Sermon preached at the Sung Eucharist on the Tenth Sunday after Trinity 2026

I guess it is perhaps to be expected that a stone sinks in the water. So, Peter—the one whose name means rock (petros)—begins to sink beneath the waves. The faith of the rock has been shaken by the crashing swell, and he plummets through the foam, like a falling stone. This play on Peter’s name is not original, I’m sorry to say, rather it belongs to St Ephrem the Syrian. The story in today’s Gospel is about faith and it is about discipleship—and as such, it is also about the corrosive effects of fear. Jesus strides across the waters towards the boat which has been battered all night by wind and waves. He is no ghost; rather this is Jesus the Eternal Word who masters the chaos symbolised by the stormy waves, showing his disciples who he really is. Jesus comes with a command—in fact, with the most frequently spoken command which arises again and again throughout the whole witness of scripture—‘do not be afraid.’ With just one word, he encourages Peter to come to him across the water. Impetuous, passionate Peter, leaps out of the boat towards Jesus and begins to walk. But he begins to feel the wind and its associated perils, and quickly pays no heed to the one command Jesus has uttered. He becomes afraid, and therefore Peter sinks like a petros, like a stone. It’s really important that we notice the ordering of these events. Peter becomes fearful, and therefore he sinks. Not the other way around. For a moment, fear sinks him, before the creating and redeeming hand of Jesus stretches into the chaos and leads him into the boat.

This is a story rich with all sorts of potential symbolic layers. The waters of the Sea of Galilee represent danger and chaos, as they frequently do in the language of the bible. The boat represents the Church—the Ark into which humanity is summoned for recreation in the Body of Christ, or the ‘hospital ship’, if you like, as Pope Francis used to refer to the Church. But right at the heart of all this wonderful, helpful, teaching imagery, is a simple truth which we need to notice if we are serious about Christian faith and Christian discipleship. Fear is corrosive. Fear is not just problematic, it is precisely the opposite of what God wills for us. It eats away at us, paralyses us, and binds us up in constricted visions of ourselves and of each other. Fear ‘sinks’ us, if you like.

We know that the Christian life is not some kind of panacea against the world’s ills. Anyone who tries to sell a vision of Christianity which is linked to immediate prosperity or success or riches is not preaching the Gospel, but something worse than heresy. Christianity is an encounter with the ‘real’—with the reality of God’s overwhelming love, with the reality of a fallen world in which pain and sin play too much of a part, with the reality of the life and ministry of Jesus Christ operative now on the choppy and dangerous waters of the world’s unpredictable chaos, with the reality of a life stronger than death. Being free from fear does not mean that we have to stop noticing the grief and pain which we see around us, and from time to time know within us; rather it means encountering all of that within the wider context of what God has done and is doing in Christ.

Peter sinks beneath the waves once his own fear takes hold, once it starts to dominate. Matthew’s Gospel tells us, almost in passing, that the reason why he was willing to be summoned across the water in the first place, was to come to Jesus. This is not some kind of stunt or circus trick for disciples. Peter walks on the water in order to come close to Christ. That is why he takes the risk! One can imagine their eyes locked into one another as Peter steps out of the boat, only for this trusting connection to be broken once Peter gets scared by the dodgy conditions. In this scene, the opposite of fear is not recklessness or cocky self-confidence, but faith. The steps that Peter takes are steps of faith, ‘walking the tightrope, walking the cross’, as one Christian songwriter put it. They are steps which lead to Jesus, and they are also steps which show what it is like to follow Jesus. How easy it is for us to be blown off course by our fear; by the noise around us, by all the contradictions and questions which life throws up, by the reality of pain, injustice, tiredness and grief. The journey is not from fear to frippery, or from fear to irresponsibility—the journey is from fear to faith, as we learn together in the boat how to allow faith to shape our steps, our actions, our assumptions.

How might we do this? We need to notice Christ’s life at work in the Church and in world around us: in every act of reconciliation, forgiveness, tenderness, proclamation, and sanctification. At this point in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus has just fed the five thousand, he has taught his followers with countless parables. They are not beginning their journey of faith from nowhere! In the sea that early morning, Peter saw Jesus coming towards them, and interrogated what he saw. He was alert, and asked questions. He noticed what was happening through the foam and the early morning mist. We can sharpen our senses to notice what God is already doing around us through prayer and a cultivation of being fascinated by the world around us. Secondly, Peter responds to Jesus’s simple call, ‘Come.’ The Gospel is an invitation. Christ will not force us to follow him; the God who is the creator of the universe does not impose or demand. The Gospel invites, and we need to step out of our security onto the waves, confident that Christ will meet us there. We need to keep eyes focused on Christ, with trust and joy, allowing the energy of his life, his personality, and his message to enliven us. Finally, when things go wrong, when we feel the pressure, and our own strength fails us (as inevitably it will), we must learn the humility to cry ‘Lord, save me!’  

The opposite of fear is faith, and we learn that faith from within the deep waters of the Chirstian life. We cannot learn it by observation or analysis alone, but only from practice. Within the life of the Church, we can cultivate trust and joy in Christ, so that that becomes the context in which we deal with everything life throws at us. Wading through those choppy waters, Peter is learning his own discipleship, so that he may not be the stone which sinks, but rather the rock on which the Church is built.  

As Peter walks towards Jesus through the foam, he is ‘walking the tightrope, walking the cross…’ with his eyes on Jesus, and with his outstretched arm ready to be caught by him. That is our Christian security; and ultimately, our very freedom from the fear which would otherwise sink us.