Last
time I preached on this passage I found this picture in an article with
the heading new age surfing. I think it had to do with the rise of Brazilian
surfers on the pro circuit rather than
new age spirituality. However, the image and that heading gave me the illusion
that this man maybe surfing the Jesus way; he’s going board less. Now you and I
can look at this picture and say yes it does look that way but hey isn’t it
just that his board and his feet are on the back of the wave and we can’t see
them. Yeah that’s it all right. And as I read the passage from Mark’s gospel we
had today my twenty first century
scientific mindset wrestles with Jesus walking on the water. Maybe Jesus was
surfing the swells on the lake, or the first ever board sailor or they were in
the shallows, but I can’t do that because it is not what the passage tells us,
it challenges us to really consider who Jesus is and how we respond to him.
It's not even like the joke about the Pentecostal pastor, the catholic Priest and the Presbyterian minister who go fishing on a lake on their day off. And I’m not a great joke teller like Lorne is. But it goes like this… The Pentecostal pastor wants a coffee so he jumps out of the boat and walks on the water back to shore. Gets a coffee from the near by café. Then comes back out to the boat, gets in sits down and keeps on fishing. No one bats an eyelid. A little later the catholic priest says he too wants a coffee so he too gets up jumps out of the boat and walks to shore gets a coffee and comes back out to the boat, gets in and sits down as if he hasn’t done anything out of the ordinary and carries on fishing. Now the Presbyterian minister had watched that and just like the disciples in our reading this morning he is totally amazed and freaked out. But also he thinks to himself my faith is just as strong as theirs so why can’t I do that. So he decides he wants a coffee and he’ll try walking on the water. So he steps to the side of the boat and jumps over, only to plunge straight into the water and be sucked down by the weight of this clothes and the catholic priest turns to the Pentecostal pastor and says “ Do you think we should have told him about the stepping-stones.” It’s not like that its about who Jesus is…
We are S L O W L Y working our way through Mark’s fast paced account of te rongopai O Ihu Karaiti the good news of Jesus Christ. In the reading we had this morning you may have noticed that fast paced-ness coming out with the repetition of immediately and right away as the narrative progresses. Mark’s gospel also has the feel of a mystery story, right at the start we are let into the secret of who Jesus is… He is the messiah the son of God and as we move through the gospel what that means is revealed to us, quite profoundly in passages like this one. The series is called ‘the way of the cross’ because against the cultural expectations around what the messiah would be like, Mark portrays Jesus as primarily the suffering servant who would give his life as a ransom for many, and we are invited to see that to follow Jesus calls us down the same path of service and self-sacrificial love. It calls us to walk the way of the cross.
The reading we had today rounds off Mark’s account of Jesus ministry around the lake, which started in Mark 3:6. We have one last journey across the lake and a summary of Jesus ministry on the northeastern shore, before he moves on to other regions. He sends his disciples before him to Bethsaida in verse 45, which is inland from the lake and they arrive as part of that journey, in verse 53, at Gennesaret which is on the lake shore.
In this section we’ve seen In a series of
miracles stories that Jesus has authority over all the forces that are arrayed
against the kingdom of God and God’s purposes, nature, in a lake crossing where
Jesus calmed the storm with a word, the demonic, sickness and death, with the
raising of Jarius’ daughter. We saw that
despite this that people still did not believe that Jesus was the messiah, he
was rejected by the people of his hometown. He then sends his twelve disciples
out to proclaim the same message as he had been preaching, the need to repent
because the kingdom of God was at hand and he had delegated his authority to
them to heal the sick and over unclean spirits. When they returned to Jesus
they had tried to get away in the wilderness by themselves but were followed by
a great crowd, and in an event that is directly connected to the one we have
today Jesus had miraculously feed the five thousand.
So lets look at the passage.
It is in two parts, Jesus walking on the water and the summary of his healing ministry.
It starts with the ending of the feeding narrative, Jesus sends the disciples on ahead of him. They had come away to debrief and rest after their mission trip but had instead had an intense time of teaching with the crowd. Jesus then dismisses the crowd and goes up onto the mountain top to pray. In Mark’s gospel this happens at significant times in Jesus ministry, after his early success in Capernaum, where he reaffirms his mission to go to other villages and towns and other regions, and also as he has to move to the lake shore to minister and he chooses the twelve to be with him. So now Jesus does that as he moves to other regions.
The twelve do what Jesus has told them, get in the boat and head over to the other side of the lake. Like with the story of Jesus calming the storm they find themselves in difficulty. We are told Jesus sees that they are struggling against the wind, they don’t have a sail up but are rather having to strain at the oars to make head way. Again we are reminded that it is not plain sailing following Jesus, in fact the early church was quick to use this image again as they faced difficulty and hardship. Following Jesus can seem very much like going against the tide of the surrounding culture, for Marks first readers and for us today.
Around about dawn Mark tells us Jesus went walking out on the lake to them. Did you note the phrase ‘he was about to pass them by’, it sort of feels like Jesus wasn’t concerned about their predicament. However in the context of this narrative it gives us a clue from the Old testament about what this story is telling us. In our Old Testament reading from Job, we hear that the God who made the stars and we have a connection here with Aotearoa as Paliedes is specifically mentioned which of course is the Matariki constellation, is the one who treads upon the waves. And Job talks of God passing by. It is language of theophany, when God turns up in his glory, in exodus Moses hides in the cave as God passes by and only sees his glory from behind, likewise for Elijah we hear on Mt Sain that God passes by. For Mark’s original Jewish hearers it was like a code that they would understand we are being told something profound about Jesus. This is further reenforced by the words that Jesus uses as he gets into the boat “take courage It is I. That ‘It is I’ , is the same Greek usage as with the I am when Moses encounters God at the burning bush. Jesus is literally saying take courage ‘I am’. With Jesus presence the wind is stilled.
