Boldness in the Storm

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Lessons, Proper 14A: 1 Kings 19:9-18; Psalm 85:8-13; Romans 10:5-15; Matthew 14:22-33

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Jonathan Myrick Daniels with Children, unknown author, 1965 (Public Domain)

Jonathan Myrick Daniels will be remembered this Friday, August 14, as a witness who stepped directly into the storm—and refused to leave those battered by its winds.

Born in 1939 in Keene, New Hampshire, Daniels sensed a call to ministry early on, though life’s demands initially pulled him elsewhere. After graduating from Virginia Military Institute, he set aside that call to support his family. Yet the vocation persisted. In 1961, he entered Harvard to study English literature, wrestling through seasons of doubt until a renewed, unmistakable summons to serve God and the Church took hold. By the fall of 1963, he had begun studies at Episcopal Divinity School, expecting to graduate in 1966.

But in March 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s summons to Selma struck like a sudden front. During evening prayer, Daniels felt a “luminous, Spirit‑filled moment”—a flash of conviction in gathering clouds. He knew he had to go. What began as a brief response became a full descent into the storm. Daniels stayed in Alabama for the rest of the term, marching, praying, and standing beside neighbors long battered by the winds of hatred, racism, and Jim Crow. In that violent weather, his quiet courage became a shelter, his presence a witness to Christ’s steadfast love.

Surrounded by the Storm

The disciples are surrounded by a violent storm with terrible winds on a rickety fisherman’s boat in the early morning hours on the Sea of Galilee. The Greek word that Matthew’s narrative uses to describe what was happening to the boat is basinizo, which had been used previously in the gospel of Matthew to describe the torment of the servant suffering from paralysis (Matthew 8:6) and the torture of the Gadarene demoniac (Matthew 8:29). I think the implication here is that the small, rickety boat is being tormented and tortured by the wind, and the disciples with it. In the darkness of the early morning, they are surrounded by a storm that feels personal, punishing, almost sentient. Fear is not an overreaction; it is a reasonable human response. 

We may not fully grasp the ferocity of that storm on the Sea of Galilee, but we know its cousins. We know the storms that batter the human heart: strained relationships, failing health, depression, addiction. We know the storms that tear at our common life: systemic racism, misogyny, bigotry, the school‑to‑prison pipeline, economies built on violence, housing inequity, exploitation. These storms can torment us. They can immobilize, debilitate, and distress both our personal and communal bodies. 

But, into that storm—into the fear, the chaos, the tortured boat—Jesus walks. He comes toward the disciples across the water, through the violent wind and the heaving waves. The sight is so impossible that they assume he is a ghost, a mirage born of exhaustion and terror. But Jesus speaks into their fear:

“Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”

Peter hears both the voice and the wind. Bold—perhaps desperate, perhaps hopeful—he asks Jesus to do what only God can do: “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” It is an audacious request, a plea to share in the divine life in the very midst of the storm. And Jesus meets that boldness with divine generosity. He simply says,

“Come.”

The storm does not disappear. The wind does not calm. Jesus invites Peter—and us by extension—to courage, shaped not by the violence of the storm but by the presence of the One who walks through it. Jesus invites us to the divine life — and that means stepping out in boldness with him. 

The same kind of boldness is woven through Jesus’ own life. Whenever Jesus faced a storm, he stepped toward it. When he met the storm of paralysis, he didn’t offer comfort alone; he said, “Stand up, take your bed, and go home.” Bold. When the rich man sought guidance, Jesus didn’t send him back to the temple; he told him to sell everything and give to the poor. Bold. When the storm of violence gathered around him, he confronted it, forgave his tormentors, and refused to let hatred have the final word. Bold.

A brief aside: Jesus’ words to Peter—“You of little faith, why did you doubt?”—are often heard as rebuke or disappointment at Peter’s sinking. That is the tone often used in the passage’s reading, and I don’t want to disabuse you of that reading. But I might introduce a different reading that the Greek (and, if you will trust me here) allows for (if not outright supports): Jesus may not be referring to Peter’s sinking at all, but to Peter’s cry: “Lord, save me!” Of course Jesus was going to lift Peter up…of course Jesus was going to save Peter from the sea! That is the very heart of Jesus’ mission. The frustration, if there is any, lies in Peter’s fear that he had to ask.

Anyway, Peter’s boldness is a thing of legend! But boldness takes on all kinds of forms! 

All Kinds of Boldness

Jonathan Myrick Daniels stepped into the storm with a boldness that matched the gospel he loved. When Dr. King called for clergy and seminarians to come to Selma, Daniels went—and then stayed. He stayed through marches, meetings, threats, and the relentless winds of Jim Crow. At a protest in Fort Deposit, he was arrested with other demonstrators and spent six days in the Hayneville County jail. Upon their release on August 20, four of them attempted to enter a small store. Tom Coleman, a special deputy of the Sheriff, met them at the door with a shotgun. When Coleman took aim at Ruby Sales, a 17-year old black girl, Daniels moved without hesitation—pushing her aside and taking the blast himself. He died instantly. His boldness in the storm was not theoretical; it was embodied, costly, and Christlike.

Boldness in Three Invitations

Boldness isn’t arrogance. Boldness isn’t bravado. Boldness is what Dr. King called “creative maladjustment.” Boldness is having the courage to say and do the inconceivable, the unbelievable, and the counter-cultural because we are strengthened by the fact that we are following in the path of Jesus. Boldness is saying, believing, and working to end poverty. Boldness is saying, believing, and working to undo the school-to-prison pipeline. Boldness is saying, believing, and working to end racism, misogyny, and bigotry. Boldness is saying and working to end genocide and violence — to transform the world with love.

Here are three invitations:

1. Step into the storm of loneliness: Is there a neighbor, parishioner, or coworker who is isolated, forgotten, or quietly suffering? Boldness can look like showing up—calling, visiting, writing, or simply sitting beside someone whose boat is being battered by loneliness.

2. Step into the storm of harm: Is someone you know being bullied, belittled, or beaten down—whether a child at school, a colleague at work, or a friend in crisis? Boldness can look like intervening, advocating, protecting, and refusing to let violence—emotional or physical—go unchallenged.

3. Step into the storm of injustice: Can you speak up for those being tormented by systems larger than any one person—Palestinians living under occupation, migrants fleeing danger, communities crushed by racism or exploitation? Boldness can look like naming the storm, praying through it, writing letters, showing up, giving, voting, and refusing to let suffering remain invisible.

These are only examples; you may see another storm entirely. But wherever the winds rise, Christ is already there, already walking through the waves, already calling you to take one bold step toward the suffering he refuses to ignore.

Boldness is hard, and the storms we face make it harder. Like Peter, we step out with courage only to feel the winds rise and the waves foam, and suddenly doubt pulls at our ankles. Yet the gospel insists that even in our sinking, Jesus reaches toward us. He shows us that a little faith is enough—faith that he has weathered the storm before us, faith that his hand is already extended. The cross itself reveals this: Jesus knew fear, felt the storm’s violence, cried out for the cup to pass, and still remained bold in love. And when he breathed his last, he entrusted himself into God’s hands—hands that lifted him as tenderly as a mother raising her beloved child, breaking the chains of death and calming the final storm. So we stand with Peter, and with Jesus, knowing that storms will come, and sometimes they will overwhelm us. But when we dare to step out—when we answer Jesus’ summons to “Come”—we find him waiting with an outstretched hand, ready to raise us up and lead us toward the shore.