I was giving a presentation last night about NEXUS to Glasgow Presbytery (Church of Scotland). It was great to see some people I haven’t seen for ages.
The Moderator led a short act of worship to begin the meeting and used the story of Jesus walking on the water (Matthew 14: 22-36) as his text.
This is one of my favourite passages. I like it because when Peter sees Jesus walking on the water he asks Jesus to tell him to get out of the boat and walk on the water too. And Peter does. For a glorious moment Peter walked on the water. But then he noticed the wind and the waves and he got scared and started to sink. Jesus reaches out a hand an saves him and says to him “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”.
I always thought Jesus meant that Peter didn’t have enough faith in him, but last night it was suggested that Peter’s lack of faith was not in Jesus, but in himself. Peter didn’t believe that he could walk on water, even though Jesus had enabled him to.
Peter was given everything he needed to do his job, just as we are given all we need to do ours. Our lack of faith is often a lack of faith in ourselves.