The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
July 28, 2024
O God, the protector of all that trust in thee, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: Increase and multiply upon us thy mercy; that, thou being our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we finally lose not the things eternal; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
2 Kings 2:1-15
Ephesians 4:1-7, 11-16
Mark 6:45-52
The story of Jesus walking on water, or perhaps more specifically, the act of Jesus walking on water, in and of itself has taken on all the hallmarks of a meme. I mean this in the most fundamental meaning of the term: a repeatable behaviour or idea that has taken on cultural currency so that it speaks to us about a particular theme or type out of its original context. “That guy thinks he walks on water,” you might hear someone say. “Walking on water” for us means perfect, never putting a step out of place, above it all, and, more often than not, we use it in an ironic sense in which the speaker is implying just the opposite. I’m not sure exactly how this has come about, but perhaps it stems from our modernist reaction – and I mean that in the Enlightenment, Scientific revolution sense – to the story of Jesus walking on water as implausible or impossible. It stretches our rational mind to see this episode in a literal sense, and many approach the passage with a pre-conceived sense of incredulity.
Jesus’ walking on the water was, however, no problem for the people of late Antiquity who understood themselves to be living in a world populated by powers, by cosmic forces that were inexplicable and that exerted themselves on people in their daily lives. These people were not simply superstitious primitives. Many – both Jews and gentiles – were educated and highly cultured, keen on pursuing knowledge, including scientific explanations for the way the world works. What they had, that we sometimes do not, although the Post-Modernist movements have helped us challenge our epistemological sense of certainty, was a larger view of what we do and do not understand about the Universe. They had no problem conceiving that there were forces and powers that existed that were beyond our comprehension. And that seems quite reasonable to me.
The people who first heard Mark’s story about Jesus walking on water, then, were not simpletons who would believe just about anything. For them the question was not whether someone could walk on water, but from whence does their authority or power to do so come. For Mark and his listeners, Jesus walking on water and, moreover, his calming the storm, was a demonstration of his power over the forces of the Cosmos. They had witnessed many extraordinary things and seen at his baptism how Jesus was marked as God’s beloved, one who carried with him the authority of God. Jesus walks on water and calms the storm because of who he is. Let’s see if we can look at the story, then, taking for granted what Mark’s listeners never doubted for a minute, and see what else we can learn about Jesus and about ourselves.
After the feeding of the five thousand, Jesus felt the need to go off by himself for a period of prayer – some alone time – and so he sent the disciples on ahead of him to “Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. And after he had taken leave of them, he went up on the mountain to pray.” Like Moses, Jesus would go up the mountain to interact with God, and from the post-resurrection vantage of Mark’s audience, this would be seen as pre-figuring both the Transfiguration and Jesus’ Resurrection. The listeners would be reminded, then, of Jesus as a type of Moses, as the one who was seen changed, transfigured before the disciples, and who defeated the powers of death to which all had hitherto be subject. All that in those few words.
We learn next that in the evening, that Jesus, standing on land, could see the boat “out on the sea” and “that [the disciples] were making headway painfully, for the wind was against them.” It may seem facile to interpret the disciples’ slow progress in the gale as a metaphor for the disciples’ actual experience and for the Christian life in a world that resists the preaching of the Kingdom of God, but most scholars agree that this is exactly one of the levels on which we can interpret these words, for the meaning of the Gospel texts always was understood to be on many levels. And so, Jesus comes to them late in the night “walking on the sea.”
Now the next thing we learn might seem a little puzzling. Mark tells us that Jesus “meant to pass by them.” Why would that be? Was he hoping to get to the other side on foot over the waves without them noticing? No, it is most likely a reference to the passage in Exodus (33:17–34:8) in which “God reveals his glory to Moses by passing by him.”(1) Mark seems to include this detail as another reference to Moses’ story, continuing to strengthen the typological connection between Jesus and the patriarch from Exodus. Yet this moment is a little different from Moses recognising God’s glory when he passed him, as the disciples actually failed to recognise Jesus, thinking him to be a ghost. Terrified as they were, they cried out, and Jesus then revealed himself to them. Once again, the disciples in Mark’s story don’t see what is before them and do not yet fully understand who Jesus is, even as he continues to demonstrate the authority he wields over the forces of the cosmos and his very identity as the son of God.
Jesus does not, however rebuke them. He gives them words of encouragement, saying, “Take heart, it is I; have no fear. And he got into the boat with them and the wind ceased. And they were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.” All in one rapid sequence, Jesus has come to them in a moment of need, walking on water, exerting power over nature, ends the storm, calms them and gives them comfort and hope, and yet, after all they have seen and experienced, the disciples still do not fully understand what has happened or who Jesus is.
And perhaps this is the biggest lesson to us, who like Mark’s listeners know the whole story, live on the other side of the resurrection, who know that Jesus’ own predictions of his passion came true. Even when we know all this, we can get hung up on trying to figure out if Jesus really did walk on water and how that was possible. We spend our energy thinking of scientific explanations – sand bars, whatever – when we should be fully taking in what we have seen and known, taking in who Jesus really is and understanding that when we are in trouble, on rough seas, facing strong headwinds, that God in Christ comes to us, has the power to calm the winds and waters that are churning up our fears and doubts, and comfort us so that we can continue the crossing and continue the work he has given us. Again and again, despite, our disbelief and hardness of heart, Jesus does not abandon us, not for a moment and nothing as small (or as big) as the impediments that the world throws up can stop that, not for a moment.
Andrew Charles Blume ✠
Barnstable, Mass.
William Reed Huntington, 27 July 2024
1. Marcus Mark, Mark commentary (Anchor Bible), 426
© 2024 Andrew Charles Blume