Does Your Lifeguard Float?

2026-08-09 Does Your Lifeguard Float?

Or, Your Lifeguard Sinks

“My lifeguard walks on water.” It’s a witty little saying I wish I had come up with, and copyrighted. You might have a T-shirt that says it. On Etsy, there’s all sorts of fan favorites with it written on them. Embroidered pillows, hoodies, yard art, a keychain buoy (faithful, AND practical). Even rocks with it hand-painted on them. Rocks? Really? That just feels like putting the Lord thy God to the test. At least bundle it with a keychain buoy.

The image of Jesus walking on water is one of God’s Top Ten “holy smokes” amazing miracles. Everybody knows this one. Not to critique Our Lord, but in my humble opinion, he made the effect so special that it distracts from the bigger point. Or, points. “Walks on water!" It’s like, Jesus at his best.

Nobody else has that. Moses PARTED the sea, but walked on dry land. Mohammed – no water features we know of, but also no pictures. Our lifeguard is clearly the best. And he's ours. We get the saying, the T-shirt. But then we ignore everything else that's happening in this almost too famous Bible story. And that’s a shame. We get distracted. And then, we sink.

That’s not Jesus’s fault. That's people for you. People skim the surface. Even in religion, we skim the surface. We quote the quips we can iron on our shirts, or poke in our pockets, or put on bumpers that WE own, that WE pay for, so we can look witty and cute. It’s not really the lifeguard. It’s ME. MY lifeguard. MY Savior. MY lifeguard walks on water. What tricks can YOURS do? My lifeguard floats. On his feet. Does yours? Or does your Lifeguard sink? How sure ARE you? 

But you know what else sinks? People sink. And not just when we have too many painted rocks in our pockets. We sink. We can sink so low. We can sink deep in our own importance. We can sink into our cliches, our biases. Drown in them. Even the best of us. And if we don’t watch our step, we will willingly sink into being smart as rocks, bless our hearts, and before we know it, we’re in a race to the bottom.

The point to remember about this Bible story is that it's not about the walking. Jesus walked on water, but that’s Jesus. One time only, as far as we know. It’s not about the walking. It’s about the sinking. It’s about drowning, about us drowning in our own little worlds. 

And when we do find ourselves sunk, and we will – sooner or later – when we do find ourselves sinking, we find out this story’s not about the walking, it's about the crying out for help with our single, dying, last breath.

Just like that other guy, That apostle. That… rock.

—

Witty sayings are a problem. The problem with witty sayings is how quickly they become cliches. 

The point of cliches is that everybody knows them already. They’re common knowledge. Everybody knows them so there's no reason to think. I'll show you. 

Finish these for me.

Look before you… leap. 

It is what it… is.

A slight chance of afternoon… 

Thundershowers. We’re in Florida. It could be 20 degrees and snowing. Still a chance. Of those afternoon thundershowers.

Here’s a cliche we all know. It doesn’t sound religious, but today it is:

Sinks like a… rock.

You know what’s going to happen in today’s story. The story itself has become a cliche. We know it so well it saves us the trouble of thinking. And not thinking is a problem. Especially for religious people.

Not thinking gets religious people in trouble.

Not thinking gets religious people into arguments. Not thinking gets religious people into wars. Not thinking, as we’ve lately discovered, sometimes gets religious people - rightfully - put in jail.

We get so mentally cozy in our faith that we let our brains go on vacation. We think, “Flooded road ahead? Eh, I’ll walk.” And then, we're sunk. In over our heads. Like Peter.

Peter was the impetuous disciple. All through the gospels, Peter was known for NOT thinking. Blurting? Yes. Denying? Three times. And, oh yeah, sinking like a rock. Peter’s T-shirt could have read: “Don’t think. Sink.”

If Peter had thought, he would have remembered: People don't walk on water. Basilisk lizards - also known as Jesus lizards - run like the Roadrunner on water. Google them. Dolphins at Sea World can use their tails to walk on water if treats are involved. But people? Evolution hasn’t yet given us that bag of tricks. Our boots are made for ... walking - another cliche - and that's just what they do. That’s all they do. We walk. We’re land mammals. Think, Peter.

If you went to Sunday School, you learned: Peter was an alias. This guy was so slippery, Peter wasn't even his real name. The Apostle Peter's birth name was Simon – Simon bar Jonah, which means Son of a Jonah. You remember Jonah. The prophet who also sank in the ocean. So deep, he got swallowed by a whale. 

The name Simon means to Listen or to hear. Hence the game, Simon Says. How do you win Simon Says? You Listen. You do what Simon says. Or you're out. Shamefully. Out of what? Out of everything, loser. You're sunk.

But Jesus gave Simon a nickname. Maybe because he knew listening was not his forte. Jesus said, "OK Simon, listen up. From now on, I'm calling you Peter.” 

Peter. From Greek, Petros, which means, The Rock. As in "upon This Rock I will build my church." Or also as in, “Peter, Petros – You’re gonna sink like a rock.” 

And, shock, he sank like a… you know. Everybody knows how it goes. The Bible doesn't say Jesus rolled his eyes. But I think it's implied. Wait, Peter! Listen! Think! Oh, never mind. Thank goodness your lifeguard walks on water.

