Homily from the Parish Priest for the Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings for Year A: I Kings 19:9-13; Romans 9:1-5; Matthew 14:22-33

‘Sink or swim’. A phrase which may well resonate with an experience we have had at one time or another.  A very common experience is learning to swim, isn’t it? I remember quite vividly when I was about 7 or 8 being scared of water but being coaxed into learning to swim  by being first held in the water then step by step let go of, being made gradually to keep myself afloat in deeper and deeper parts of the swimming pool.  On a totally much larger scale: the decisions we make about life choices.  I think for me I felt a call to ‘take the plunge’, really not knowing if I could live the life of a Jesuit priest, feeling it was where God might be calling me and which would use gifts for the good of others in a life of service rooted in Christ, finding God in the world, a challenge I had to respond to, but I didn’t know how that would feel in twenty years’ time.  I needed to ‘take the plunge’, just as we are called to ‘take the plunge’ with any life commitment – relationship, career, any choice in life small or large.     

 Well, in today’s Gospel Peter is challenged by the Lord in the midst of his own life and work. Indeed, if you’ve been on the Lake of Galilee you will sense how this was Peter’s habitat, his family home close by, on the lake where he made his living through fishing.  And the Lord challenges him to ‘sink or swim’, to take the plunge if you like.  Although this challenge we might think is set up for failure.  Peter is not being very rational here, is he?  He is really making impossible demands on himself it seems: his understandable concern about walking on water in a howling storm for a perfectly reasonable fear of sinking is not simply going to go away by making himself do this.  

And yet for this extraordinary disciple, for Peter/ in his taking the plunge, and moving off on his own, there is a real breakthrough, a great triumph over his fear.  So what does it all mean to us?  We who have our own fears in life, reasonable and unreasonable.          

 Well - as with most of the Gospels this time of the year the clue is in looking to Jesus.  This is always Peter’s great appeal: whenever he starts looking to himself, his fears and concerns, he is brought back to focussing wholeheartedly with total trust in Jesus.  And the Jesus he sees on the water, the Jesus who makes all the difference, is the Jesus who wants to show himself to us in our own fear here and now. For the Jesus whom Peter sees is the one who sees him first.  He feels Peter’s fear.  He feels the gale blowing around him.  Yet he sees in Peter the desire to overcome it all.  “If you are Son of God, make me overcome my fear and walk towards you”, Peter says; “Come”, replies Jesus.   

 And this Jesus Peter sees holds him in his fear as the Good Master does by the hand and does not force him but rather coaxes him into the water, not allowing him to sink but gently encouraging him to keep himself afloat.  And finally this Jesus Peter sees indeed quells the wind and all is calm.  Truly this God of the gentle breeze is the Lord who comes to take away our fears.  

 Maybe we can return to this story this week and look again at Jesus from Peter’s and from our own perspective?  Can we bring our fears and our desires to overcome them before this Jesus and in faith take the plunge with him?  That is: take the plunge not on our own with all our doubts, uncertainties about the future, and our fears, but with Our Lord as our gentle Master whom we can really trust can calm every storm.  

Fr Dominic Robinson SJ