Get Out of the Boat! A sermon based on Matthew 14: 22-33, preached on August 9, 2026

This morning, on the front page of The AJC, or what used to be the front page of The AJC, was our church. There it was, above the fold, an article with quotes, pictures, and everything about our food pantry. Not only that, the week before last, we were in The MDJ, and now that I’m seeing this ministry so celebrated, it’s easy to forget how fragile it was when it started. Do you remember? Or do you know the story of how the Pantry on Church started? Thinking this morning of Peter, the first time we leave the boat to walk out on the water, we almost always sink, and so I want to remind you that, while today we have our annual tradition of the incredible Pantry on Church fundraiser at Two Birds Taphouse, a legion of volunteers who support our food distribution every Tuesday rain or shine, a grant from the county, a space dedicated for storage on the main floor with shiny new refrigerators, and a paid program director, our food distribution ministry started with a phone call out of nowhere. It happened during the pandemic. Kim Blass of the Marietta City School system called to tell me about free food from the Atlanta Food Bank. Would we want to receive the donation to distribute the food in our parking lot? Well, that sounded fine, but we’d never done anything like that before, so, when I presented the opportunity to the church staff, it seemed like they all thought it was a bad idea. There were just too many moving parts that we were not prepared to handle. Where would we store the food? How could we give it out? How would anyone know to come and get it? Would any of our members dare to show up here to do the work of putting the food in peoples’ cars? This is how it always is with something new and unexpected, yet Cassie Waits dared to imagine that it might work. A few other staff members joined her in trying. They got out of the boat. They stepped out on the water, and of course, they started sinking. The first time they tried it, they gave out less than half the food if I remember correctly, yet here we are, six years later, on the front page of The AJC. Or what used to be the front page. The last time I read a print version of The Atlanta Journal Constitution, I remember a story about the longest-serving paper delivery man on the staff. He said that when he first started delivering newspapers, he’d drive into a neighborhood and would throw a newspaper in basically every driveway he passed. Years ago, that’s how it was. Everyone subscribed to the newspaper. It was something automatic that we all did. Even if you never read the articles, you still subscribed to the paper. Even if you hated the opinion columnists so much that you used the paper to line the bottom of your bird cage and called The AJC the Atlanta Urinal and Constipation, you still subscribed. Everyone did. Now they don’t because the boat is sinking. That’s what I want to point out to you today about our second Scripture lesson. We focus on Peter sinking, but what about the others who never stepped out of the boat? It’s easy to read this Gospel account and to focus on how Peter sinks because he tries something new and risky. How, when he stepped out of the boat and onto the water, he was going OK for a minute, but then he got scared and called out for Jesus to help him. “Lord, save me!” he cried out. Jesus immediately reached out His hand and caught him, saying to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” yet the lesson here is not that Peter had less faith than any of the other disciples. Peter is the only one who dared to get out of the boat. Have you ever noticed that? You should. Peter may have lacked faith, yet the other disciples didn’t have any. Peter tried something new, while no one else did. Don’t you dare look down on Peter if neither of your feet has touched the water, for we all must get out of the boat because the world is changing all around us all the time, and those who are too afraid to change with it will get left behind. Boats sink. Did the disciples who stayed in the boat think of that? The AJC had to go digital because the world has changed. I still get a paper copy of The MDJ, but how much longer will that last? My friends, don’t get caught up in thinking about how Peter sinks. Notice with me how much further ahead he is of the other disciples who are stuck in that boat, stuck in the old ways of doing things, for Peter may lack faith, yet he is miles ahead of the others, and this is always the case. Those who try and fail have taken the first step, while at best, those who have yet to try aren’t going anywhere; at worst, they stay where they are and eventually the waters starts to rise and their boat sinks. I try a lot of new things and fail a lot, so I know this to be true from experience. It seems like everything I try, I fail at for the first two or three times. That’s why I wish we had a third service on Sundays. The first time I preach my sermon at 8:30, I think of all the things I should have said, and I realize how I should have told the joke, so my sermons at 11:00 tend to be a little better, but I always wish we had a 12:30 sermon because I feel like by the third try, I’d really have something worth listening to. This is life. Those who try, fail, and keep trying eventually succeed. It’s said that Thomas Edison failed 10,000 times on his way to inventing the lightbulb. Did you know that? 10,000 failures before he got it right. We can’t be so hard on ourselves for failing because every failure is a step closer to success. It’s far better to step out onto the water and to sink than it is to stay in the boat. Get out of the boat! I was telling Jim Ogburn the other day that it took me 8 years to finish my doctorate. He saw these fancy stripes on my robe and congratulated me. “That’s quite an accomplishment, earning your doctorate,” he said. I told him, “I feel like anyone could get a doctorate if he gives himself 8 years to do it,” and he said, “Maybe that’s true, but if you’d never started, you’d still be 8 years older. You’d just be 8 years older with no doctorate.” I thought that was the most wonderful thing he could say because it doesn’t really matter how long it takes us. What matters is whether or not we step out of the boat. It doesn’t matter that we sank the first time; it just matters that we got out from our comfort zone and tried. It matters tremendously that we step out in faith, no matter how awkwardly. It means something to try. It means something to take a risk. It means so little that we fail because each fall that we get up from makes us better, and each step we take towards Jesus strengthens our faith in Him. I want to focus on that word “faith” for just a moment. We’ve now finished our sermon series on the Apostles’ Creed. My hope is that you’re able to say those words with a little more understanding now than you could before the series. My hope is that you learned something and can appreciate each of those articles of faith so that you can increasingly say each word with confidence. Each Sunday, we “affirm our faith,” saying those words: either the words of the Apostles’ Creed or the Nicene Creed, but faith is not something that we say. Faith is something that we do, and we don’t have faith in a document or a creed or a set of beliefs. We have faith in a Person named Jesus. When we talk about faith, that’s just the word we use to describe our relationship with Him. When Jesus pulled Peter up out of the water and said to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” what I want you to hear is not His disappointment that Peter doubted. Instead, what I want you to hear in the tone of the Savior’s voice is the same notes of your mother or your father saying, “Why were you afraid? Don’t you know I’ll always be there to catch you?” My friends, we live in a broken world where people are terrified of making mistakes, so terrified that many never step out of the boat, never take a risk, so afraid of sinking that they never try, and their fate will be like that of the print newspaper. They will drown confined to the way things were, too afraid to step out into the future of how things will be. So get out of the boat. Try and fail. History is made by the likes of Peter, and the future of our church and our nation will be defined by those who are bold to believe that the way things are now are not how they will always be, so we must take that step towards what is not seen. We must walk out into uncertainty. Step out of the boat and onto the water. Do so trusting that Jesus will be there to catch you when you fall. Amen.