PENTECOST 7

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: PENTECOST 7
PROPER: 12B
PLACE: St. John’s Episcopal Church, Kingsville
DATE: July 27, 2003


TEXT: Mark 6:45-52 Jesus walks on water.
“Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” Then he got into the boat with them and the wind ceased.

ISSUE: The story of Jesus walking on the water is surreal. It is dreamlike. It is similar also to a poem, or a devotional reading. He sees his disciples fighting an adverse wind in the very early hours of the morning. In the face of an adverse ill wind, or evil spiritedness, in the darkness, Jesus comes and steps into their boat. There is a calm in the presence, and a new day dawns. The story reveals the uniqueness of Jesus to walk or step upon the uncertainties of life, and heal the evil spiritedness, and bring a new day.
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What a wonderful story! Jesus walks upon the water, and steps into the fearful disciples boat, and there is a calm and the dawning of a new day.
Many years ago now, when I was in Seminary, I had a New Testament professor who largely dismissed the story of Jesus’ walking on the water. He was inclined to think that the story did not have much real meaning, but was a kind of folk image of Jesus that had crept into the biblical narrative. If Jesus were truly human, he would not have walked on water; the story served no purpose that to say that Jesus was really unique or special in some miraculous way that had little to do with reality. For the longest time I believed that too. Jesus walking on water was just a flamboyant way to say that he was a cool guy.
I’m glad to say that over the years, I’ve come to think differently. I cannot help but feel that the story of Jesus walking on the water had significant meaning for the early church, and for those of us living today in a very troubled world with a great deal of evil spiritedness.
First, I would suggest that we come to realize just how important this story may have been to the early Christian community of Jews. There were a number of stories from the Old Testament, Hebrew Scriptures, where men of God were given command over the waters. We could begin with the righteous Noah who followed God’s command to build an ark that saved Noah his family, and God’s creation from the cleansing flood. In the story of Moses leading his people out of Egyptian bondage and oppression, Moses stands before The Sea of Reeds, or Red Sea, and at God’s command holds up his staff, and the waters divide. The family of God walks across the sea bed, and are delivered. Wandering the wilderness for forty years, Moses’ successor Joshua parts the Jordon River, and the people of God enter the Promised Land in hope.
The Hebrew Scripture reading from 2 Kings tells of the great prophet Elijah who takes his successor with him, and striking the Jordon River with his mantle parts the river, and the two cross on dry land. Returning with the power of Elijah, Elisha is also able through the power of God to part the Jordon once again. These too are all stories of God’s power to deliver his people, and to express the power of his word in and through the prophets.
Even in the story of Job 9:8, in one of Job’s narrations on the power of God, he says: “He (God) alone stretches out the heavens and treads on the waves of the sea.” Isaiah too writes: When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep you away.”
What then is this story of Jesus walking on the water have to say to the people of God, other than in the presence of Jesus Christ we find the saving power of God revealed. When the disciples in the boat in Mark’s story see Jesus walking on the water, they think that it is a ghost and cry out in terror. Then they hear that his most precious voice saying: “It is I” or “Ego eimi,” which is the name of God pronounced to Moses. God is with them in the dark, in the wind, and on the sea. The story seems to be saying that in Christ, God is with his people in difficult times, and Jesus is the Lord revealing the saving presence of God to the disciples and to the early Christian community of Jews and Gentiles. Jesus is the Word of God in the flesh and reveal in this wonderful way to his people. The story is bringing to bear, opening revealing, the saving power of God in Jesus Christ to his people facing an evil spirited world.
The story tells even more, I think. Professor and biblical scholar David Buttrick speaks of the Parables of Jesus as often being surreal, having an unexpected twist to many of them that really grabbed the attention of the listener. They have a jarring quality to them. Just to refresh what I mean, remember the workers in the vineyard. The workers, who come last in the day, at the last 50 minutes, get the same wage as those who bore the heat of the entire day. We would say that’s not fair. But the shock of the story reminds the people that God wants everyone to have enough, and he has enough to assure everyone of what they need. The parable shocks us into another kind of thinking, different from the way the world thinks, but the way God thinks.
In the Parable of the Sower, the farmer goes out throwing seed all over the place. It lands on the road, lands in the weeds, on the rocks. It is a parable of enormous extravagant waste. The people of Jesus’ time would have been appalled at the performance of such a wasteful farmer broadcasting seed in every direction, and some of assured to be fruitless. Shocking as it is, or was, the parable tells of God’s enormous generosity of God’s love and grace. It packs a punch! It’s a surreal story. Many of Jesus’ parables demand a new kind of thought and thinking.
