The Gospel read today, on the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, is the walking of the Lord upon the sea (Matthew 14:22–34). The disciples are alone in the ship, far from land [4], in a night of contrary wind; Christ comes to them treading upon the water; Peter asks to go as well, walks for a time, then begins to sink and cries out for help. The wind falls only at the end, after the Lord has come up into the ship. What is heard first, before any calming, is a word: „Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid.”
Upon this word we should dwell, for the whole account opens out of it. Where the English renders it is I, the Greek has egō eimi — I am. By these words God made known His Name to Moses at the bush that burned and was not consumed; the same words the disciples hear upon the sea, in the hardest hour of the night, while the wind had not yet ceased. They are given to know first who it is that comes to them, and the sea grows quiet only at the last.
The Ship Was Sent into the Storm
The account begins with a detail that piety often passes over: the disciples did not come to be upon the water by chance, nor through any heedlessness of their own. The Evangelist writes that Jesus „constrained” His disciples to get into the ship and to go before Him unto the other side, while He stayed behind to send the multitudes away. The word is a hard one, and the Church has kept it as it stands: the disciples were set in that ship by the One who knew what wind awaited them.
The ancient interpreters of the Gospel join this hurried sending to what had just taken place. Five thousand men had been fed from five loaves, and the multitude, kindled by the miracle, would have made Him king. The disciples are drawn out of that fervour and sent into the night, upon the water. What the world called success, they leave behind; and what follows bears no likeness to a reward — darkness, and a wind against them.
From this comes a teaching that few receive gladly: a storm is not always the sign that we have mistaken the road. Sometimes it is the very place where obedience has set us. The disciples were exactly where Christ had put them, and there the wind found them.
And He went up into the mountain apart, to pray. His prayer in solitude and their labouring among the waves belong to the same hour; He who prayed apart saw them, though they did not see Him.
There is a further detail of time, easily overlooked: the Lord comes in the fourth watch of the night, in the hours before dawn. He had sent them out upon the water at evening. Nearly the whole night they rowed against the wind before He showed Himself. This delay does not come of forgetfulness; patience is being asked of them, since what is learned in such hours cannot be learned otherwise. Saint John Chrysostom, expounding this place, shows that the Lord permitted the storm on purpose and did not appear from the beginning, so that the disciples might learn not to seek a quick deliverance from their troubles but to bear them manfully [1].
The Walking upon the Sea Is the Work of God
To ears raised upon the Scriptures, walking upon the sea was no ordinary wonder, but a sign that carried a name. The book of Job bears witness of God that He „alone spreadeth out the heavens, and treadeth upon the waves of the sea” (Job 9:8), and the Psalmist sings to Him, „Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters” (Psalm 77:19) [7]. The sea, in the Old Testament, is the unmastered deep, the expanse over which the Creator alone has power.
When the disciples see Him stepping upon the waves, they behold — without being able as yet to say it — the work that in the Scriptures belongs to God alone. Their terror is not, therefore, a simple fear of the unknown. They are afraid because what they see passes the measure of man, and the mind, finding no other sense in it, lays hold of the nearest and says that it is a spirit.
„I Am” — the Name Heard before the Calm
The Lord answers them at once, and at the middle of His word stands a short saying: I am. It may be understood plainly, as a recognition between men who know one another — it is I, the One whom you know. The Church has heard more here, without the first meaning being set aside, since the same words lie at the foundation of the Name revealed to Moses (Exodus 3:14), and the Gospel according to John places them more than once upon the Lord’s lips precisely where His divinity is spoken of.
In the hardest hour of the night, then, the disciples do not first receive the stillness of the sea. They hear the Name spoken over the waves. The wind blows on, the waves rise as before, the ship rocks as it did until then — and yet their fear begins to give way, because in the midst of it they have heard who it is that comes. This knowledge is not given them whole at once; it grows through the night and is uttered fully only at the end, when they will confess Him Son of God.
Here one sees the difference between faith and the relief we feel when trouble passes. Relief hangs upon a change of circumstances: the weight lifts, and only then do we breathe. Faith can be born without the circumstances changing at all, since it is enough for faith to know Him who holds them in His hand — and Him it can come to know in their very midst, as the disciples came to know Him on that night.
„Bid Me Come unto Thee”
Peter does not ask to walk upon the water. He asks for a command: „Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water.” The difference is a weighty one, and Saint John Chrysostom sets it in the apostle’s own words: „He said not, ‘Pray and entreat,’ but, ‘bid’” [2]. He observes further that Peter did not ask to walk upon the water, but to come to Christ. Peter does not imagine that he holds within himself the power to tread the deep; he understands that the water will bear him only if the word of Christ bears him.
And the word comes, a single one: „Come.” Upon that word Peter goes down out of the ship and walks upon the water. What upholds him is no quality of his own, nor the word taken as a formula having power in itself; Christ upholds him, working through the word asked for and received. Peter’s faith shows itself precisely in this, that he trusts the One who has commanded.