Maybe we can relate to the disciples here who when they saw Jesus didn’t recognise him. In fact they though it was a phantom that they were seeing and so were terrified. While they had didn’t have the laws of physics quantified for them, first century people were no more likely to conceive of someone walking on water as we are today. The narrator explains to us that they were amazed by Jesus but didn’t understand what this meant as they hadn’t understood the miracle of the loaves. In fact it says their hearts were hardened. Now scholars tells us that their hearts were hardened is in the passive tense in Greek, so it was not a deliberate hardening of their hearts and rejecting Jesus, it was that’s something was stopping them from fully comprehending who Jesus is. As we journey through the gospel we will see that there is a gradual process of understanding who Jesus is and putting their trust in him. We have peter’s affirmation ‘you are the Messiah, but even then he is quick to rebuke Jesus as he talks about his coming death. Like the disciples we are on that same journey as we read through the gospel, we are invited to understand what the gospel is telling us about Jesus and have faith. To come to see and understand the totality the good news of Jesus the messiah and the son of God.
It's interesting that in the second section of our reading this morning that as soon as Jesus is seen by the people of Gennesaret they recognise him. Their response is to run throughout the region and carry the sick people to bring them to Jesus. You get this echo of the friends who carry the paraplegic man and lower him through the roof to Jesus. Were ever Jesus goes the sick are placed in front of him hoping just to touch the edge of his garment. And they are healed. I wonder if that touching the hem of his garment comes from the fact they had heard the testimony of the women who Jesus healed of her bleeding. I wonder if this isn’t a case of the power of a testimony to impact others… The crowd here recognise Jesus and while they do not fully understand who he is, remember in the gospel it is the crowd who one day will cry hosanna hosanna blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord and then just five short days later will chant crucify him crucify him. But here their recognition of Jesus leads them to rush and bring those in need of a healing touch to Jesus and those people are healed. Recognition of Jesus calls us to compassion and action, for the least and marginalised in society, bring them to Jesus who is able to heal and make whole.
What does this passage say to us today
Firstly we are invited to see who Jesus is… Morna Hooker in her commentary on Mark’ says the miracles of feeding the five thousand and Jesus walking on the water and the healings in the second section of this passage, show the Jews that here is one in their midst that is even greater than their ancestor Moses. Through Moses God provided manna in the wilderness, through Moses God lead the people of Israel through the red sea on dry land, through Moses even though they had sinned against God as Moses raised up a snake and people looked to it they were healed. Here in these miracles were signs for the Jews that the God who had saved them from slavery in Egypt was amongst them in the person of Jesus Christ: Able to feed his people, walking on the water, healing all who looked to him.
Looking back from beyond the crucifixion and resurrection for us we catch a glimpse of how theologians will later describe who Jesus is talking of two natures indivisible that Jesus was totally human and totally divine at the same time…
Secondly, we are invited to respond to Jesus. I often find myself feeling a little like the disciples, not so much terrified by Jesus but surprised and amazed when I see and sense Jesus act in a way that reflects his sovereignty. It is an ongoing journey of responding to him. In Mark of course we don’t have peter getting out of the boat to try it for himself. But we do have the response of the crowd as well… that of compassion in action. The going and getting and bringing to Jesus. At a talk by Andrew Katay the CEO of city to city Australia’s revitalization process he spoke of people responding to the love of God shown to us in Jesus dying in our place and brining us into relationship with him as a reordering of the loves in our lives, our response to God first loving us is to love god with all our heart and all our mind and all our strength and to love our neighbour as ourselves. Recognizing Jesus calls us to compassion and action.
Lastly, I know we can struggle with Jesus walking on the water. But I also know we need to meet Jesus walking on the water in our lives today. And I don’t think that Jesus it is as foreign to us as you may think. It is very much part of our culture here in Aotearoa New Zealand. It is an image that has appeared on our stamps a long time ago when we had stamps and that is often in brochures that tourist read about this land of ours. At St Faith’s Anglican Church at Ohinemutu there is that amazing piece of art where as you look out from the church you see etched in the glass and image of Jesus with moko on his face and a feather cloak draped round his shoulders walking towards you on the steaming waters of Lake Rotorua. Then there is one of James K Baxter most well known poems that picks this image up
I saw the Maori Jesus
Walking on the waters of Wellington harbour
He wore blue dungarees
His beard and hair were long
His breath smelt of mussels and parāoa (bread)
When he smiled it looked like the dawn
Then
the poem goes on, like the passage today, to talk about this Jesus walking into
the lives of disillusioned railway workers, street walkers, worn
out housewives and even alcoholic priests and bringing new creation
and life. In the midst of your struggles and wrestles, that straining on the
oars, may you meet Jesus walking on the
water and hear his words ‘take courage It is I’. Allow that to go with you as
you encounter those who are in need of knowing the love, grace and power of God
to heal and make whole as you respond by following him.
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