Candy Floss Faith - Matthew 14:22

The reading is taken from the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 14, starting at verse 22. Immediately, Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd. After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray.

When evening came, he was there alone, but the boat was already a considerable distance from the land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it. During the fourth watch of the night, Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified.

It's a ghost, they cried, and cried out in fear. But immediately, Jesus said to them, take courage, it is I, don't be afraid. Lord, if it's you, Peter replied, tell me to come to you on the water.

Come, he said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water, and came towards Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink, cried out, Lord, save me.

Immediately, Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. You of little faith, he said, why did you doubt? And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down. Then those who were in the boat worshipped him, saying, truly, you are the son of God.

When they had crossed over, they landed at Gennesaret. And when the men of that place recognised Jesus, they sent word to all the surrounding country. People brought all their sick to him, and begged him to let the sick just touch the edge of his cloak, and all who touched him were healed.

May God add his blessing to that portion of his word. And now Christine Aldridge is going to sing to us. I heard a story of Jesus.

Sounded like music to my ears. Wonderful story of Jesus. Dispelled my doubts and all my fears.

How marvellous is his love. Brought to me from above. But oh, it's not just a story, but reality.

Beautiful story of Jesus. I want the world to know. Wonderful story of Jesus.

I'll tell it wherever I go. Tell of his love for this world. To every man, woman, boy and girl.

But oh, it's not just a story. No, it's not just a story. Oh, that plain and simple story became all for me.

And that story. God came among us. He became a man.

Became a baby, though through him the world began. He came to earth to bring us peace. But where is that peace today? It can be found by those who will let him direct their way.

He came to serve, to show men how much he cared. The joys and sorrows he so willingly shared. He came to earth to bring us joy.

But where is that joy today? It can be found by those who let him wash their guilt away. Death tried to hold him, but it could not succeed. He rose again, and now we can be free.

He longs to give eternal life to all who will simply receive. Yes, to all who will open their hearts and just believe. Let's just sing once again and a song of Matthew's gospel.

You've come across these words written out in the 31st verse. Jesus is the speaker and the object of his comment is Peter. Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught Peter.

You of little faith. You of little faith. There's one word in the Greek.

Why did you doubt? Or if you like, why did you duplicate? Why did you have second thoughts? Where I was born in the north of England, it's some miles from the sea. And my boyhood was spent just after the Second World War. Money was scarce.

And it was to the credit of my dad, I was born in a working class home, that he saved sufficient money to take mum, my brother, myself, to the seaside each year. It wasn't exactly Costa Brava, Cleethorpes actually. But dad said it cost a lot of money, so it was Costa too.

That's where I inherited my sense of humor from my father. Now certain things stay in my mind about those early years. You see, you folk who live by the sea, you don't know the thrill that it is for someone who is more of a land lover than we folks from Sheffield are.

The thrill that it is just to catch the first sight of the sea. And it used to be a competition between my brother and myself who clapped eyes on it first. But it's not so much that that remains in my memory, nor even vying with one another for who sat alongside the driver in the taxi cab, because it was the only time per year that we ever rode in a motor car.

We just had trams in Sheffield. What I do recall to this day is folk going down Cleethorpes Promenade, eating pink cotton wool, with wide-eyed astonishment that would have beaten the Hebrews' surprise when the Red Sea opened. I watched these people devour the stuff.

The initiation ceremony personally wasn't far ahead. I blewed in my pocket money that I'd saved during the year in getting some of this candy floss. And I still recall the sense of being conned.

It was like taking a bite of nothing. There was only the resemblance of reality, but the real thing, the good old chew, it always evaded you. Those days are long past, and my life's taken me, in God's grace, to many different areas.

18 years down here on the South Coast. Never seen anyone eating candy floss here, actually. But what I have seen, not only here, but in various parts of the world, is a sort of spiritual equivalent to candy floss.

People whose religion amounts to liturgy, but there's no life. Word, but there's no witness. There's the resemblance without the reality.

What's your faith like? Is there any substance to it at all? Peter's a man who always attracts me in Scripture. We have certain common denominators. He spoke first and thought afterwards.

And I guess some of you would join in in saying yes, and that describes me too. Lovable fellow. Working class man.