Spiritual delusion begins just here: with the man who comes to believe that he walks upon the water of himself. He who has received a gift and reckons it his own has already begun to sink, though he does not yet feel the water at his ankles.
The Wind Seen
There follows the detail richest in teaching in the whole account: „But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid.” The sea had not grown worse. The wind blew as hard while Peter was walking as it did when he became afraid. What changed was his looking: until then it had rested upon the One who had said „Come,” and now it slipped away to what surrounded him.
The Fathers who wrote on prayer call this attention, and its loss they call distraction. The whole labour of watchfulness gathers about a single thing: where the mind stands. So long as the mind holds to the word of God, a man walks over what by nature would swallow him; when it moves to the wave, weight at once claims its right.
This is no make-believe in which a man keeps his eyes shut to danger. Peter saw the sea before, and he saw it while he walked upon it. The difference lies not in his seeing the wind but in his regarding it — in his giving it his heart. Faith did not go out all at once; attention moved, and with it faith grew weak. Saint John Chrysostom says of that hour that Peter had prevailed over the greater danger, the sea itself, and gave way before the lesser, the beating of the wind; and that nearness to Christ, he adds, avails nothing to the man who is not near Him by faith [3]. This is why unceasing prayer was not appointed as a chosen discipline for a few; it is the work by which the mind remains set where the word holds it.
„Lord, Save Me”
As he sinks, Peter makes no speech. He cries three words: „Lord, save me.” He has no time for more, and needs none.
The whole short prayer of the Church has room within that cry. A prayer is heard not for the length of its words, but because the one who utters it knows in truth that he is drowning. Peter prays well because he prays out of real need, and need gathers his whole being at a stroke into those three words. The man who does not feel the water rising may recite whole canons without his heart stirring; the man who feels it says little and is heard.
The Jesus Prayer has been kept by the Church in just this brevity: a Name and a plea for mercy. Peter’s cry is not yet that prayer, but it has the same making — it calls by name and asks for help — and it receives the outstretched hand at once.
The Hand and the Question
„And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him.” He did not let him sink to the bottom, and neither did He spare him the sinking. Peter felt the water. He had to feel it, for otherwise he would have been left with the notion that he walked of himself, and that notion would have cost him more than the drenching.
Then comes the question: „O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?” It is worth noticing that the Lord does not call him faithless. He calls him of little faith, and the word grants that faith was there, only that it had not reached the end of the road. It is worth noticing also when the reproof is spoken: after the hand has taken hold, not before. Laid upon a man already drawn out of danger, a reproof can be received. So God deals with us — first He raises us, and then He shows us why we fell.
The Confession in the Ship
Only after both have come up into the ship does the wind cease [5]. This order is not by chance: the stillness comes last, as the sealing of the work, and not as its beginning.
And they that are in the ship worship Him and say, „Of a truth thou art the Son of God.” It is the first time, in the Gospel according to Matthew, that those who were with Him in the ship confess Him so. The night of contrary wind wrought what the feeding of the five thousand had not wrought: they had seen the loaves multiplied and their minds had stayed with the loaves; they were afraid upon the sea, they heard the Name, they saw the hand stretched out — and they confessed.
What Remains to Us
The Gospel of today leaves us no promise of a quiet sea. The disciples were sent into the storm by the Lord Himself, and the wind fell only at the end. It leaves us something of greater use: in the middle of the night a Name is heard, and the one who keeps his mind upon it walks over what ought to swallow him. When the mind slips and the water begins to rise, one thing remains to be done, and it is enough — to cry out.
Notes
[1] Saint John Chrysostom, Homily L on Matthew, 1. English text: Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 10, translated by George Prevost, revised by M. B. Riddle, edited by Philip Schaff, Christian Literature Publishing Co., Buffalo, 1888. Romanian edition consulted: Scrieri, Partea a treia: Omilii la Matei, col. „Părinți și Scriitori Bisericești” 23, translated by Fr. D. Fecioru, EIBMBOR, Bucharest, 1994, pp. 578–581.
[2] Ibidem, 2.
[3] Ibidem, 2.
[4] The liturgical text of the pericope, as it is read in church, says that the ship was already in the midst of the sea, tossed with waves. Some editions of Holy Scripture render verse 24 as being many furlongs distant from the land, following another tradition of the Greek text. The sense remains the same: the ship was far from any human help.
[5] The name given in the calendar — The Walking upon the Sea; the Stilling of the Storm — takes in both moments of today’s pericope. It should not be confused with the stilling of the storm in Matthew 8:23–27, where the Lord was in the ship together with the disciples and was asleep.
[6] Order of the day: Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, Tone 8, Eothinon 9. Epistle: 1 Corinthians 3:9–17. Gospel: Matthew 14:22–34.
[7] Scriptural citations follow the Authorized (King James) Version. This Psalm is numbered 77 in that version and 76 in the Septuagint numbering used in the Orthodox Psalter.