There was a time a while back that if you drove through the small mountain community of Parsonsville in Wilkes County, you would almost certainly be stopped by the sheriff. No matter how carefully you obeyed the traffic laws, he’d pull you over.

“You better not speed, I’m watching,” he’d say. “Slow down.”

The driver would nod solemnly and agree. “I’m sorry,” he’d say. “I’ll watch it. I’ll try to do better.”

“OK, just be careful.”

The driver would go on his way, often with a smile.

The sheriff of Parsonsville would climb back on his bike and pedal off. He’d sing a Hank Williams song at the top of his lungs. “Goodbye Joe, me gotta go, me or mio.” But the next time he saw a car he’d stop singing, he’d blow his whistle, flap his arms and pull the driver over.

His name was Bill Parsons. The community is called Parsonsville because so many people named “Parsons” live there. The late Winston Cup champion race car driver and NASCAR commentator Benny Parsons was one of them. He’s buried there at the end of a long-dirt road behind the old homeplace where he was raised by his grandmother. There’s no town of Parsonsville, but it’s a community of rolling hills and Blue Ridge Mountain views, of creeks and woods and farms. It’s a place where people look out for each other.

While Benny Parsons was famous, Bill Parsons was virtually unknown outside of Wilkes County. But in Parsonsville nearly everyone knew he was the man who carried a shiny badge, and rode a bike and stopped traffic. They also knew he was mentally handicapped. Nobody knew exactly what caused his condition. But years later when his family took him for diagnostic testing, the medical team figured out that the sheriff of Parsonsville had the mental capacity of a 5-year-old child.

The people would stop when he’d pull them over because they knew him and they knew his parents and people were kind to him. They played along.

But, his sister told me, he really did think he was the sheriff. He wasn’t playing. It was real to him. With the faith of a child who plays at being an astronaut or a firefighter or something else he or she wants to become, he was convinced he was the sheriff. After all, people called him the sheriff of Parsonsville and he had a badge.

Many of the children growing up there indeed thought he was the sheriff. They saw his badge. They saw him stop people. And one day, an adult who lived up the mountain, someone who didn’t know the family, called the home of his parents, where the sheriff of Parsonsville lived. There was a dispute going on, and the caller needed the sheriff to come up and settle it. “Well, you know he’s not really the sheriff,” they told him. The caller was taken aback. “He’s not?” Well he sure acted like the sheriff.

And so it is with us who aspire in our childlike faith to become something that we are not capable of becoming. No, we don’t aspire to be Jesus, but we want to be like Jesus. We are called to be Christ-like, to be kind, to pray without ceasing, to put others first, to honor God and each other, to care for the poor and the lonely and the sick and the hungry, who include all of us at some point in our lives. And if we are faithful in following our call as followers of Christ, there may be those times when someone looking at us may be convinced they see a Christian person. They may understand that in our acting as if we are Christians, there are the moments in which we do transcend ourselves and they recognize Christ in us.

And that brings us to today’s passage about Peter walking on the water, or at least trying to. The Old Testament depicted the sea as a place of chaos. It churns and rolls, and one of the ways they thought of God as being powerful was in calming the sea, in imposing order on the chaos. Our own lives sometimes feel like a sea, like we’re adrift and being battered by the waves, by the constant bills and illnesses, by the worries of jobs, worries about children, our worries and fears for the future. We are a tiny lifeboat adrift on a vast sea, a speck on the ocean.

The disciples actually were on a sea in today’s story. The Sea of Galilee is the lowest freshwater lake in the world (the world’s lowest lake is the Dead Sea, a saltwater lake). The upper Jordan River is the primary waterway flowing into the Sea of Galilee and the lower Jordan River is the primary waterway flowing out of it. So the Sea of Galilee offered the waters where Jesus was baptized. It offered the fish that Jesus and the disciples sometimes ate. But at 13 miles long, 8 miles wide and as much as 141 feet deep, it is a sea that can threaten a small open boat when the winds are high and there’s a storm.

But notice just why the disciples were in the boat. Jesus had heard about the death of John the Baptist and had traveled by boat to a deserted place to be by himself. But when people heard Jesus was around, a large crowd gathered. He had compassion on them and cured their sick. When they were hungry, he took five loaves and two fish and fed the 5,000. And the disciples had gathered 12 baskets full of food left over. And after all that, today’s scripture tells us that immediately Jesus made his disciples get in the boat and go on ahead to the other side while he dismissed the crowd. So the disciples were in the boat because Jesus told them to be in the boat. He didn’t ask them to be in the boat. He didn’t say it might be a good idea. The word in Greek could be translated as he “compelled” them to be in the boat. Now people may wonder why this is so. The gospel of John tells us in its account of the feeding that the people wanted to make Jesus an earthly king, which was not part of God’s plan then. John says, “When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.” And so Jesus orders the disciples to get into the boat and, as Matthew tells us, he goes up into the mountains to pray alone.

Now, there are scholars who believe that Matthew saw the early church as a boat, a ship. And you can see the appeal of that illustration. The church is a place where people gather together for safe passage. They sail through life, weathering the storms that come. And in today’s passage, Matthew says the wind was blowing against the boat, against the church. Think about when this was written, in the First Century, and how Rome was persecuting the church. The church was meeting in homes, not in public buildings as today, and people were being dragged from their homes, and tortured and killed for worshipping Jesus. And so, Matthew says, the waves are battering the boat, the church. In fact, the Greek says the waves are literally “torturing” or “tormenting” the boat, the church. Now, I can accept this idea of the church as a boat and we’re all on a journey together. But we need to remember that Jesus is in the boat with us. If there’s a storm, he won’t need to come walking on the water. He’s here, praying for you, holding your hand, and guiding you in the darkest night.

