“God forbid it, Lord!”
The same Peter who just declared that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the Living God, is now telling this same Jesus that he must be wrong. Do we hear how absurd that is? Who would be crazy enough to tell God that God is wrong?
Well… except for maybe every one of us at some point in our lives…
“You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
Such a simple statement of faith, at least from where we sit in our comfortable and often privatized religious world. How easy it is today to say Jesus is Lord and Messiah. How easy it is to say we believe.
For Peter, this may have been a declaration of faith, but it was far more. Likely standing within eyesight of the imperial cult sites of Cesarea Phillipi where Caesar alone was worshiped as the son of God, this declaration was nothing short of treason under the penalty of death…
…Who in our lives do we see as “less than” in some way? Who do we instinctively turn away from? Who do we assume are the people furthest away from God?
Might it be that those are the very ones God has placed in our path to wake us up to our own prejudice and self-righteousness? Might it be that the very people we assume have no faith at all are the ones who might remind us what faith is really all about?
…Peter walks on the water. Surely he didn’t do that on his own. This has to be the work of Jesus and nobody else.
Well, yes… and no.
You see, if the miracle was only dependent on Jesus, then why would Peter sink? There is no evidence that Jesus was holding him up with some kind of Star-Wars like force and then simply lets go to teach Peter a lesson. Jesus didn’t make Peter sink because Jesus wasn’t actually holding him up to start with. Peter was able to walk on water not because Jesus gave him some magical power, but because he had the faith that Jesus was greater than the wind and the waves around him. Peter always gets a bad wrap for his lack of faith, but remember, Peter is the one who had the faith to step out of the boat in the first place when none of the others even considered the possibility…
…We often look at this miracle of Jesus feeding the 5,000 and celebrate how he saved the day. So long as Jesus is around, we have nothing to worry about. He’ll fix it. He’ll take care of it. If he won’t send them away, he can feed all the people.
The only trouble is that’s not exactly what happens in the text. Jesus doesn’t send them away and Jesus doesn’t technically feed all those people.
Instead, we read in verse 16, “Jesus said to them, ‘They need not go away; you give them something to eat.’”
“Whoa. Hold up now preacher. What do you mean telling us to do it. That’s what we pay you for?”
“We have nothing here except five loaves of bread and two fish,” they reply. “What do you expect us to do?”…