Cast All Your Cares Upon God for He Cares For You
(A Sermon Preached on August 9, 2026 on Matthew 14:22-23, see below)
Scholars judge that Peter wrote The First Letter of Peter around three and a half decades after the event, just recounted for us, when Jesus saved Peter from sinking. We don’t know how old he was when Jesus called him, maybe as young as 19, maybe as old as 30. In any event, it’s a more mature, wiser, seasoned follower of Jesus that Peter is, in his fifties or sixties, who writes his letter to the handful of churches he is overseeing, and he writes this, in chapter 5, verse 7: “Cast all your cares upon God, for he cares for you.”
God cares for us is the theme today.
Now, sometimes events happen in the midst of our lives that so clearly seem to be of God, that we can’t help but say in the midst of them “Thank you, Lord!”
I’m thinking of the time, twelve or thirteen years ago, when I traveled to Miami University of Ohio on a Friday afternoon to watch my son’s high-school hockey team play in a tournament at the arena there. My car came to a stop, a battery dies, just as I was coming close to the campus. I drifted over to the side of the road in a pretty quiet neighborhood. It wasn’t a main highway or the main drag. I called Triple A. Now it turned out that the car would have to go to the dealer. And I would need a ride to the hotel that I booked, and then to the arena, and then to the dealer. But I hardly had time to figure all of that out, when a guy came out of the house from across the street from where my stalled car was, and asked if he could help. I said my name was Mark. He said his name was Tim. And I said, “I know you.” And I did.
Twenty years earlier (!), we came home from England on vacation, and went to a summer church pic-nic, this in Pittsburgh, at a place called Schenley Park, close to Carnegie Mellon University, and The University of Pittsburgh, and we had lunch with him—Tim Cameron-- and his family, back then when he was a professor of engineering at Pitt. I didn’t know him before that. Never saw him after that, until 2012 or 2013 when he was a visiting angel (and Professor of Engineering at Miami of Ohio) who took me where I needed to go, and who enlivened our time together with wonderful conversation.
Closer to home, well, at home in Akron, another time—in a less challenging episode--when the kids were in middle school and we decided to go out for dinner, and there was tension and grumbling going on, we sat down at the table closest to the door at Papa Joe’s in the Valley here. And to ease the tension and get our minds off whatever was causing the tension, I said, “Let’s pray that someone famous walks through the door.” Bam! On cue came a famous NBA basketball player, not the current most famous basketball player, but one from a previous generation who lives in Bath, and won the NBA Dunk Contest.
Now, C.S. Lewis said that miracles tend to happen early in one’s conversion to Christ and he opined that as one went along miracles occurred less. I don’t know about that. He didn’t say they never occur later in life. But I took these events, and so many other similar events, as pick-me-ups. Not as events that created my faith, but as events that rekindled some parts of my faith where the fire wasn’t burning so steadily.
I hope that you have had events that in the moment seem to be clearly instances of God’s providential care—or that you see later, upon reflection, after time passes, that seem to be of God. Times when you were given ‘the right friend, the right book, the right doctor, the right situation, or the right thought.’ Or,, times when you were steered away from the wrong friends, or wrong situation, the wrong books.
And, I think it’s also customary to see God’s hand at work in things that we would not want to happen again. Difficulties. Disappointments. Tragedies. Dry seasons of life when nothing seemed fruitful. But all of which did, maybe much later, much, much later, produce some form of fruit: wisdom, strength to endure, a wider vision of God’s grace, a greater commitment to pray. And that these later fruits led you to embrace the biblical conviction, that “God is at work in all things toward our good for all that love God and are called according to his purposes.” Not that God causes all things, or that all things that happen are good. No. Not that at all. But that God is working—after these bad things, or in spite of these bad things--toward the good. It’s a confidence that Peter, the disciple who is saved from sinking in the lesson today, had strong, right up to the end of his earthly existence.
Peter, and this different kind of miracle
God did not save Peter from persecution and death. Tradition says that Peter was imprisoned by the Roman Emperor Nero, and crucified. But a close look at the miraculous episode recounted in today’s lesson, as part of Peter’s up close and personal history with Jesus, will lay before us the basis for Peter’s confidence that God cared for him, that God brought him into a new fellowship with himself through Jesus, and sustained that fellowship till the end---and this examination will encourage us to have the same confidence.
