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O'Malley's Best Walking
on Water Along
with the talking snake, this gospel puts a real fishbone in the throats of
literalists. Somehow, it's easier to
segue across water turning into wine-maybe because it's less, well, less
embarrassingly obtrusive. I've read
fundamentalist interpretations of feeding the 5,000 that explain it by relying
on the indisputable truth that no Jewish mother would let her family trek out into
the wilderness for the day without a basket of food. (Jesus spoke so convincingly that they were even willing to share
with the less provident, doubtless with a condescending sneer at their lack of
maternal foresight. And that's where
they got the baskets to gather up those fragments. - I'd always wondered where
those baskets had materialized from.) But
this one about Jesus and Peter sauntering across the surface of the lake is
truly taxing. And they weren't just
ambling across a lake that had gone stiff and still as slate. There was a storm raging. This was like walking through a junkyard in
a hurricane! Well, of course there was
most likely a giant sand bar there, right?
Or some enormous alien-planet lily pads? Or maybe a great white whale just happened to hunch itself up in
the middle of the Lake of Tiberius? All
that sounds ridiculous because it is ridiculous. I'm as willing as the next man to admit God could do any of those
unexpected things if he chose to.
(After all, he felt no great challenge creating a universe out of
nothing.) But a wise old philosophical
principle called Occam's Razor warns that possible explanations shouldn't
multiply beyond necessity-like the sand bar and lily pads and Moby xxxx. To do that places a quite different
limitation on the all-powerful God, that is, limiting God only to communication
as literal and plain as a sledgehammer.
Since long before Jesus, humans knew that figurative language and
stories can often make truth more powerful by making readers or listeners
discover it for themselves rather than filching it off a silver platter. Aesop
didn't think his listeners had surrendered their wits to the point they
believed that, once upon a time, long, long ago, turtles and bunnies made bets
on races. The story never happened, but it still tells an indisputable truth:
Slow and steady wins the race. In this
story, the disciples-most of whom were seasoned sailors, remember-are out on
the lake being tossed from here to hell and gone and are scared out of their
wits. Then they see someone meandering
toward them through these gigantic curls of water-which was about as unlikely
in their day as it would be in ours. So
they think it must be some kind of apparition.
But Jesus says, "Peace.
It's okay. It's only
me." So Peter, with typical baseless
bravado, shouts, "Master, if it is really you, call me to join you out
there." Now
maybe Evel Knievel or some of those covetous idiots on "Fear Factor"
might ask to do that, but no sane man-surely not Simon Peter, who had the
evaporating courage of the Cowardly Lion-would feel impelled to ask permission
to try it. And there is no reason why
Jesus, who knew Peter better than Peter knew himself, would call him out onto
the waves-unless he had a reason more convincing than just showing he could pull
it off. Which contributes to my
suspicion that Matthew is doing here precisely what Aesop did: Telling a truth
through a story that, like Catcher in the Rye, never happened but still
explores a profound truth. For
awhile, Peter's doing just fine negotiating the giant shark-fin waves- as long
as he forgets what he can do and keeps his eyes only on the Jesus who calls
him. And it's the CALL that supplies
what Peter himself lacks. But as soon
as he forgets that, as soon as he looks down toward his feet on the escalating
water and feels the sharp stab of realism: "What the hell am I doing out
here?"- he starts to sink. Of
course! Because no human being can do
that. At least not without help. As I
said, I'm more than willing to concede that God could have pulled off that
story literally, in the world in which we all know it's unthinkable. But to limit God to that way of
communicating is, I think, more than mildly insulting-not only to God but to
the minds God gave us. Allow this story
to be as fictional-but truth-bearing-as the parable of the prodigal son, and
you see that perhaps Peter never did, historically, walk on the turbulent waves
of Lake Tiberius. BUT the simpering
coward who denied knowing Jesus three times, to a waitress, did in truth submit
to being crucified, upside down, rather than deny his experience of the risen
Jesus. Hoo-boy! That is a miracle! And I trust it really happened.
Because Peter forgot what he himself could do and focused his entire
self on the One who called him to it. Isn't
that ironic? If you hold that the story
must be rigidly literal, it becomes so impossible it's unthreatening to us.
But once you loosen up and allow walking on water to be
"merely" symbolic of other kinds of challenge, it becomes truly
threatening to us personally. |
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Copyright © 2008, McQuaid Jesuit |
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