In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

I gave a passing thought to preaching about St. Lawrence this morning, who died in 268, the deacon of Rome. He’s one of the more—one of the really more brave and interesting of the saints from that period. One of you among the chanters this morning read that little brief account of him at matins, in which it mentioned that he died praising Christ and mocking the emperor. [Laughter] You’ve got to love it: praising Christ and mocking the emperor! Actually, eyewitnesses recorded what the mockery was. Remember, he was cooked on a grid-iron, on a spit. They fixed him to a spit and turned him over this fire, so he died very, very slowly and in enormous pain. At a certain point he simply turned to them and said, “I believe I am done on this side. You may turn me over.” [Laughter] You’ve got to love it! He despised death; he despised all of the things going on here, giving his life for Christ. However, that would only be one point in three, and I need a three-point sermon.

Today’s scene of Jesus walking on the water is part of the theme of the season, beloved in Christ, and the theme of the season is the Transfiguration of Christ, which we celebrated this past Tuesday evening with vesperal liturgy, because the feast itself was on Wednesday. The glory of Christ’s appearance in the gospel reading this past week is continued, as it were, in today’s presentation of him walking on the water. Transfigured on the mountain, walking on the water.

This story is found in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and John. [Young child noises] That’s all right, I’ll elevate my voice; don’t worry about it. And in all of these accounts, the story follows directly on the multiplication of the loaves. And you recall that the story of the multiplication of the loaves was this past Sunday’s reading from the gospel.

Matthew’s version of the event, however, the only one of the three, includes also an account of Simon Peter attempting to do the same thing. It is to this detail that I want to direct your attention this morning. In particular, I have in mind to compare this story of St. Peter to what holy Scripture tells us of the Patriarch Jacob. I propose to make this comparison in three steps.

First, both Jacob and Peter act rashly. They act rashly. Specifically, they put God to the test. I mentioned, I believe, two weeks ago, that most believers have as their ideal Job before he was tempted. Job before he was tempted: that’s the way they want it. They want to be loyal servants of God and have all the goodies! They want—that’s held out all along. It’s the gospel of success. It’s very deep in America. That’s why Billy Graham was always bringing on people who had made it big and who had great lives, because they’d turned their lives around to Christ and now they’re a success. I mean, they were yo-yo champions or whatever. That’s very, very strong in American religion. People want to be like Job before he’s tempted.

Both Jacob and Peter put God to the test. In this, I am—I would not have thought so, but 49 years of hearing confessions has converted me on the point—this is a very common thing! People want to serve God on their own terms. Now, both men do this in response to a revelation from God. Each man is emboldened by the revelation. Just take the revelation made to Jacob. We recall that the Lord showed himself to Jacob at Bethel, and let us remember the scene. Jacob, being departed from Beersheba, traveled toward Haran. Beersheba’s down in the Levant. It means he’s going out in the general direction northeast; he’s heading out toward Haran which sits at the very top of the Fertile Crescent.

And when he was come to a certain place and would rest in it after sunset, he took of the stones that lay there, and putting under his head, slept in the same place. And he saw in his sleep a ladder standing upon the earth, and the top of it reached up to heaven. The angels of God also were ascending and descending by it. So he has this vision of something that’s happening all the time, and that is the traffic; it’s a highway back and forth between heaven and earth, and that’s going on all the time. Now he has a vision of it, this traffic.

And the Lord, leaning upon the ladder, and saying to him, “I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and of Isaac. The land wherein thou sleepest I give to thee and to thy seed.” There’s the promise. He’s going to give him this real estate. “And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south.” The offspring of Abraham everywhere. “And in thee, and in thy seed, all the tribes of the earth will be blessed. And I will be thy keeper.” There’s the promise. “I will be thy keeper. Whithersoever thou goest, I will bring thee back into this land. Neither will I leave thee until I have accomplished all that I have said.” Now there’s the revelation and the promise.