A Unique Miracle
This miracle of Jesus here—I mean the walking on the water-- differs from all the other miracles of Jesus. Unless I am mistaken and forgetting one or two other miracles (and, if so, I know one of you let me know!), all the other miracles of Jesus have an obvious and immediate benevolent aim. In all the other miracles Jesus acts supernaturally to bring about some natural good. He restores sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, speech to the mute. He makes the lame and paralyzed walk He heals lepers and others with disease. He brings Lazarus back to life. Even changing the water into wine had in view a good: It saved the hosts from social embarrassment.
But walking on the water doesn’t seem to have a point like these other miracles. It seems gratuitous, without a point, not serving any restorative purpose. What is going on, however, is massively important. There is a point here, and it is this: Jesus is displaying his Lordly freedom. In The Book of Job (chapter 9, verse 8) we can read that it is ‘God alone who stretched out the heavens and who walks on the sea, trampling the waves.’ That is what is going on here. As one commentator puts it (David Ford, The Gospel of John: A Theological Commentary, page 148) ) : “ . . . Jesus here is acting with the freedom of God, just as after his resurrection he appears [to the disciples] in spite of locked doors….”
Now, this is startling, even fear inducing. “There is no indication [that the boat is sinking]—the fear is a response to Jesus walking on the water.” (Ford, op cit.) The disciples try to get on top of this. They say, “It must be a ghost!” But it’s not a ghost. It’s Jesus giving to the disciples a revelation of who he is. In this way, it’s like the revelation on Mt. Tabor, the Transfiguration, a disclosure of who Jesus is. And Jesus uses the same words that God used to name himself in the revelation to Moses—I AM—Jesus says Take heart,,,I AM,,,so be not afraid.” And how many fears have been calmed by those words I AM ….in turbulent times…in times of despair…down through the centuries. People who have been sitting alone at night with the worries. People brooding over their mistakes and their sins. People paralyzed by their fears. People assaulted by their regrets. But given courage, given a deep release from all of these things just by taking the truth Jesus Is. They realized He is, whether it comes quietly to mind, or like a great big thunder clap. God comforts. God gives hope. God send us liberated into our future.
Peter Is Learning
Well, hearing this from Jesus, Peter dares to ask Jesus to command him to come to him. He is willing to move out of comfort, knowing that to be with Jesus is the safest place to be. And that what Jesus demands, Jesus empowers a follower to do. Peter’s example teaches us that faith and obedience cannot be separated. Peter is beginning to learn this. More powerfully, we see that Jesus reaches his hand out to save Peter who began to sink because he took his eyes off of Jesus, the I AM, and allowed the waves to dominate his vision.
This is in keeping with Jesus’ relationship to Peter since the beginning. All along the way, Jesus reached out his hand to Peter to save him from sinking. Now as then, this is the case with Jesus. It’s part of his unilateral commitment, his fidelity to us.
Back then, Jesus stretched out his arm to call Peter to be his follower, and save him from a life of drift and uncertainty, a life that didn’t know humanity was made for God, and to know God, and to be in fellowship with God. He gave Peter, as he gives you and me, a vocation. Now as then.
Back then, when Peter denied Christ and betrayed him, he restored Peter, put him back on the path…and saved him from sinking into pathological guilt and despair. All is forgiven, Peter! Now, love me, and feed my sheep. Now, Jesus restores us, again and again, despite our woeful failures, and denials.
Back then, when Peter took issue with Jesus’ prediction of the passion, challenged Jesus’ teaching and when he failed to understand Jesus’ …well, Jesus kept on teaching him anyway. He didn’t sunder the relationship. Never cut Peter loose. Never said, “I’m done with you.” Jesus kept on teaching, and now as then, so, too, with you and me. He teaches. He illumines our slow, and darkened minds.
And back then, when Peter drew a sword to prevent the arrest of Jesus, Jesus saved Peter from retaliatory violence. Now as then, Jesus (the Prince of Peace) schools us in the way of peace.
Conclusion
These are the primary ways, the bread-and-butter forms of God’s providential care for us. Yes, there are things that happen out of the blue that lead us to think we’d have to invent the idea of providential care if it weren’t already in play. But it’s the teaching, the speaking, the guiding, the fresh start in forgiveness, the reconciliation with God through Jesus Christ, and his resurrection, that led Peter to say what we can, and should say, to one another, “Cast all you care upon God--the great I AM--for God cares for you.”
Matthew 14:22-33
Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them. And early in the morning he came walking toward them on the sea. But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”
Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”