Walking on Water - Homily on the 9th Sunday after Pentecost (2024)

Today the Church celebrates the memory of St. Maximos the Confessor. St. Maximos is called the confessor because he was persecuted and tortured for proclaiming the Orthodox faith of Christ’s two wills—one divine and one human.  He preached against the heresy that taught that Christ had only one will. We will see how crucial the Church’s teaching on Christ’s two wills really is.

It was by directing their will away from following God’s commandment that Adam and Eve fell in Paradise. It is by our will that we choose sin and cut ourselves off from God.  Our nature became corrupted and incapable of communion with God after the fall. So God became man to heal our fallen nature and that includes taking on human will to heal our disobedient and selfish will.  When Christ was tempted, he resisted the devil not just as God but also as man with a human will. He fasted for forty days in the desert and allowed Himself to feel what we feel—hungered, tired, and weary. It was in this weakened state that Christ resisted the devil. He resisted the devil not in strength of His divine majesty, but in the weakness of His humanity. So that in our weakness, we too might overcome the devil. 

In the Garden of Gethsemane, He submits His human will that naturally desires to live to the Divine will that desires the salvation of mankind through the crucifixion. “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.” (Matt. 26:39). He accepts crucifixion and death not just as God, but also as man, so that our will can also submit to the Divine will.

God wants us to be like Him, but that change does not come automatically, magically, against our will. It is only through much toil and sweat and pain, that our selfish will can be fitted with divine grace. One of the clearest ways God heals our broken and selfish will is by allowing us to undergo trials and temptations. The Venerable Bede writes, “If anyone of you is not able to understand the usefulness of temptations which befall the faithful for the sake of testing, let him beg from God that there be given him the ability to recognize what great kindness the Father chastises the sons whom He carefully makes worthy of an eternal inheritance.” Trials should be seen as signs of God’s providential love and care for us.  If there’s anything trials and temptations can teach us, it is for us to learn how to look at Christ, how to be in His presence.

Working backwards in today’s Gospel, let’s start with Peter calling out to Christ as he begins to slip beneath the waves.  He cries out, “Lord save me” and immediately Christ rescues him. In the midst of trials, we have to learn to run to Christ as soon as we fall. As soon as we slip beneath the waves. So often we do the opposite. We don’t want to run to Christ after we have failed and fallen into temptation, especially if it’s public.  We do not want to look at Christ when we’ve soiled ourselves in our sins. Mostly, we don’t want Him to look at us in such a state. We want to present a polished, immaculate (and artificial) image of ourselves to Christ. Outwardly, we will acknowledge that we’re terrible sinners. But when faced with the reality that we really are poor and blind and miserable and naked, we would rather let the waves swallow us up, instead of turning to Christ to save us.  But this is not the way of the saints. They did not become saints by not sinning, but by running back to Christ as soon as they fell.

Dostoevsky beautifully captures what it means to God when we come to Him in our sinfulness. In his novel, The Idiot, one character muses,

A mother rejoices when she notices her baby’s first smile, the same as God rejoices each time He looks down from heaven and sees a sinner standing before Him and praying with all his heart… [this is] the whole essence of Christianity, that is, the whole idea of God as our own father, and that God rejoices over man as a father over his own child—the main thought of Christ.

This is how our God looks at us when we come to Him in our sinfulness. This is the warmth and care Christ had for Peter when he cried out to Him. When we slip, when we fall and come crashing down, let us remember this image of God as a loving Father who rejoices over His precious and dear children and not be ashamed to look at Him, not fearful of coming into His presence to ask Him for help.

Peter sinks because his fear of the wind distracted his attention from his Savior. His fear of the current problem he was facing cut him off from the divine power flowing in him that allowed him to walk on water.  This is an important lesson for us. When we find ourselves falling from the trials of life, it is for the same reason—we aren’t looking at God anymore. Elder Thaddeus of Serbia tells us very clearly, “If our attention is turned to the circumstances in which we live, we are drawn into a whirlpool of thoughts and can neither have peace nor tranquility”.  If we obsess about our dire circumstances, or desperately cling to any material things to save us—our money, our health, our successs—we can be swallowed up in anxiety because we have no control over those things and they cannot save us. But this is an excellent time for us to look to Christ and learn to trust in Him to save us.

It is not our money that will get us out of a tight space, but our faithfulness to Christ—going to church, even when we don’t want to go, perhaps even when we’re ashamed because we still can’t overcome our vices after all these years and it all seems pointless.  It is not our health that will secure a good life for us, it is our faithfulness to Christ—praying every day even when it feels dry and dead and the thoughts tells us God isn’t listening anyway. It is not our successes at work that will patch up all the problems in our families, it is our faithfulness to Christ—accepting the trials that come upon us as coming from His loving hand and believing against belief that He will bring about some greater good than whatever evil is happening. When our faithfulness to Christ is the first priority in our life, that is how we will learn to look at Him in the storms. That is how we will begin to walk on water.

I would say one of the most striking examples of a modern saint walking on water, so to speak, can be seen in the life of the Tsar-Martyr Nicholas. In 1905, there was a mutiny at the naval base in Kronstadt, right across the river from the Imperial villa in St. Petersburg, where the Tsar was in a meeting with one of his advisors. Gunshots could be heard, and soon cannon fire. The advisor at the meeting later recounted:

Glance as I would in his direction, I could not detect the slightest trace of emotion in his countenance, although he knew well that it was his crown that was at stake at that moment, only a few leagues away. If the fortress remained in the hands of the mutineers, not only the situation of the capital would become very precarious, but his own fate and that of his family would be seriously menaced, for the cannon of Kronstadt could prevent any attempt at flight by sea.

When my report was finished, the Emperor remained a few moments looking calmly out of the open window at the line of the horizon…I…could not refrain…from expressing my surprise at seeing him so unmoved.  The Emperor did not apparently resent my observation, for he turned to me with a look which has so often been described as of extraordinary gentleness, and replied in these words, deeply engraved in my memory: ‘If you see me so calm, it is because I have the firm, absolute conviction that the fate of Russia, my own fate, and that of my family, in in the hands of God Who placed me where I am.  Whatever happens, I will bow to His will, conscious of never having had a thought other than that of serving the country that He confided in me.'

Tsar Nicholas always looked to Christ throughout his life, so when he literally heard murder and revolution outside his window—the threat of imminent death for his family and the destruction of his country, he was at peace. Because what was all that noise but a small wind that could not distract him from being with his Savior, as he walked above the sea of this life.  He had joined his will so firmly to Christ’s that he and all of his family willingly drank the bitter cup of terrible martyrdom God had prepared for them years later. 

Becoming sanctified does not come without storms, it does not without severe trials, and it certainly does not come without us submitting our will to God.  But when we learn to look at Christ, regardless of our failures or the difficult or impossible circumstances we find ourselves in, Christ will safely guide us along the way. Amen.