—

Last spring, I was at Pensacola Beach, doing my part to raise the median age. Enjoying the sunshine and the tourists. And the most horrible thing happened. 

Everyone started crowding around, pointing out at the gulf. And then, out of nowhere, like, twenty lifeguards appeared. Lifeguards of lifeguards on ATV’s. Lifeguards on waverunners. The EMT’s in their ambulance tore down the beach. Everybody kept looking, and pointing, but nobody could see anyone. Everyone was searching. 

Except this one woman. And she was screaming. Screaming in a sound like I’ve never heard anyone scream in my life. Screaming for her child, her boy, her son. Find him! Find him! Save him!

Eventually, they did find him. They laid him on the beach and did CPR. And they put him in the ambulance and raced off, sirens wailing, with a helicopter landing. It seemed like it took forever, but then it seemed so fast. I watched the news for days, but never found out if he made it. I’ll never know.

What I remember the most about that day, though – wasn’t the lifeguards, so brave, so selfless, so dedicated, working so hard. What I remember most, was his mother. I remember her terror. Screaming. Crying. Calling out. Calling out. Calling out for somebody, anybody, to save her son. Calling out for Jesus. 

—

If you slow down. If you really read today’s Bible story about your personal lifeguard Jesus walking on water, you’re struck by how little cliche and much terror is in this story. 

Jesus has been teaching crowds by the waterside. But evening comes and he goes by himself up to pray. He leaves his disciples alone. Alone. Unguarded.

It says… 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…” 

Did they find this relieving? No. The opposite. They weren’t relieved, saying, “Oh look! Here’s our lifeguard, walking on water!” No. It says, “they were terrified, saying, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out in fear.

Notice, they weren’t afraid of the storm. Maybe they should have been. Maybe they figured, “We’re fishermen. We’re smart. We know the weather. We’re not worried. Been through worse.”

It’s not the storm that scares them. Jesus scares them. Not the storm: Jesus. They think he’s a ghost. Here’s the part we don’t think about because we make it about the walking. The cliche.

Jesus wasn’t coming to the boat - or to Peter - in the form of a lifeguard. He wasn't a rescuer, wasn’t a comforting figure. They literally thought he was a ghost. Not a friendly ghost. Back then, ghosts weren’t nice. Ghosts were haunting, terrible demons of nightmares. The disciples might have been afraid of the storm. But they were more afraid of the ghost. They were more afraid – of Jesus.

And that's why I think this story is not first about saving, not about doubting, not about the magic of walking on water. Yes, These are the adorning background parts of it. But I think the heart of the story is about terror – plain, simple, gut-level, scream out, helpless terror. It says they saw Jesus… “And they cried out in fear.” There’s an understatement, on a biblical level.

I think deep down, this story’s really about when moans of agony are all we have left in the bag. It’s not about the lifeguard. Not about safety. This is a story about fear. It's about the fear. Peter’s fear. Our fear. The fear that's left after all our confidence, all our arrogance, all our thoughtless cliches. It’s about when everything else – even when our faith – when everything else has sunk to the bottom. 

It says, “But when he (Peter, the Rock, the walking rock) – when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and, beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” The Lord the lifeguard? No! The Lord he thought – the Lord he feared might not be real, but might be just a made-up ghost. What he really feared was that his Lord was only in his imagination. A ghost. Peter’s true fear was that the demon who looked like Jesus wasn’t really the Lord after all. That it was just an illusion ready to watch him drown.

Fear. Mortal Fear, and Peter the alleged rock's final, desperate, drowning last words, "Lord, save me.”

—

It says, When they (Peter and Jesus) got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

You know who else said that? In Matthew 27:54, after the crucifixion, when Jesus’s body has died, the Roman centurion says, “Truly, this man was the Son of God.” Not a disciple. Not a follower. Not someone you’d expect. Not a person in the boat.

But on this day, it says, those in the boat – it says – those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.” Centurions, sailors, spectators, tourists, T-shirt sideliners. People who didn’t know what to think about this Jesus. All of them. The ones with dry feet. All of us with them.

It says to me the good news, the merciful news, that those of us still in the boat, those of us still in relative safety, those of us who haven’t thoughtlessly, stupidly sunk in over our heads – We in our safety, and comfort – we in the spectator seats – we get to see Jesus for who he is, too. We don’t have to be scared out of our minds. We don’t have to be devoured by fear – we don’t have to watch someone almost die and hear the screams. We don’t have to live through the awful worst to see the life-saving hope – the life-giving hope of knowing Jesus truly is the Son of God. Not a ghost. Not a cliche. Not what your preacher told you you have to believe or else you’re going down. 

We don’t have to be as brave as an apostle, or as dumb as a rock, to worship Jesus. We just need to be in the boat. Which boat? Here’s another cliche, but it’s true: We’re all in the same boat. And once we get that – once we see we’re all in this together, the storms - and even the saviors - aren’t so scary.

It’s OK to just be in the boat and hope and pray that there is a lifeguard who hears our cries for help and who WILL come to us, however he gets there.

Let’s pray.

[eos]