Romans 10 comes under the heading of a New Testament reading. As one studies it, however, one begins to wonder. For rather than being simply a New Testament reading, we discover that it is actually seven Old Testament readings rolled into one! In this brief but remarkable text, the Apostle Paul skillfully knits together excerpts from Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Psalms, Joel, and Isaiah in order to make his point.
Let us set aside for just a moment the point that Paul is making overtly and consider instead the points that he illustrates subtly by his handling of material. First, at a minimum, we see that the apostle is a man who is marvelously conversant in scripture. Absent the sort of digital tools and devices that you and I can use to find the texts that we’re looking for, Paul clearly has God’s written word deeply ingrained in his mind and heart. He is able with great facility, therefore, to move freely from law to prophets to writings as he makes his case.
But beyond what is remarkable about Paul, this excerpt from Romans serves to illustrate a part of what is remarkable about the scriptures. We have a pretty good sense in our day for the variety of authorship, dates, provenances, and historical contexts that lay behind the books of the Old and New Testaments. Yet the very sort of weaving together of disparate strands that the Apostle Paul does here in Romans 10 reveals the oneness of the book. Like Solomon’s temple, which was composed of fine stones from one place, cedar timber from another, and precious gold from yet another, so, too, the writings of scripture come from many people, places, and times, yet are constructed together to form a unified whole. And so, the apostle is able to draw from every section of the Tanach to speak a truth about the gospel of Christ.
In this particular section of the Romans epistle, the apostle is exploring the nature of the righteousness that is available to us in Christ. He contrasts the righteousness that comes from the law with the righteousness that comes from faith. The former proves to be hopelessly elusive for sinful human beings. The latter, however, is near at hand, for Christ has come to us.
The quote from Deuteronomy 30:14 — Moses’ affirmation that the message is near, that it is in your mouth and in your heart — prompts Paul to assert the role of our mouths and our hearts in our salvation. For we believe in our hearts, and we confess with our mouths. It is a connection in which we hear echoes of Jesus’ earlier expression of the relationship between what is in our hearts and what comes out of our mouths (e.g., Matthew 15:10-20).
Once such salvation by faith is established, the law ceases to be the issue, which allows the apostle to make the dramatic claim that “there is no distinction between Jew and Greek.” Rather than being a demotion of the Jews, as some would have heard that message, however, it is an exaltation of God. For he is the Lord of all, his grace is available to all, and everyone who calls on his name will be saved.
That affirmation, then, brings Paul to the final point of this section. Having declared that anyone — Jew or Gentile — can call upon the Lord and be saved, Paul acknowledges that they will not call on him if they do not believe in him. And they cannot believe in him unless they have heard of him. And they cannot hear of him unless someone proclaims the gospel to them. That brings him, then, to the final of his citations from the Old Testament: how beautiful are the feet of him who brings good news! The saving truth that culminates in the mouth of the believer, therefore, originates (humanly speaking) in the mouth of the preacher.
Matthew 14:22-33
Over the course of the stories recorded in the four gospels, we see Jesus working a wide variety of miracles and in a rather wide variety of ways. This episode from Matthew 14 — and especially with a nod to the preceding scene that is hinted at within the first verse — offers a small sampling of miracles.
I mentioned the preceding scene. In the first verse of our assigned passage, we read that Jesus sent the crowds away. A curious reader might want to rewind the tape just a bit to see what the crowds were there for in the first place. And by rewinding, we would discover that this present episode was immediately preceded by the famous feeding of the 5,000. That represents one of Jesus’ miracles of provision, and the method is hard to pin down, for it is never revealed when the multiplication of loaves and fishes happened. Did it occur when Jesus touched them? When he blessed them? Or did it continually occur as the disciples were distributing?
Meanwhile, in the subsequent scene, which is our focus, we see evidence of Jesus’ authority over nature. His walking on water and his calming the storm are both stunning events for the disciples to behold. There again, however, the method remains hidden from the reader. The walking on the water seems simply to be something he is able to do. And the sudden calm, as Matthew reports it, is not attributed to either his word or his gesture, yet the narrative — and the disciples’ own reaction — surely attribute the calm to Jesus.
The interaction with Peter represents another sort of layer of Jesus’ work. We reckon that Peter is only able to walk on the water because of Jesus — specifically, it seems, because of Peter’s focus on and faith in Jesus. This is consistent with a truth hinted at elsewhere in the gospels. For on several occasions Jesus tells people, whom he had clearly healed, that their faith had made them well.
Meanwhile, Jesus also rescues Peter from drowning. At first blush, that may not seem miraculous, for people are rescued by others every day. Yet Jesus’ rescue looks different for everyone else’s. He does not dive into the water to save the drowning man. Rather, he stands, as if on solid ground, and pulls Peter up out of the water to safety.
As an aside, we observe that a conversion of sorts takes place among the disciples. We can’t say with certainty what they believed about Jesus prior to this moment. It’s not until two chapters later that Peter makes his famous confession about Christ. Within this episode itself, however, we see that the disciples’ perception of Jesus changes from “It is a ghost!” to “You are truly God’s Son!” I wonder how often that same sort of testimony has been replayed in the lives of people. God is at work in their circumstances, but they don’t recognize him; indeed, they may well misdiagnose his hand for something else, something bad. Yet in the end, they realize who he is.
