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Sunday 9 August 2026 Trinity 10, Nineteenth in Ordinary Time, Proper 14
A cry from the blackness
1 Kings 19:9-18; Matthew 14:22-33
Context: A suburban city parish, with a mixture of affluence and deprivation; a varied congregation in a liturgical church with a rich literary heritage
Aim: To enter existentially into the Gospel story through the imagined recollections of St Peter
It was the blackness that I remember the most. It was like the lipless mouth of some gigantic creature, sucking and swallowing without mercy.
All night long we’d struggled against the blackness. Below us the churning water; above us the terror of the starless night. All night long the battering waves, the howling wind, the black rain like a whip of cords on our grim-set faces. We were hard men, most of us – apart from that soft-skinned tax collector, Matthew – our hands were gloved with callouses, toughened by the nets with which we caught our daily bread. We were used to weather and water, but nothing like this. Hour after hour, our arms strained the oars; our voices cracked with shouting until we could shout no more. By the fourth watch, we were afraid, and tired – so deathly tired!
But it was then – with our hopes almost sunk – it was then we saw something. Fear turned to panic, panic to despair – for now, on top of this supernatural storm, seemed to be the visitation of a ghost. Come to take us? Come to drag us down to Godforsaken depths?
But then it spoke, a voice above the violence. No ghost, but a man – and more than man. ‘Take heart’, he said. ‘Do not be afraid. It is I. I am. “I am” is speaking to you.’
I felt myself lifted up – as if by a fishing hook beneath my breastbone. As if newly created with a brash, brazen boldness. The words tumbled out of my mouth like waves: ‘Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the waters!’
And in a moment, I was up. Up above the chaos. Weightless, walking on water, surveying the kingdoms of this world. A strange silence filled my head. Power swelled there, ambition, pride – all that had been bubbling up these past months at his side boiled over and buoyed me. I felt I could do anything, anything.
And then, in an instant, something snapped. Blackness flooded back, and with it the noise of the waves and rain. They fell about me like a shroud. My heart plunged into my feet, and my feet into the waves. The mouth of the sea opened again and I sank into darkness.
Deep calls to deep
in the roar of your waterfalls,
all your waves and breakers
have swept over me.
(Psalm 42:7)
All was blackness and senselessness. Breath deserted me, sight failed me, but somehow with a mighty heave of will and of surrender I found the lungs to cry: ‘Lord, save me!’
A prayer from the blackness. A cry of the heart.
The meaning of this story in Matthew’s Gospel is grace. When Jesus says to Peter, and to us, ‘Come’, it is not an invitation to pride. It is an invitation to trust. And like Peter, I know that my own proud efforts to walk on water usually don’t work out too well. I trust too much my own abilities, and it doesn’t take much to sink me.
This is why the meaning of this story is grace. Because it is not by our own expertise, energy, or effort that we learn to ride life’s storms. It’s by who Jesus is, and what Jesus has done, and what Jesus is going to do. You see, the blackness that descended on the wind-blown lake was of a manner like the blackness that descended on Good Friday afternoon. It was real – as real as the sin and shame we bear. But it was, in the end, dispelled by the Light of the World. He who rose up from the chaos of death was no ghost, no apparition. He was flesh and blood and spirit: God and man and Lord. And he still approaches us, walking into our lives especially when we are at our lowest, and when we are sinking.
St Peter, as we know, would soon sink to a lower, darker place than this, when he denied and abandoned his Lord. Yet Peter discovered a great truth: that it’s at our most faithless moments that God proves himself faithful. This has been my experience; perhaps it has been yours. Because the reality of grace is that when I reach the end of my own resources that’s when faith really kicks in.
I utter a heart-cry from the blackness. His hand clasps mine, and yet again I am saved.
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