Now, what does Jacob say in response to this? What would have been a good response? How about: “My! Why, thank you! I’m going to spend the rest of my life in service to you! I’m grateful for this! This fills me with joy! This fills me with courage!” What, however, does Jacob answer? He takes the entire message and turns it into a hypothetical. Here’s how his response is described. And he made a vow, saying, “If God be with me, and keep me by the way by which I walk, and if he gives me bread to eat, and if he gives me clothing, and I shall return prosperously to my father’s house, then the Lord will be my God.” He just changes grace into a set of conditions.

Observe the sequence. God reveals himself and promises Jacob that he will be on Jacob’s side. Jacob answers, “Well, all right. Let’s see. If you do this, then you will be my God. But first you have to prove yourself. You have to come through with the goods!” Now notice Jacob dictates terms to God. The Lord must meet Jacob’s conditions. Jacob tells the Lord, “Prove yourself! If you are who you say you are, I expect results!”

Now look at Peter. Jesus, walking on the water, reassures the disciples in the boat, “Take courage. It is I. Do not fear.” And what does Peter respond? “Well, if it is you…” [Laughter] I mean, because just about anybody can walk on water! “If it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” Like Jacob, Peter tells the Lord to prove himself. He puts the Lord to the test. “If you are who you say you are, do something for me. And now let me tell you what I have in mind.”

God reveals himself, then, to each of them, but they both proceed to take charge and to dictate to God their terms. Brings us to point two. God turns the situation around by putting both Jacob and Peter to the test. Any time you try to put God to the test, watch out. You’re about to be tested. In the case of each man, his attempt to put God to the test becomes, in fact, a testing of himself.

First, Jacob. Throughout the career of Jacob, the Lord is completely loyal to him, doing exactly what he promised he would do for Jacob. He gives him exactly, precisely, what he requested. In fact, however, Jacob is being tested. Jacob later describes this testing to Laban. “In the day the drought consumed me, and in the night the frost, and sleep departed from my eyes.” Somewhat later, Jacob confesses to Pharaoh, “The days of the years of my pilgrimage are 130 years. Few and evil have been the days of my life on the earth.”

You see, Jacob, having endeavored to put God to the test, at last learned that he has been tested. He learns, moreever, that he has largely failed. At the end of his life, he looks back on a long series of failures, more than he could ever have imagined when, as a young man, he set out from Bethel. God has measured up; it is Jacob who has not measured up. Jacob learned that God has passed the test. The problem all along has not been God; it has been Jacob.

Now let’s turn to Peter. When Peter challenged the Lord, “If it is you, command me to come to you on the water,” he had in mind to put God to the test. It’s a really funny way of putting God to the test: “Hold me up on the water.” It’s a very funny way. However, I’ve seen it repeated many times. Immediately, the Lord takes up the challenge. “Come.” In other words, “If you want to put me to the test, little buddy, get out of that boat and start walking.” I threw in that “little buddy.” That’s not in there. [Laughter]

So Peter stepped out of the boat, like Jacob marching away from Bethel, and at first his endeavor to walk on the water is surprisingly successful. The evangelist says when Peter had come out of the boat, he walked on the water to go to Jesus. Like Jacob, however, he soon finds that he is being tested, not God. Peter quickly learns what it means to fail. Matthew describes the scene: When he saw that the wind was boisterous, he was afraid. And beginning to sink, he cried out, saying, “Lord, save me!” That’s what the Lord wants to hear. “Lord, save me!”

Like Jacob, Peter finds that he, not God, is the one being tested, and he knows, moreover, that he’s failing the test. Both of these young, brash men learn the meaning of failure. You see, failure is part of the package, my brothers and sisters. Americans don’t like to hear that! We’re into success! And when we come to serve God, we expect success; we don’t expect to have our faces rubbed in the mud, but that’s what happens. Jacob and Peter display traits not uncommon in those who come to God. Especially they constantly put the Lord to the test.

This past week I spent a couple of days with a very dear friend, a former student of mine, whom I taught in seminary right at 40 years ago. His name is Fr. Chad Hatfield; he’s the chancellor of St. Vladimir’s Seminary. Fr. Chad and I go back a very long way. And on Thursday I had to give two talks to the people for whom we were lecturing, and his talk was squeezed between my two talks. I was very struck by the things he had to say. He’s a man of vast experience: a missionary in Africa, founded parishes in the United States, was dean of the seminary up in Alaska, currently chancellor of St. Vladimir’s in New York. Fr. Chad has been a priest almost 40 years and is very wise.