Finally, when the episode is finished, we have been reminded of some of Jesus’ most famous miracles. They remind us of the larger variety of miracles that he performed during his ministry. And they also serve to remind us of the type of miracle that he never performed: he never served himself, and he never saved himself. Who can fathom the power and authority that he had? Yet it was employed not for turning stones into bread, but for feeding a hungry multitude; it was employed not for saving himself from the cross, but for saving Peter and the disciples from perishing. As we noted above in our consideration of the Old Testament lection, the beauty of the Lord is not found merely in his providence or power, but in his grace.
Application
About the last thing we human beings want to hear — or to feel — is that a situation is hopeless. For as long as there is some reason to hope, we can usually keep going. But when there is no more reason to hope, then we are overwhelmed by purposelessness and despair. Yet a core affirmation of the gospel message is that human beings are in something of a hopeless situation. Hopeless, that is, apart from Christ.
Peter sinking beneath the violent waves of Galilee in the middle of the night is an emblem of the human situation. We cannot help ourselves. And what the hymn writer declares in picturesque language, the Apostle Paul articulates in theological terms. We are all sinners, and the law of God cannot save us, but only diagnose and condemn us.
What, then, is a person to do?
Peter knew instinctively what to do. In perhaps the shortest prayer in the Bible, Peter cried out, “Lord, save me!” It was not a long treatise of a prayer, but it said what needed to be said. In that brief cry, Peter had expressed both his need and his faith, both his desperation and his confidence in the Lord’s sufficiency.
The Apostle Paul recited the Old Testament promise that anyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Peter called on the Lord, and Peter was saved. So, too, the hymn writer.
We notice, incidentally, that Peter’s salvation does not depend in any respect upon Peter except his faith in calling out to Jesus. He is not required to meet Jesus halfway. He does not make any promises. He simply cries out to Jesus, and that is enough. Peter’s story, therefore, serves as a good and helpful illustration of the gospel truths that Paul proclaims.
But what, then, shall we make of our Old Testament lection? We recognize a certain similarity, to be sure. Joseph, too, is in a frightening situation, and he is unable to help himself. We imagine him crying out from the pit as desperately as sinking Peter. Yet the “rescue” Joseph experienced seems comparatively unwelcome. He, too, is lifted up out of his predicament — but only to be sold into a different predicament.
We are not privy to Joseph’s prayer life. We get some sense of his faithfulness in the episode with Potiphar’s wife and of his faith in his post facto reflections to his brothers at the end of the story. In the midst of all his troubles, however, we can only guess at how often and how earnestly he may have cried out to God — from the pit, from his slavery, and from the Egyptian prison.
And, indeed, the Lord did save him. Make no mistake, the Lord lifted Joseph up — higher than anyone but Joseph’s own dreams could have imagined! But that deliverance was certainly not as immediate as Peter’s.
We are not always equally comfortable with the Lord’s timing. We prefer immediacy over providence. But we may proceed with faith in either case, for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. And, in him, there is no situation — or person — that is truly hopeless.
Alternative Application(s)
Matthew 14:22-33 — “Never Alone”
A few verses into our assigned gospel pericope, we read that Jesus was alone. On the surface, the scene seems immediately understandable. Yet it may be that we will need to rewind the tape just a bit for our people in order for them to fully appreciate this moment.
At the beginning of Matthew 14, we read the story of John the Baptist’s execution. A few verses later, Jesus hears the news about John. John was clearly important to Jesus at several levels, and that fact might be appropriately explored in order to get a sense of Jesus’ mood. In response to the sad news, Jesus and his disciples get into a boat, and they set sail for a deserted place. It seems clear that Jesus was seeking some solitude. We know how that is: we, too, may seek a time and place to be alone when we are processing some grief.
When they arrived on shore, however, Jesus did not find solitude. On the contrary, he found a multitude of people waiting for him. And needy people at that.
Is there anything more exhausting when you’re already exhausted? It’s one thing to want solitude and find yourself in the midst of many people; but the situation is more desperate when it’s not just random people but specifically people waiting for you. Here was a crowd of people wanting Jesus’ attention; people needing something from him. Jesus had needs of his own at that moment, but now he found himself surrounded by people who needed him.
And what did he do? First, we read that he healed them. And then, as the day grew long and late, the disciples urged Jesus to send the crowds away so that they could find food for themselves. How appealing the thought of sending the crowds away must have been; but he didn’t do it. Instead, Jesus continued to meet their needs, this time with the miraculous feeding of the five-thousand.
This is where we join the story. After the crowds have been fed and the leftovers collected, Jesus sends his disciples off across the lake on a boat. And then, finally, after all of that, he sends the crowds away.
How many hours before had he set out seeking solitude? How much time and energy had he expended on people in the meantime? And now, finally, after literally meeting a multitude of needs, we read, “He was alone.”
Alone at last.
Yet the next word in the text is “but.” Immediately after the text reports that Jesus is alone, it turns to the situation of the boat carrying the disciples. And that is where Jesus’ attention turns, as well. The disciples are in distress; they are in need. And what does Jesus do? He goes to them.
It is an easy thing to be fascinated by — dare I say, distracted by — the miracles of Matthew 14. After all, within the scope of just this chapter, Jesus miraculously heals untold numbers of people, he miraculously feeds a multitude with little more than a bag lunch, he miraculously walks on water, and he even seems to miraculously enable Peter to do the same. Yet quietly at work behind all of that supernatural power and authority is a less glamorous but more remarkable and inspiring reality: the love and compassion of Jesus. Long before he went to the cross, we see that self-sacrifice was the nature of his love all along. And Matthew’s brief, subtle observation that “he was alone” may help us to see the larger and deeper beauty of the entire story.
________
1 James Rowe, “Love Lifted Me,” The Cokesbury Worship Hymnal (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1938), #233.
