There are moments in life when fear arrives before we even begin the journey.

Many years ago, our family planned our first canoe trip into the interior of Algonquin Provincial Park, Ontario. We had spent months preparing. I read every canoe-camping book I could find in the library. I watched videos about wilderness camping. I studied maps and routes. We packed carefully and drove north with great excitement.

The first night we camped near the edge of the park before paddling into the wilderness the next morning. After supper we stored all our food in two large waterproof barrels beside the canoe and settled into our tent.

Sometime in the middle of the night I woke to a strange sound — a heavy breathing, a deep huffing outside the tent. Then came another sound that terrified me: the metal ring on one of the barrels being opened. I knew how difficult it was to unlock that lid. Yet something outside had managed to do it.

My heart raced. I imagined a bear only a few metres away. I grabbed the only protection I had — a flashlight in one hand and a camping knife in the other. When I shone the flashlight toward the sound, the animal disappeared into the darkness.

We hardly slept again that night. As dawn came, another fear emerged. If there were a bear here, what would happen once we paddled deep into the wilderness where there would be no one else around? Perhaps we should cancel. Perhaps this was a sign. Perhaps we were not ready.

But when morning came, mist floated over the lake, loons called across the water, and something beautiful drew us forward. With more fear than confidence, we placed the canoe on the water and began to paddle.

Sometimes faith feels exactly like that — not certainty, not courage without fear, but simply taking the next stroke.
That is where we find the disciples in today’s Gospel.

Jesus has just fed five thousand people. Then he sends the disciples ahead by boat while he remains behind to pray. The Sea of Galilee could turn without warning; a calm evening could become, within the hour, a wall of wind and water that fishermen who had worked those waters their whole lives could not out-row. The boat was not a detail of setting. It was their trade, their safety, and — that night — the only thing standing between them and the deep. During the night, the wind rises. Waves crash against the boat. The disciples struggle for hours, and only just before dawn do they see someone walking toward them on the water.

Naturally, they are terrified. When Jesus says, “Take heart, it is I,” Peter answers with one of the most astonishing requests in Scripture: “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you.” Jesus simply says, “Come.” And Peter climbs over the side of the boat.

Think about that for a moment. The miracle is not that Peter walks on water. The miracle is that he gets out of the boat. Every instinct tells him to stay where it is safe; everything inside him says, remain where you are. Yet somehow, with what Jesus later calls “little faith,” Peter steps into the unknown. Then he notices the wind. He sees the waves. Fear overwhelms him, and he begins to sink.

And perhaps this is why I love Peter so much. He is not a hero because his faith is perfect. He is our companion because his faith is incomplete — he trusts and doubts, walks and sinks, cries out and is caught. He is like us.

I used to hear the words “you of little faith” as criticism. Now I hear them differently. Jesus does not wait for Peter to become a giant of faith before reaching out; he reaches out while Peter is sinking. Perhaps Jesus is not condemning little faith at all. Perhaps he is reminding us that even little faith is enough for God to work with.

Elsewhere in Matthew, Jesus says that faith as small as a mustard seed can grow into a tree where birds come to nest — the same small, stubborn kin-dom logic we keep meeting in these parables. God has never required perfect faith. God asks only that we keep saying yes: one step, one prayer, one act of trust, one more paddle into uncertain waters. Faith is not the absence of fear; it is choosing not to let fear have the final word.

The disciples were afraid. Peter was afraid. I was afraid on that lake in Algonquin. Perhaps you know that feeling too — it may come with an illness you did not choose, a relationship you cannot fix, a beginning you did not ask for, a loss you are still carrying, a decision whose outcome you cannot see. You may be wondering whether to stay safely inside the boat, or to step into unfamiliar water. The Gospel never promises calm seas. It promises something much better: that Christ comes toward us in the storm.

There is another story that has stayed with me — the story of the great cellist Pablo Casals. When Casals was only thirteen, he found a tattered old score in a second-hand music shop in Barcelona, Spain: Bach’s music for unaccompanied cello. No one performed these pieces then; most musicians dismissed them as mere technical exercises. But the boy sensed something more was hidden inside them. He studied them quietly for the next dozen years before ever playing them in public, and he kept returning to them for the rest of his life. After the Spanish Civil War, Spain came under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. Casals, who loved freedom and justice, refused to recognize the regime. He left his homeland and settled in exile in a small town in southern France called Prades. For years, one of the greatest musicians in the world chose silence rather than compromise, and many believed the world would never hear him perform again.

Then, in 1950, friends from many countries approached him with an unusual request. It was the two-hundredth anniversary of the death of Johann Sebastian Bach. Would he come back — not for politics, not for fame, not for himself, but to honour Bach? Casals agreed. Musicians travelled from all over Europe and North America to the tiny village of Prades. They were not a permanent orchestra; they came from different countries, different traditions, different languages, and together they gathered simply to make music. They performed many pieces including Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos and The Musical Offering. Those concerts became the first Prades Festival, now remembered as one of the great musical events of the twentieth century.

What moves me is this. Casals did not return because the world had become peaceful. It had not. He did not return because all injustice had disappeared. It had not. He returned because hope had become possible again. Bach’s music gave him the courage to lift his cello once more. His faith was not certainty; it was faithfulness — one more step, one more note, one more act of hope.

Peter stepped out of the boat. Our family launched the canoe. Pablo Casals lifted his bow. None of them knew exactly what lay ahead, and none of them acted because fear had disappeared. They acted because hope called them forward.

Perhaps that is what Jesus means by faith: not possessing certainty, not eliminating doubt, but trusting that Emmanuel — God with us — is already present in the storm before we arrive there.

The good news is not that we never sink. The good news is that Christ never lets us sink alone. When Peter cries out, “Lord, save me,” Jesus immediately reaches out his hand. That is the Gospel: whenever our little faith begins to fail, God’s great faithfulness remains.

This, I think, is what companionship looks like at its root — not a God who waits on shore for us to become strong enough to deserve rescue, but a God already in the water, already reaching. Faith, in the end, is not a private achievement of the perfectly devout. It is the shared, unsteady walk of people who keep stepping even while they are sinking, and who are held.

So whatever waters lie before you this week, whatever fears accompany your journey, may you remember that God is not waiting for you to become fearless. God simply invites you to take the next faithful step — with little faith, with trembling hands, with hope. And when the waves become too high, may you discover that the hand already reaching toward you is the hand of Christ, who never abandons those who dare to follow.

Little faith, take the next stroke. Little faith, step out of the boat. Little faith, lift the bow and play.

Thanks be to God. Amen.