Came from the North. Ran a successful business in Galilee. Fair amount of evidence to suggest that he and John had got a shop in Jerusalem, and they had a sort of fresh fish business.

Sending the stuff down to the city. The holy city. What strikes me as being interesting about Peter, the fisherman, is the way that Jesus spoke to him.

Not so much his call, though maybe it's curious taking someone from the North to do a job down in the South, but the charisma of Jesus. You see, here's Peter, and he's doing fairly well, but Jesus comes down the seashore and says, start what you're doing and following me. And mother-in-law, notwithstanding, he does just that.

My quip about mother-in-law is biblical, incidentally. It's written into Scripture. Dropped everything and went and followed Jesus.

There's almost, I speak reverently, almost a sort of impudence in the way that our Lord behaved. Most people don't work in that fashion, do they? But then he's not most people, he's unique. But another curious thing is why he picked on Peter.

He wouldn't really get through a selection committee for a job here at the tab, would he? I mean, he might do with a sort of full scenario of his life spilt out, but I mean, in the beginning, if you can forget what you know of him, he doesn't seem a prime candidate to be one of the great helpers and healers and preachers that the Christian church has ever known. Jesus says to him on first encounter, you are, and then he says, you shall be. You can read that in John's Gospel.

The play on those verbs is very interesting. I'll tell you why. Because when Jesus looks down upon this congregation here, he doesn't just see you for what you are now.

He sees you for what you can be. Now, before Peter can become the leading apostle, I think he would smile to know that he was turned into Pope as far as history was concerned. To him, it would have been as absurd as Oliver Cromwell being offered the crown.

When he was offered the crown, he went home to his wife and had a laugh as though he could be King Oliver, as though this man, Peter, could be Pope. But he did become a very outstanding man, did he not? But only after he'd been schooled by Jesus with eleven others for three years. How did you do at school? Did you ever think about your reports? Could do better.

Could do worse. My teachers were very uncommittal in the way that they assessed my ability in certain subjects. Peter? Well, on occasions, he put Jesus right.

You remember, Jesus says that he needs to go to Jerusalem. There he's going to be crucified. It's vital for the sins of the world to be forgiven, for a perfect sacrifice to be offered.

And Peter says, No, teacher, you've got it wrong. Another occasion when Jesus predicts Peter's denial. And again, Peter says, No, Lord, you've really got it wrong.

Do you know the last piece of surgery that Jesus ever performed in terms of a miracle on the earth came as a result of the overzealousness of Peter, who unsheathes this sword, you recall, in the garden of Gethsemane, takes a lunch for the high priest, misses him, at least that's what I think he was aiming at, and chops off the ear of the high priest's servant. So many things in Peter seem to be somewhat flimsy. In terms of a candidate for full-blooded faith, he doesn't seem to be the prime one, does he? A sort of candy-floss fellow, do you think? I was up early the other day, and I couldn't get the overseas international news from the BBC.

So when I can't do that, I take the option of tuning into either the Voice of America or Radio Moscow. Interesting to hear how everybody distorts truth, so you may as well get it from both sections. I learned that from Malcolm Muggeridge, who told me that the most painless operation he ever had was when he had all his aerials pulled out.

It was the final bit that came from the Voice of America that stays in my mind, because, you see, I'd always construed, or been told, that Ronald Reagan was a born-again Bible-believing Christian who went to church quite frequently. At the end of the broadcast, the man who bears his surname, but he's not a relative, Donald Reagan, was quoted as having written a book on the life of the President thus far, and revealed the fact that before Nancy and Ronald go on any particular journeys, from time to time, they consult astrologers. I do find that, if you don't mind me saying so, a sort of candy-floss approach to faith.

Resemblance, but no real reality. And what I'm trying to ask you in these remarks that I'm putting together using personal illustration and relating contemporary incidents, what I'm trying to isolate is, where is your faith? What sort of quality is it? Is it based on something substantial? Or is it the will of the wisp? The concourse of the planets? The arrangements of the stars? Is there something really that you could cling on to as being the foundation for your life? Now hear me, and this is the reason why I'm zooming in on Peter for a little while. I'm not suggesting for a moment that if you've come into the tab without a full-blooded faith, then Jesus is not interested in you.