But in our scripture today, when Jesus was actually a man who walked the earth and was in a particular place at a particular time, the boat is far from land, far from safety, and it’s the darkest night – sometime between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. – when Jesus comes walking toward them on the raging sea. And the disciples cry out with fear. They want Jesus, but they’re terrified when they see him and they cry out. And Jesus says, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.’”

Now Peter, impetuous, strong-headed Peter, answers Jesus and says, “Lord if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” And Jesus says to him “Come.” And Peter starts walking on the water, doing something that seems impossible. But then he takes his eyes off Jesus, he notices the wind, he becomes frightened and he begins to sink and he cries out “Lord save me!” And Jesus immediately reaches out and catches him and says, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” Now we think of Peter as the rock, revered in church history as the father of the church. But many people look down on Peter here. But at least Peter of all the 12 had the courage and hope to get out of the boat. And if we think of our church as the boat and we think of the sea as the chaos of the world around us, we too should travel together in the boat, but we should also step out into the chaos, knowing that Jesus will help us walk through the storm. Is your storm a marriage that’s breaking up? Is it school that seems too hard? Is it a struggle with job loss? Worries about money? Well, Jesus is with you, his rod and staff they comfort you. But also look to his word and see the things that are there for what you should do. These words of life are guideposts showing you the way as you travel through this world. Delve into God’s word to see how you should act along the way. Be humble. Speak truthfully. Be diligent. Have faith that Jesus will not let you sink.

And people criticize Peter, too, because Jesus said he had little faith. And there are places where Jesus does criticize people because they are faithless. But if we read this passage carefully, Jesus tells Peter, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” Jesus doesn’t say your little faith is not enough. He asks why he doubted. We all have doubts about things. Later Jesus tells the disciples that if they have faith the size of a mustard seed that they can move mountains, can do the impossible. A mustard seed, which is a tiny seed, can grow into a large plant if it’s offered the proper conditions and nourishment. Think about the children here today and what they can become. We think especially of Larkin and Lula and Catherine, baptized here today. Jesus tells his disciples they should have the faith of a child. “Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” Now think what this means, to have the faith of a child. A child who does not understand the world, but takes the hand of a good father or mother and is led from the safety of the house to the car to church and school and life. We’ve all had that faith of a child, but perhaps we need to remember it. But even a little faith is better than no faith. Peter, who took his eyes off Jesus and began to sink, would become the pillar of the early church. And when he walked on the waters and he started to sink, he cried out to Jesus and the Bible tells us that “Jesus immediately reached out his hand.” Don’t let your problems and fears get the best of you. Build on your little faith. Trust that God is there to reach out to you and to gather you safely into His arms.

But realize, too, that in the midst of our frail, human existence that God embraces us. The last sentence of this passage is really the climax of the story: “And those in the boat worshipped him, saying, ‘Truly you are the Son of God.’” Because Jesus has power over wind and sea, over death and the grave, and because he died for us, our journey’s end will be in heaven. But God is with us on this precarious journey here and now, where we find beauty, friendship, hope and love along the way. We have a faith that Jesus is our anchor.

Bill Parsons, the sheriff of Parsonsville, had a child-like faith that he really was the sheriff. And so people acted like he was. They responded to his faith. For 30 years, he would get up before dawn and ride his bike two miles from his parent’s house to the small country post office, where he’d stow his bike beneath the porch. He’d walk over to the country store and sit and talk with people, or he’d hop into a truck and go up to a farm and work there, feeding the cattle. And promptly at 4:30 p.m. every day, he’d hop back onto his bicycle and head home. His sister told me he’d sing his Hank Williams songs “just like he was singing to God and everybody.”

But his parents grew old and they died, and the Sheriff of Parsonsville had to move to a place where his sister could take care of him. That meant a busier area where it wasn’t safe for him to be on the road. So it had been years since he was out stopping cars. His family thought people didn’t remember.

Last year, Parsons had chest pains and his family took him to Wilkes Regional Medical Center’s emergency room. A doctor there heard the name and asked them, “Bill Parsons? Is this the sheriff of Parsonsville?”

An attendant came to do an EKG. The sheriff of Parsonsville had just one question for her. “Do you know a woman who can kiss good and make good cornbread?” he asked.

But his tests didn’t look good. They airlifted him to Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem. The next day, his family could see he wasn’t doing well at all. At one point, they called up a country radio station and asked them to play some Hank Williams for the old sheriff.

In the hospital they listened. They listened through all the commercials and the news. They listened through all the other music. And then finally, finally, there came the familiar voice of Hank Williams, filling the hospital room. “I saw the light, I saw the light, no more darkness, no more night, now I’m so happy, no sorrow in sight, praise the Lord, I saw the light.”

And when the song ended, the Sheriff of Parsonsville went home to Jesus. And they looked at the clock and saw it was 4:30. His sister told me later, “You know, that was the time he always headed for home.” For the rest of us, for those of us of little faith, it is not yet time to head for home. It is our time to step out onto the waters. Amen.