Sitting in small group the other day, a great brother in Christ mentioned Bungee Jumping as an analogy for his faith in God. Now I have never bungee jumped but I have cliff dived from 100 feet.
Where I grew up we have these slate mines just outside of town. The way these slate mines worked, is the miners (miners- you know those who dig for resources. Not MINORS – those little people running around the house) dig in a box shaped fashion straight down till they reached the slate. As they dug further and further down, eventually they would hit an underground lake which would fill the mines up with water.
They would then abandon the current mine and start digging in another place. What this achieved was a square shaped lake, with slate walls. These walls would tower from 20 feet to 200+ feet. As kids, we would climb the mountain and emerge at the top of these walls.
The dare was to top the last dive of the previous diver. Now the skill and daring of this is, when they dug straight down, they sometimes would hit rock outcroppings (non-slate type). Instead of removing these outcroppings, they worked around them. So, in diving off the cliffs, you had to make sure to dive where there wasn’t an outcropping.
There were other hazards besides the rock outcroppings. Living in New Jersey, the water maintained a 60 degree temperature or less… cold! There was also the hazard of the higher you jumped the further you went under the water. The deeper you went, the harder it was to see the hazards. And let me also mention, that when you dive in, how you dive regulates whether it hurts or no.
Of course, risk was heavily involved. The higher the dive the harder it was to see the hazards. You relied on a spotter, a close friend to be close to the bottom and tell you where to dive. So besides risk, trust was involved as well. I survived every dive I made but thinking back now, it was a pretty risky thing to do.
I did learn something from this.
Faith means nothing if it doesn’t have risk. Faith and trust go hand in hand, and that means so do faith and risk because trust is a risky business. You can tell me that you trust me to hold your money until you’re blue in the face, but until you have actually put the money into my hands, you haven’t really trusted. It’s the same with faith.
Most of the sermons I’ve heard on the passage about Jesus walking on water have focused on Peter, who finds himself sinking into stormy seas when he begins to doubt Jesus. But if we only focus on the moment that Peter sinks, we will have missed the boat. Literally!
We can focus on Peter sinking if we want to, and it seems like most of us do. But that’s not the whole story. Peter walks on the water. He walks on the water just like Jesus. He sinks after a few steps, yes. But for a brief moment, Peter walked on water.
Peter showed great faith in getting out of the boat and going to Jesus. The reason he sinks is not because it was wrong to get out of the boat. Peter only sinks when that faith waivers. The greatest failure in this story is not Peter but the rest of the disciples, who sat huddled in the boat, still wondering if they were seeing a ghost. Peter’s faith may have been weak, but it was much stronger than the rest of the bunch. Peter had boldness.
Peter does take an incredible risk in getting out of a boat on a dark and stormy night. But the key here is, he doesn’t put out the first toe until Jesus has said to him, “Come.” If Jesus is not anywhere near our boat, we would be crazy to get out and try to walk on water. We can’t do that on our own. But when God appears on the scene, new possibilities open before us and we listen for the guidance of God. And if God says it’s OK, you can take that to the bank (pun intended). We are not called to be reckless, but we are called to trust.
Jesus doesn’t chide the others for staying in the boat, but later it is Peter to whom Jesus says, “You are the rock on which I will build my church.” The church is founded on the one who dared to get out of the boat.
Maybe the kind of risk you are called to has more to do with how you do ministry rather than where you do ministry. Maybe Jesus is standing there outside the boat and calling to you, personally. Maybe God is calling you to a new ministry within the church, or a new job, or a new attitude.
A ship in a harbor is safe, but that’s not what ships are built for. God calls us to set sail. And once we’re out on the raging sea, we see God and some new possibilities. Jesus is on the water and bids us come.
If you want to walk on water, you must first get out of the boat.
There will be hazards.
The water may be cold.
There may be raging waters and bad storms.
But God has called you out!
Ready to take the dive?
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