Commentary on Matthew 14:22-33

May I introduce you to an insistent, even bossy, Jesus? We meet him in the language used to open this text. The instruction Jesus gives the disciples about getting into the boat is neither a suggestion nor an invitation.

The writer of Matthew chooses the word anagkazō. This word means “to compel, to constrain, to force.” The New American Standard Bible translates it plainly: He “compelled” them. The New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition softens it to “made,” but the force behind the word is unmistakable. This verb appears only nine times in the entire New Testament, and in every instance it carries the weight of compulsion rather than invitation. Jesus did not give the disciples a choice. He put them in that boat the way a teacher puts a test on your desk. You did not ask for it. You may not be ready for it. But it is here, and you are going to take it.

The test

The announcement of a test is often the catalyst that opens us to a deeper kind of learning. It is the thing that makes us go back to what we skipped, sit with what we avoided, and reckon with what we thought we already understood. Jesus has been teaching these disciples for chapters. They have heard the Sermon on the Mount. They have watched healings. They have just participated in the feeding of more than 5000. They have been in the classroom of faith, and now it is time for the test, in the form of a storm.

Look how Matthew describes it. Verse 24 says the boat was basanizomenon, tormented, by the waves. Our English Bibles may say “battered” or “tossed.” But the Greek is far more violent. Basanizō is the word used elsewhere in Matthew for demonic torment (8:29). This is not rough weather. This is the kind of experience that exhausts every resource you have brought with you. The disciples’ arms are spent. Their strategies have failed. Every skill they have for managing a boat in a storm has been used up. This test has left them defeated and in despair. And this is precisely when Jesus shows up.

What the test reveals

Jesus appears on the water at the fourth watch,¹ between three and six in the morning. In their exhaustion, the disciples don’t recognize him. But Jesus speaks: Tharseite, ego eimi, mē phobeisthe. “Take heart. I AM. Do not be afraid.”

Note the absolute form. Jesus does not say ego eimi followed by a predicate. He does not say “I am the bread” or “I am the way.” He says the bare, unfinished, unqualified I AM, the name that needs no completion because it contains everything. He is the one who walked on the waters at creation (Job 9:8), the one who rules the surging sea (Psalm 89:9), the one who was present before the foundation of the world. The one who can help them finish this test.

But Peter seems intent on testing the one who tests him. “If it is you,” he says, as if to say, “If you really are the I AM, show me how I can not only pass this test but earn extra credit by walking on the water with you.” Everyone reading this already knows the outcome: Peter sinks. And in his sinking, he learns the lesson the test was designed to teach. The lesson is not “Try harder.” The lesson is not “Keep your eyes on Jesus,” as though faith were primarily a matter of improved focus. The lesson is three words: Kyrie, sōson me. “Lord, save me.”

The lesson that lives

I have spent years asking audiences a version of this question: What is the lesson that has most shaped who you are, the one that lives in your body, that changed how you move through the world? I ask them to think of their answer, but not to speak it out loud. And then I ask whether they learned that lesson in a time of ease. No matter the group—seminarians, executives, seasoned pastors, or college students—no more than 5 percent of the room has ever learned a formative lesson when everything was going well. We learn the lessons that live in crucible moments, in the fourth watch, during the test.

This is exactly what Jesus was doing when he compelled the disciples into the boat. He knew that the confession they needed to make, the one that would ground them through everything that was coming, could only be born in the heat of a test, in the belly of a storm.

When Jesus and Peter return to the boat, the wind stops. And the disciples fall down and say something they have never said before in Matthew’s gospel: “Truly, you are the Son of God” (14:33). This phrase appears only once more in Matthew. It is spoken by the centurion at the foot of the cross (27:54). The storm on the sea and the cross on the hill are linked by the same confession, born from the same kind of test.

The disciples did not arrive at this confession through study. They did not arrive at it through lecture, or parable, or even through watching miracles. They arrived at it because Jesus compelled them into a boat, sent them into a storm, let them struggle through the night, and revealed himself as the answer to the test, I AM who saves.

So when the test lands on your desk, and it will, remember who put it there. The insistent, even bossy, Jesus who compelled the disciples into the boat is the same Jesus who shows up at the fourth watch, when every resource is spent, and the only answer left is three words long.

The storm is the test. The test is the teacher. And the lesson learned in the belly of a storm is the lesson that lives and holds you through the next test, and the next. It is the lesson that drops you to your knees and fills your heart with a post-test confession: Truly, you are the Son of God.

Notes

1. The fourth watch is a recurring site of divine encounter in scripture. It was during the fourth watch that God moved through the sea and delivered Israel from Pharaoh’s army (Exodus 14:24). It was in the predawn hours that Jesus rose to pray alone (Mark 1:35), and it was before daylight that the stone was already rolled away (Matthew 28:1).  Some preachers may want to pursue what happens in the darkest moment of the night.