Peter Little Faith
Most people probably have not been at sea at night with wind whipping waves high in the darkness, the boat or ship fighting for control, to head into the seas and to keep from rolling beyond the righting moment and capsizing. It can be quite unnerving, even terrifying. I'm thinking the disciples in the boat that night were indeed uneasy, although as fishermen they would have been accustomed to being out in the boat in all sorts of weather.
There are dozens, hundreds of works of art visualizing Jesus walking on the water, wandering out on the surface of the Sea of Galilee at three o'clock in the morning's darkness. Looking, searching online, I just chose one*
that's at night, and isn't sappy. Everyone knows the story, it's one of everybody's all time favorite Sunday School bible adventures. The gospel for today (scroll down), as I write this morning, imaginative sermons from it are being preached, with any number of lessons drawn from it.
As Matthew tells it, it's not for sure whether this story is more about Jesus' astonishing feat of walking on the surface of water, or about Peter's sudden loss of faith as he realizes what he is doing.
There's the miracle, Jesus with the power and authority of God, walking on water, impossible for us, but anything's possible for God, and for us who have faith.
In Matthew, there's knocking Peter, whom Jesus addresses as Ὀλιγόπιστε, "Little Faith!!" and who could be any one of us. But I never would have gotten out of the boat in the first place, so Peter has my admiration and understanding.
And in a sense, Ὀλιγόπιστε, "Little Faith" (a vocative masculine singular NT Greek adjective, becomes Peter's new name that describes him in a way similar to Jacob's new name Israel describing him. Peter, whose original name is Simon, changed to Peter (Rock), now Little Faith. So maybe Ὀλιγόπιστε Ἰωάννου, Little Faith son of John? There is a sense in Bible naming, in which the name one is given carries power, prophecy, destiny.
There's the acclamation, "Truly you are the Son of God," This story also appears at Mark 6:47-52 and at John 6:16-21, but neither Mark nor John record that acclamation, which may suggest that it's Matthew's message to his intended Jewish Christian audience, to whom he is writing to persuade that Jesus was the Messiah(i.e., if Peter sees it and acclaims it, they need to know that, so they also can acclaim it).
Also, as Mark and John tell it, Peter does not get out of the boat. And whereas in Mark and Matthew, Jesus gets in the boat with the disciples, in John's account Jesus does not get into the boat. A Sunday School discussion would contemplate and explore the differences and their reasons!
Among NT scholars, Mark (c.a. 70?) and John (c.a. 90-125?) are regarded as independent sources, indicating that this story itself is quite ancient, possibly going back to Jesus' time and the disciples' memories?
There is foolishness about the story of Jesus walking on the water: some people have searched for a sandbar stretching out into the sea that Jesus may actually have walked on that night. If this is to disprove the "miracle", to prove that he didn't really walk on water, then it indicates ignorance about why the story is told (the same ignorance shown in searching the ocean for a fish big enough to swallow Jonah, it misses the point, which is the story itself). Although searching for a sandbar may seem reasonable to establish a basis for what the disciples remembered and told, and the story growing as oral tradition over the years and decades before the evangelists set it down in writing, it misses the point of accepting the story just as each evangelist tells it and trying to understand the message each (Mark, Matthew, and John) meant to convey to his intended audience. Everything can be disproved, but that's not the point of bible scholarship.
Anyway, really good for a Sunday School discussion. Here's the story, as Matthew tells it: