Sermon for the 9th Sunday of Matthew

In this Sunday’s Gospel (Matt 14:22-34) the disciples are alone on the lake in the dark. Jesus has gone up the mountain to pray, and their boat is far from land, straining at the oars, beaten by the waves, with the wind against them. It is the fourth watch of the night, the dark hour before dawn when strength runs out and fear grows. And it is just then that Christ comes to them, walking on the water that threatens to drown them. We know this sea. How often we set out full of faith, only to feel the wind turn against us — worries about health, about work and money, about troubles at home closing over us. It is the old chaos the ancients feared in the deep, the same fear that rises in us when trouble comes. But the Gospel shows us that the One who walks on these waters is the Lord of all creation, and He does not wait for the storm to pass before He comes. He comes in the storm itself. Peter, bold as ever, calls out: “Lord, if it is you, bid me come to you on the water.” Jesus simply says, “Come.” For a moment Peter walks where only God can walk — until he looks away from Christ to the wind and begins to sink. His cry is the shortest, truest prayer of all: “Lord, save me!” Immediately Jesus reaches out His hand and catches him. Notice that word — immediately. The hand of Christ is always quicker than our sinking.

Saint Paul, in today’s Epistle (1 Cor 3:9–17), says that we are “God’s fellow workers,” and that no one can lay any foundation but the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. Peter learns this on the water. What held him up was never the sea, which holds no one, but his faith in Christ. While he kept his eyes on that foundation, he stood where no one can stand. The storm tests what each of us is built on. But the moment he looked away to the wind, he was standing on nothing, and he sank.

Today the Church remembers a man who built on that one foundation, and whose work stood when the testing came: we keep the translation of the relics of the holy Protomartyr and Archdeacon Stephen, the first to follow Christ through the storm of death. Full of the Holy Spirit, a living temple of God, Stephen looked up as the stones fell and saw heaven opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. His last words echo Peter’s: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit,” (Acts 7:59) and then, for his killers, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” (Acts 7:60) His body, that earthly temple, was broken by the stones, but he himself was saved; the same hand that drew Peter from the waves reached out to receive Stephen from his own storm.

What, then, does the Lord ask of us today? Not that we never feel the wind — Peter felt it, and so did the saints. He asks only that we keep our eyes on Him, and that when we start to sink we are not too proud to cry, “Lord, save me.” That cry is never refused; Christ’s hand is already reaching out. So ask yourself this week: what storm is making you afraid? What is shaking your trust? Look away from the waves, fix your eyes on Christ, and trust His outstretched hand. And when the wind drops and we are drawn into the boat beside Him, may we make our own the words of the first disciples, who worshipped Him and said: “Truly you are the Son of God.” (Matt 14:33)