Look now at the story of Jesus walking on the water. It too is surreal. Jesus has just fed 5,000 people on in a green pasture, beside still waters. Hungry undeserving folk, good and bad, get more than enough to eat, and are sent back to their homes with their bellies full. (That story in itself is a bit surreal too, but we dealt with that last week.) Then, Jesus sends his disciples back across the lake while he stays to be alone and pray. From a place of observation, late in the night, and just prior to the dawn, Jesus sees his disciples struggling or straining against an adverse wind. Apparently they had not sailed very far, and were maybe trying to row against the wind. Remember that wind was a spirit for these people. It is an adverse wind, and evil-spirited wind. The sea for these people was also a pretty scary evil place, especially in the darkness. You may also raise the question of how Jesus saw them in the dark? Don’t know. He walks out to them on the sea. He doesn’t have to part the sea, like Moses and Elijah did. He can walk on it. He appears to be going to walk by, or pass by the boat. Whether this passing by, has anything to do with the passage from the Gospel of Thomas, where Jesus tells his disciples to be passersby or wanders in the midst of life, we can’t be sure, but Jesus is a wander in the midst of the frightening sea, and the scary place of evil spiritedness, and he hears the frightened and terrorized cries of his disciples. Then, he steps into the boat, and all is well. The evil spirited wind is calmed.
What we have here is a rather surreal story, as surreal as any of Jesus’ parables. He sees in and through the darkness and the fog. He walks on water. He passes by, but then turns responds to the call. He steps into the boat as easily as if it were on dry land, and the wind ceases. And the dawning of a new day comes. It is like a dream, a scary dream, but ends with peace. I remember as a child, spending time with my Godparents who had a shore home on the Magothy River, with a white rowboat tied to their pier. One night I awakened in to, or at least I thought I was awake, or in an alternative consciousness. The white bed sheets appeared to be the rowboat, and the floor appeared as water, and I had the illusion that I was adrift in the dark in the boat in the sea. I was terrified for an extended period of time. Until finally I saw the light from the bathroom lighting the hall, the illusion vanished, and there was such relief. We may understand something of the terror of the disciples when we have our own experiences of being adrift against the wind.
We do live in a world of considerable evil spiritedness, a world in which we feel that we are rowing against the wind, and a world of enormously bad odds. We’ve seen a lot of disillusionment in recent years. We’ve seen the decline of so many sports figures, and supposed role models. We’ve seen a mess with religious leaders: TV Evangelists, and pedophile clergy. We’ve seen the scandals in political leadership, and the scheming of the business world. We’ve seen a lot of ill winds of war that never seem to get won, in Korea, Vietnam, the war on poverty and the war on drugs. Now we struggle with Iraq, with Palestine and Israel. And of course, we live with the struggles and the strains of our own lives, with loss of jobs, with a failing threatening economy, with a troubled marriage, a sick child. Perhaps it is as if we are starved for hope and resolution, as some people say we are starved for closure. We long for peace, and in our dreams it is as if God appears to be passing us by, and we are left alone to struggle helplessly against the adverse winds.
The story of the disciples battling the adverse wind is indeed surreal, dream-like. But I wonder too, if it is not like a meaningful devotional story of the early church and the church down through the ages. Last week I talked with you about how the Feeding of the 5,000 is a story that acts out the 23rd Psalm. People without a shepherd are led to green pastures by still waters to a place where with Christ Jesus, their baskets runneth over. It’s too good to be true. Surreal as it may be, the story is comforting, strengthening, and empowering to the faithful. And so it is with the story of Jesus walking on the water and stepping into the boat. Surreal, hard to believe, the story is yet meaningful to the struggling faithful. God steps into their situation and the evil spiritedness is taken away, and the journey home more bearable, more hopeful and encouraging, more peaceful.
Indeed, not unlike the disciples we too become hardened in acceptance of the magnificence and abundance of God to feed, and to deliver us from adversity. It’s hard to believe we are worthy of such grace, peace, and hope. Yet the mystery abounds of God’s presence and determination to reclaim our hardened hearts into the deeper understand of God’s mysteries.

Let us pray:
Lord God empower us to be your apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. Equip us for the work of ministry. Let us not be tossed to and fro and blown about by every adverse wind of doctrine, buy people’s trickery, by the business, craftiness, and deceitfulness of a scheming world. Make our hearts malleable in allowing the presence of your Son Jesus Christ to step into our journeys that with him we may appreciate the meaning and the mysteries of Scripture that bring us safely home to your Kingdom. Amen.