NO NEED TO WALK ON WATER

We read in Matthew's Gospel that Jesus walked on water. No one, not even the world's greatest magicians and illusionists, has been able to duplicate that. To be able to walk on water one has to be divine.

That's one way to look at. Those who believe that Jesus is divine, that Jesus is God's Son, believe that Jesus' walking on water is proof positive that he is who he said he is: the Son of God. On the other hand, those who do not believe or do not wish to believe or cannot believe, Jesus' walking on water is written off as so much hokum: the product of the fertile imaginations of those who desperately wanted to believe that Jesus was someone he was not, namely, God's Son.

But both are wrong. Belief does not come from the miraculous, from the extraordinary. Belief in another, even if that other is the Son of God, belief in another comes not from the miraculous but from the mundane, the ordinary. The Apostles came to believe Jesus and to believe in him, not because of his miracles, not because he walked on water or raised Lazarus from the dead but simply because he always loved and cared about them.

It is the little things we do for the ones we love that matter. The big things are icing on the cake. We may be impressed by expensive gifts and we usually are. Walking on water, making a blind man see, giving clean skin to a leper can almost, if not in fact, overwhelm the receiver and the beholder. They almost demand belief, the big things do.

But we don't and dare not fall in love with the gift giver because we are impressed by his or her magnificent generosity. We fall in love with the gift giver because of all the little, everyday gifts of love. Not the big but the little. Not the extraordinary but the ordinary. Not the out-of-this-world, not the you'd-have-to-see-this-to-believe-it, but the mundane.

And we prefer it that way, too. The dozen roses are less important than the held hand. The glass of water is more important than box of chocolates. The size of the gift does not matter. What matters is the gift-giver, the person, the one who loves us by his or her presence rather than his or her present. Faith in another, love of another, comes and grows. It flourishes little by little, day by day. We sprinkle another, God sprinkles us, every day. The water to grow comes drop by drop and not by bucketfuls. Trying to overwhelm the other usually results in drowning the other.

In any relationship – God with us, us with God, one with another – it is never the size or the cost of the gift that matters, really. It never is. What matters in the beginning, in the end, and all along is the love behind the gift. If love is not there, or if the love is selfish rather than for the other, the gift, no matter how impressive or miraculous, will mean very

little.

Jesus did not need to walk on water for us to believe in Him. We need not walk on water to demonstrate our love for God or for another. Like Jesus all we need do is wade through the water with them.