Pentecost 11A (Matthew 14:22–33)

​If there is a goal worth accomplishing, one thing is required above all: to be single-minded. Today's gospel gives us three glimpses of what that looks like. And I would say, metaphorically, that the Christian life is like walking on water. We have heard this story so many times — Jesus walking on the water. But for it to matter to us, it has to say something that touches our own lives.

For me, the most interesting part of the story is not Jesus walking on the water. What I find really fascinating is his prayer life. He goes up the mountain alone to pray. We are not told when he first withdrew, but it was at least evening, and he stayed there, alone, until early morning. I wonder what he prayed about, and how. When we think of prayer, we usually imagine talking to God, saying many words. St. Paul tells us to "pray without ceasing." How could that be possible? I don't think most of us can pray even an hour for ourselves — and I don't believe we are that narcissistic.

So here is my hypothesis. I think Jesus prayed in silence. He prayed according to the Spirit, according to the Breath of God. He placed himself in God's presence and let his own breath fall into rhythm with the breath of God.

There is an old story that has always helped me imagine what that might be like. It comes from nineteenth-century Russia, from an anonymous little book called The Way of a Pilgrim. It begins with a man walking into a church, where he hears the very words of Paul read aloud: pray without ceasing. And he is stopped cold by the same question we just asked — how is that even possible? How can anyone pray in every moment, through work and weariness and the ordinary storms of a day? He cannot let the question go. So he sets out, wandering across Russia with a staff in his hand, asking everyone he meets how a person could pray without ceasing — and never getting an answer that satisfies him. At last he finds an old spiritual father, who tells him the secret is not more words. It is breath. He teaches him a short prayer and shows him to let it ride on his breathing — drawn in, released, drawn in, released — until one day the prayer slips down from his lips into his heart and begins to say itself. It goes on while he walks, while he eats, even while he sleeps. The praying no longer depends on his effort. His breath has become prayer.

That, I think, is what Jesus was doing on the mountain through the whole long night. Not many words. Breath aligned with the Breath of God, until the two could hardly be told apart.

Meanwhile, his friends in the boat were facing a different kind of breath — a strong wind against them, raising the waves, shaking the boat. And notice: this is a different wind altogether. Not the breath that rises from within and comes from God, but a wind that blows in from outside, with its source somewhere out beyond us, ungovernable, answering to no one. One breath indwells you. The other simply befalls you. The whole of the Christian life, I sometimes think, is learning which of the two you will let set your rhythm.

Into that storm, Jesus walks toward his friends. I imagine him carrying his own inner wind — his breath, still attuned to the Breath of God — and so unafraid of the wind outside. And when Peter cannot get past his fear, Jesus calls him out onto the water. As long as Peter keeps his eyes on Jesus, he walks. In that moment he is single-minded. His breath, we might say, has found the same rhythm. But the instant he notices the strong wind — the instant that outer wind, rather than the inner one, becomes the thing he is breathing to — he loses his focus and begins to sink.

And then comes Jesus' hand.

Three glimpses, then, of what it means to be single-minded. First, Jesus' prayer — the solitude that lets him cross the water while everything around him rages, because his breath is set to God's. Second, our own focus: to keep our eyes on Jesus, and above all on the way he prays and breathes, because his breath and ours are meant to be one breath. And like the pilgrim, we do not begin as masters of it; we begin as seekers who have only heard the words and don't yet know how. And third — the glimpse that keeps single-mindedness from hardening into anxious striving — when we do lose our focus and begin to sink, it is alright. There is always the grace of a hand reaching toward us. We take hold of it, catch our breath, and try to walk again. As Samuel Beckett wrote: "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."