He commented this past week on the great number of Christians who spend their lives—and the following is a quotation—“who spend their lives only two or three unanswered prayers short of giving up the faith.” I was very struck by that. There are only two or three unanswered prayers short of apostasy. I have seen it. I never thought of it quite that way. See people who have been Christians nominally all their lives, well into years when it should long have been past them, they’re still expecting God to come through with the goods, on their terms, what they want.

I confess that I have seen this repeatedly. Discouraged Christians who declare, “I put my faith in God, but he ignores my prayers. The Lord does not hold up his end of the bargain. I tell God what I want, but he pays no attention. I don’t know how much more of this Christian life I can take!” Two or three unanswered prayers short of apostasy, ready to give it up, feeling frustrated because God is not holding up his end of the bargain. And they think that’s reasonable. It seems reasonable to them because we have in this culture, almost down in our American DNA, this expectation of success.

This is not a phenomenon limited to new Christians. One sees this trait in people who have all or most of their lives been in the Christian faith. You wonder if they ever heard the sermon on the mountain. They are forever putting God to the test and finding him coming up short. They have no sense that they are the problem, not God.

Point three, because we don’t want to end on that point. [Laughter] That would be hopeless! Point three, God in his mercy redeems both Jacob and Peter. He redeems them both. If you read the biblical stories about them, to our eyes they seem somewhat disappointing characters. Neither of them can be trusted very far; they seem disappointing characters. That’s important. Taken as a whole, both stories are messages of encouragement, because both men, all along, remain the friends of God, even in their failure and their sin. See, God does not repudiate our friendship, or his friendship toward us, because of our sins. God does not let us go.

At the end of his life, Jacob proclaims the redemptive mercy of the Lord. Notwithstanding his own sense of personal failure, Jacob knows that the Lord has been faithful. Jacob dies with the sentiments of the thief on the cross: “Remember me in your kingdom. Remember me in your kingdom. I haven’t done anything good. My whole life has been a failure. I have absolutely nothing on the scales in my favor, only your mercy.” Jacob speaks of the God before whom my fathers, Abraham and Isaac, walked, the God who has fed me all my life long to this day, the Lord who has fed me all my life long to this day.

He didn’t get everything he wanted, although he seemed to have gotten most of it, if anybody thinks it’s a good thing to have four wives… [Laughter] If anybody thinks it’s a good thing to have a completely dysfunctional family, where all the brothers get together and sell little Joe into slavery—if you think that’s good. [Laughter] But God, he says of God: He fed me, all my life long to this day. In other words, I’m not dying of starvation. Admittedly, I’ve only lived 130 years; compared with Methuselah, that’s hardly anything. But he’s fed me all my life long to this day.

And at the end of the story of Peter, we find him with the other disciples in the boat, falling prostrate before Jesus and saying, “You are the Son of God,” the Church’s confession of faith, because the boat, Peter’s boat, is the Church. “You are the Son of God.” For Peter, this endeavor to walk on the water was but one in a detailed series of instances in which he grievously tried the divine patience by his unwarranted self-confidence and constant efforts to stand out. Always he was Mr. Big. “Everybody else will deny thee, but not me, not me.” He was forever putting himself in harm’s way to prove some point or other about his own moral superiority, including this one. Even after his egregious failure on the night of the Lord’s arrest, we find him reprimanded by Jesus on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, and reprimanded by the Apostle Paul at Antioch.

These are intended, beloved, to be stories of encouragement. I hope you hear them that way. Neither Jacob nor Peter appears in holy Scripture as a perfect man, and that’s very important to know. We lay a great deal of stress in the ascetical life in this church, striving for perfection. The perfection we really need, however, is perfect repentance. These men are examples of God’s ability to work with imperfection and shortcomings as long as these are accompanied by an eagerness for repentance and the willingness to get up again after a fall.

When God put Jacob at the beginning of the history of Israel, and Peter at the beginning of the Church, his wisdom was manifest to those many other believers who find their own life reflected in the imperfect lives of these two men. Amen.