What I'm trying to show you from this particular incident which was read to us earlier is this. That if you will entrust your life into the hands of Jesus, then He will bring the flimsiest faith to a fuller faith, and perchance to an absolute faith. You see, here is Peter, halfway through his time in the presence of Jesus.

Fisherman that he is. He's on the Sea of Galilee and there's a storm. Jesus isn't there.

In fact, to be quite frank, because I've taken a sneak look at another parallel passage, it's pretty obvious that Jesus actually was arranging for this particular storm, so that Peter's faith, flimsy though it be, could be tested. And you remember, because it's one of the most well-known incidents, how Peter is afraid with the rest of the disciples, because there are perils on the deep. The wind just blows down the Syrian mountains until this very day of course, because the geography remains the same.

It can whip up what is basically a calm sea into something that's akin to a cauldron with waves tossed up high. Peter, he suddenly discovers however, that his fear and that of the disciples, because of what is happening as far as this boat is concerned, is lessened by an even greater fear. It's interesting how a greater fear can cancel out, at least minimize, a smaller fear.

Walking in the midst of the darkness towards them is a phantom, a ghost. Peter's perilous feeling as he considers the storm becomes a feeling of great fright as he sees this thing moving towards him. But the peril which moves into a phantom eventually identifies itself as the presence because you hear the Lord Jesus revealing to the disciples his identity.

Take courage, verse 27, don't be afraid, it's I. Lord, says Peter, if it's you, command me to get out of the boat and to walk towards you. And Jesus does just that. You see, Peter is a man whose faith has got to be tested and in the very testing of his faith he will increase in capacity.

Very often our Lord will bring you to an extreme situation and ask you to take a risk on his word. And as you take that risk, even if you're only partially successful, the faith that you had will begin to grow that little bit more. Do you know why these stories are incorporated into Matthew and Mark's gospel? Not because they're legend, they're fact.

But they stand for more than facts, they stand for principles. You see, the Jews had a basic dislike, a basic fear of the sea. You never read of great Jewish navies, do you? You don't read of them going across the Mediterranean.

In fact, when you get to the book of Revelation you discover that John says on the Isle of Patmos as he sees the new Jerusalem and the new heavens and the new earth, there'll be no more sea. He doesn't say that literally. Sea for the Jew indicated danger.

There'll be no further danger in the life that lies beyond. But all the time that you belong to Jesus, Peter, all the time that you are in his company, whether he's physically present or whether he's only spiritually present after his ascension, you will be in danger. And you'll walk on the water, so to speak.

Because there never has been a man who has become a Christian who has forfeited the responsibility of the faith walk day by day, moment by moment, men and women who follow Jesus follow him in the life of faith. You see, the fallacy of most people's rationalistic thinking is this, that safety remains in the boat, but it doesn't because the boat is on the sea and the sea is troubled, the wind has come, the waves are high. On what are you basing your security? We've heard reference to astrology twice already this evening.

On what are you gambling for the future on politics? The way the politicians will get us out of the mess. What about the absurdity of the French political scene at this very moment, when the destinies of people are gambled as pawns in order to enhance a particular political position? What about a man like John Stonehouse who never really came to terms with reality as a politician, and as far as I know, never confessed his own sinfulness before he died. But he died a disillusioned man as far as political philosophy was concerned.

Tim O'Leary, who was the front runner of the drug culture in the States in the 1960s, said this, leave it all to evolution, that will get us right. I doubt whether he's saying that now with the AIDS epidemic and the dangers that are on the horizon in terms of people reaping the penalties of promiscuity. I listened to Elizabeth Taylor being interviewed two or three months ago on the television, and I was astonished when a question was fielded to her about her relationship with Richard Burton, and a supplementary question, what eventually did she think would have happened to Burton, and what eventually would happen to her? And she said, I will go and be with him.

There will come an occasion when I'll know Burton again. And the whole of the studio audience started to clap, and I thought to myself, on what basis are they clapping? Where is the rational basis behind what she has said? What is the evidence? Where is any semblance of religious faith and commitment? Now am I making sense to you? You see, I see these people, so to speak, politicians, film stars, all those, and thank God there are some who confess Jesus as Lord, but all those who take a non-biblical position as trying to find safety and security in the boat on the storm-tossed sea and feel that somehow or other they're going to make dry land. The only security that there is in this world is when you get out of the boat and you start to walk towards Jesus Christ.

