Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 19], rcl yr a, 2026
1 KINGS 19:9-18; PSALM 85:8-13; ROMANS 10:5-15; MATTHEW 14:22-33
they cried out in fear
I watched Jaws this week. I do hope you’ve seen it—it is a Steven Spielberg classic. If you haven’t seen it, I imagine you at least have some sense of what it is about—a Great White Shark with a taste for human flesh, the beachside town that gets terrorised by said shark—and the three men who hunt it down. Naturally, after reading the Gospel we heard this morning—I watched it in preparation for this sermon.
Well perhaps not so naturally; you may well be asking what in the heck does Jaws have to do with Jesus walking on water? Well—stick around. I’ll get there.
The Gospel today is unique to Matthew. In it, after Jesus spends some time in the mountains alone in prayer, the disciples try to cross the lake in a boat only to find themselves battered by waves, far from the shore, and in the middle of a storm; the disciples are terrified. In the middle of the storm, they see Jesus walking on the water; Peter is invited by Jesus to walk on water; so Peter does, only to be overwhelmed, frightened, and eventually to sink. Peter and Jesus do end up back in the boat, where the wind ceases, and the disciples worship Jesus.
Clearly, Peter is just being Peter here. Talking a better game than he plays a game; brash and confident in the first moment, but failing in his execution in the second moment; full of faith at first, and then, overcome with doubt. He’s impetuous; he’s outspoken; richly deserving judgment, and yet so open to grace. Walking on water as an expression of faith in Jesus, only to sink in the water as a consequence of his doubt. This just sounds a lot like the Peter who calls Jesus the Messiah, the Son of the living God, only to deny that Jesus would be killed and be raised; it sounds a lot like the Peter who says he would never deny Jesus, only to do so three times before the next morning.
To walk on water in a storm the way Peter does is about more than just walking on water, as miraculous as that might be. Call to mind those old maps where you would see drawings of dragons in the sea—expressing a dangerous mystery, famously in one instance reading “here be dragons.” The sea, in the Biblical imagination, was not just a dangerous place, a place of storms and violent wind—it was where chaos reigned, where tyrannical earthly powers held sway. The sea is where the dragon, where the Leviathan plays.
It makes me wonder if Job would have made a better Old Testament reading for us today—in Job 41, the Leviathan is described in detail. The Leviathan overwhelms lesser gods; its face is fierce; no one can confront it and be safe; it is a terror of fire and stone making the sea boil like a pot. Job 41 describes an untamed creation in the form of an undefeatable creature of chaos.
Now call to mind that iconic movie poster for Jaws: an innocent swimmer on the surface of the ocean, with the leviathan-like Great White shark, all open jaws and sharp teeth, ascending from the deep towards that unsuspecting swimmer. Jaws is not an accurate representation of the behaviour of Great White sharks, by the way; they aren’t the lone killers the film makes them out to be. Think of Jaws more as a parable about the untamed and dangerous sea, where the predator in Jaws represents the Leviathan, an agent of predatory chaos and death, something that cannot be reasoned with, a terror that comes from the deep, something that can only be defeated with great cost and the kind of divine intervention that looks like a lucky and explosive rifle shot.
Now imagine Peter walking on the water in the storm, in the Leviathan’s own backyard; with Peter at first as innocent as that swimmer on that movie poster, only, after a moment of faith in Jesus, to be reminded of the great peril he was in, not just on account of the wind and the waves, but on account of the creature of death that lies beneath the wind and the waves. This is not just a story about believing that at Jesus’s invitation, that you can walk on water; it is a story about remembering the deathly, demonic chaos that is reaching for our feet to devour us whole from just below the mottled and murky surface.
Which to my mind makes Jesus’s equanimity in all this a very interesting part of this story. If this is part of the story—that evil, chaotic, untamed and irrational creatures threaten us from just below the surface—this is a slightly different Jesus than we will see later. Call to mind, for example, Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. There, Jesus has some knowledge of his fate, of his own death and suffering, where even he says that he is deeply grieved; where he hopes that the bitter cup of suffering might not be brought to, but rather pass from, his lips. Meanwhile, the Jesus who has the Leviathan reaching open-mouthed at his feet as he walks across the sea, threatening to devour him, has no fear. He somehow knows, and acts, like he is safe from chaos’s reign of terror.
It makes me wonder if we might be right in inferring that Jesus trembles less at the chaos of an untamed creation, less at the demons of the deep, only for the cruelty and unjust politics of death and destruction perpetrated by his own fellow human beings to be something to truly worthy of fear. Is it possible that we are more of a threat to Jesus and God’s peace than even the fierce, entirely unsafe terrors of fire and stone, that we have a greater capacity for violence than the chaotic creatures of the deep that make the sea boil and overwhelm lesser gods? Now that is a sobering thought.
This is, though, the Jesus that will calm the sea and the waves at the command of his voice; this is the Lord of Creation, who is one with the maker of all that is, and who upholds creation in an ongoing act of love as the second person of the Trinity; this is the God that tames the Leviathan, the God who will break the head of the Leviathan into pieces if necessary. And so it is no surprise that the disciples worship Jesus here, not just because he demonstrates his power over creation; they worship him because he has no fear of the deathly forces of the deep, because he is Lord over them as well.
And so neither should we, right? Those who are in Christ and with Christ by our baptism, our own dunking into the waters of his death, only to be raised out of those same waters in his resurrection to life?
The miracle may not be that we might walk on water, if Jesus calls us to do so. The miracle is that there is nothing to fear in the deepest of dark waters, nothing to fear in the chaos of life, and even what overwhelms the lesser gods, whatever demons are nipping at our feet threatening to swallow us whole—in fear, in anxiety, in lack of trust—all of these threats need not overwhelm those of us who have been sunk into the water of baptism only to be lifted out of that water by Jesus. In this Christ, Lord over the wind and the sea and all that lies beneath it, we have nothing to fear.
And this includes the cruel and deadly politics that kill the innocent and allow the wicked to thrive—because even the wicked are redeemable by the suffering and death of Jesus, the one whose faith lends to us the faith we need. Neither leading us into, nor abandoning us to fear, because this is the Jesus who is pulling us out of the chaos by the scruff of our shirt like a cold and dripping Peter, into the boat that is the church, the ark of safety even when it is far out to sea and battered by the wind; the church that is the gathered worshippers of Jesus, Lord of Creation.
Angus Sinclair was appointed Director of Music of St. John the Evangelist on February 1, 2023. Having graduated in 1981 (Honours B.Mus.) in organ performance from Wilfrid Laurier University, he went on to distinguish himself as a church musician, recitalist and accompanist touring in both Canada and the UK. For over 40 years Angus has served parishes and congregations throughout Southwestern Ontario as director of music. He experiences his present appointment to St. John’s as a welcome homecoming, both spiritually and musically.
As our parish musician, he provides both support and leadership so that a variety of parish programs can find musical expression and attract participation. When our handbell choir is in season, he is one of our ringers. At parish dinners, he provides popular piano music for the guests to dine by. For both worship services and concerts, he will rehearse and accompany vocal and instrumental soloists from our congregation on piano, organ, or even accordion.
Angus Sinclair was appointed Director of Music of St. John the Evangelist on February 1, 2023. Having graduated in 1981 (Honours B.Mus.) in organ performance from Wilfrid Laurier University, he went on to distinguish himself as a church musician, recitalist and accompanist touring in both Canada and the UK. For over 40 years Angus has served parishes and congregations throughout Southwestern Ontario as director of music. He experiences his present appointment to St. John’s as a welcome homecoming, both spiritually and musically.