He comes
toward his disciples, toward us in this great scene of epiphany- revealing the
beauty of his divinity, of his Otherness, expressing in his walk over the
waters of the deep that he is Adonai
of the Psalms, the Lord of all creation: “Greater than the roar of mighty
waters, more glorious than the surging of the sea, the Lord - glorious on
high.” But the apostles are scared out of their wits. They think he’s a ghost.
“Not so,” says he. “It’s really I, your Lord.” The voice of the Lord
“resounding on the waters, on the immensity of waters. The voice of the Lord
full of splendor.” Perhaps not so much chiding them, as longing to be
recognized, he says, “Please do not be afraid; I’m trying to come closer to
you.”
But what about
Peter, the Rock; is he just once again comic-tragic in his daring and
overconfidence? Doesn’t he always seem a bit too eager, foolhardy, speaking too
quickly? And now he wants to walk on the water? He should save himself the
embarrassment, for we know well how he’ll put his big fisherman’s foot into his
mouth later on - “Though all forsake you, Lord, I will never forsake you.” We
cringe just to hear it, don’t we? And this morning he calls out to Jesus:
“Command me to come to you on the water,” and soon after begins sinking out of
fear. Should we simply say that like Peter we all need to have greater faith
and stop here?
Perhaps
there’s something more here that deserves our notice - something about desire,
blessed desire? What about Peter’s ardent, foolish desire to be with his Lord?
Peter calling out to Jesus, his Lord; Peter whose lofty desire trumps all
discretion. “Call me to yourself, my Master!” “Come,” says Jesus. “Come.” Jesus
does not find Peter’s request pretentious or inappropriate. For he encourages
him, cries out to him, to us, “Come then, come to me, walk on water with me.
Come to me across the waters of the deep.” And so, God’s desire and our own
meet across the stormy waters. And if in the end Jesus reproaches Peter ever so
gently, it perhaps comes from his disappointment - at being
misunderstood. “Don’t you know I would never let you drown? How long have you
been with me? Though the flood waters may reach high, I will always stoop down
to save you.”
Jesus
walks on the waters of the deep towards us to remind us that he is the Lord,
with us in all that is precarious and unfathomable. And he wants to stir up our
desire for him, and perhaps most of all to
stir up our confidence in his desire to share all that he is, all that he has,
with us – stir up our confidence in
his desire. The God, who is at once totally available and at the same time
altogether beyond our reach, draws us here and now into mystery, the mystery
that he is; draws us into himself. For God in Christ is always moving toward
us. "His desire gives rise to yours," says Saint Bernard, "and
if you are eager to receive (him), it is he who is rushing to enter your heart;
for he first loved us, not we him." Jesus enfleshes this towardness of God - going out of
himself, rushing toward us as he seeks to captivates us with the “spell of his
love and his desire” for us.
Perhaps
then this scene is among other things a parable about prayer, the awesome
daring of our prayer. Imagine it - we hope, we believe that we can be intimate
with the living God - we’ve built our lives around this. And we know that this
desire, this reaching out toward God, is possible only because of God’s desire
in the first place. If you want to pray, remember always God wants it more than
you. Best of all - God’s most tender desire for communion with us has taken
flesh, in Jesus our Lord. Jesus
is God’s desire for us coming toward us moment by moment across the depths of
otherness. Jesus is always using
anything at all to get our attention. Jesus is the Bridge, our Bridge to the
Father. And to have the gumption to pray at all, we must like Peter allow our
foolish overreaching desire to trump the imbalance of reality - our puny
humanity vs. his sublime divinity. What prudence would surely caution against,
we boldly do when we dare to pray. And that is awesome to say the very least.
Jesus
striding on the waters toward us, teaches us confidence, fiducia, for Saint Bernard. For within our very bones, our guts,
planted there by the invisible, unfathomable, living God is our capacity, our
natural need and longing for God - for an intimacy and union that is our rightful
possession. We’re built for it - built for Jesus, Jesus whose name means "God
saves, God frees.” In Christ God is constantly giving us
himself, his own life, “that life that flows in abundance from his pierced
side.”
And so,
what Peter longs to hear from Christ Jesus, he does hear. Somehow, we might say, Peter's desire
puts words in Jesus’ mouth. Somehow our desire puts words in Jesus’ mouth. Not because
we make it up, but because our deepest desire is the echo of God’s desire for
us. “Command me to come to you across the waters.” “Come,” says Jesus. “Come to
me.” If indeed this is a parable about prayer, then know that what we long to
hear, what each of us longs to hear from the Lord, may very well be just what God
longs to say to us - “Come to me.”
If God in Christ is coming toward us, constant in his desire, how will we respond? Maybe like the apostles back in the boat - bow down and worship. It is in the Holy Eucharist that we have our best chance, as Jesus rushes toward us, rushing to feed us with his own Body and Blood. For in this broken bread and shared cup, our desires will meet, collide and become one.