That's what Peter did, you see. He wasn't successful, but he made it for a while. And at least he always could have had this thought in his mind, there was a moment when I walked on water.

There was a moment when I started to move towards the Lord Jesus. The fact of the matter is he wasn't completely successful, but that's beside the point at present. He started to move, and the movement was on a rational basis, as it's a rational basis that I bring to you that suggests right now you ought to make a commitment of your own life to Jesus Christ, because the future of yourself personally and our world as a whole is in jeopardy of that there can be no doubt.

And so, I want to tell you that real security commences the moment that you acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior and he demands your obedience in your life. That's equivalent to the faith walk. When Peter started to sink, what did he discover? That the Lord Jesus was near at hand to pick him up and to send him on his way again.

Did you hear these baptismal candidates give an indication that there was a lapse in faith at points in their spiritual pilgrimage? There always is a lapse because we are creatures who are finite and our faith is constantly under pressure and being developed. But once you start to move towards Jesus, once you confess him as Lord and Savior, you will also discover this. He says, I will never leave you.

I will never forsake you. And Jesus is near at hand stretching out his arms towards you as he stretched out his arms towards Peter. When Peter saw the wind, he was afraid.

When he had second thoughts, he began to sink. There are times when you shouldn't have second thoughts. That's why Jesus puts the question to Peter.

Why did you doubt? Why did you have a double think? But when the winds and the temptations and the pressures of life sometimes seem to rob you of that first faith, remember this, faith like the grain of mustard seed is sufficient to guarantee you the help of Jesus Christ and your eternal security. However much Peter failed, he started off and he walked on water. Are you prepared to acknowledge who Jesus is and to make that faith commitment to him right now? Faith demands keeping your eyes completely on Jesus Christ.

When my eyes were fixed on Jesus, I lost sight of all beside. I don't always find that easy. You see, I'm just a mortal man too.

I have my temptations. I have my pressures. I listen to the people yelling in their boat that it's stupid to be out walking the faith walk.

It's much better being where they are. But when I come to my senses and I reason out the positions from which they speak, I begin to realize that rationality is really on my side. And so I continue again.

To what? To Jesus Christ. Peter is addressed by the Savior. You of little faith, why did you doubt? It's just as though Jesus gave Peter a nickname.

You remember the story of Robin Hood, how he had his chaplain called Little John. He wasn't little. He was a great swarming fellow.

But they called him Little John. Here is Jesus in a very wonderful fashion picking Peter up, ensuring that Peter realizes he's now safe. And then he says, You of little faith, Mr. Little Faith, why did you have a double think? And then? And then he takes Peter back to the boat.

He brings him back to the circumstances that he has left. And ultimately he takes that boat safely into the haven, into the shore, where the disciples presumably disembark. Candy floss faith is a faith in which there is very, very little, if any, reality at all.

It's a semblance. It's an illusion of the real thing. But what I'm calling to you right now, what I'm calling you to do, is to place simple faith in Jesus Christ.

You've heard him explained movingly as the Savior of three young women. He died on the cross of Calvary so that your sins, heavy on you, might be transferred to Him. And getting out of the boat, so to speak, in the context of my personalizing this address, means asking Jesus to take the responsibility for your sins.

It means moving towards Him. Perhaps not with a full faith, as yet, but with a growing faith. Certainly with no sham.

Certainly with no sense of not doing something that you don't really mean. Confessing Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. The days are long spent when I was at Cleethorpes, but I still remember the insipid taste and the con that I thought candy floss was.

Peter's faith wasn't candy floss faith. It was the beginning, a small particle, which grew and grew until the day came when Peter was in charge of the apostolic team and ultimately won hundreds, if not thousands, for the cause of Jesus Christ. Jesus saw Peter not for what he was, but for what he could become.

That's how He sees you right now. Will you get out of the boat and do the most rational thing in life walk towards the one who controls not only the tempests and the natural laws of gravity and can suspend them if He wishes, but one who is the Lord of eternal life and can grant that to you, provided you cry out, Lord, save me. Let's pray.

Let's pray.