Today’s Gospel lesson is one of the best-known and most often told Bible stories of the New Testament. I can remember hearing it as a young child in Sunday School – with my jaw dropped in amazement as the teacher showed us a picture and told us the story of Jesus walking on water. Wow! How could He do that? At that age I couldn’t swim and had trouble trying just to float in the water. And Jesus could actually walk on water? I believed it to be true – but I sure didn’t understand it.
Unfortunately, many people who don’t understand how Jesus could walk on water don’t believe it to be true. In fact, when critics of the Bible start taking shots at Scripture, this account that’s included by St. Matthew, St. Mark and St. John is one of the big, easy targets. After all, everyone knows that it’s flat-out impossible for anyone to walk on water – no matter who you are. It can’t be done. And if three of the Gospel writers are going to make up stories this crazy – then how can you trust anything else that the Bible says?
Some people, of course, try to explain how Jesus just appeared to be walking on water. One popular theory is that Jesus was walking close to shore – perhaps stepping from one rock to another – so it just looked like he was walking on water. If you’re going to buy this theory then you have to ignore the parallel account from John chapter 6, where he writes that the disciples had rowed “three or four miles” – way too far to see Jesus walking on rocks. Others have tried to explain this so-called walking on water in other ways, but none of those explanations make sense, either. Last year some self-proclaimed “expert” announced that he had solved the mystery, explaining that a freak cold spell had created small areas of ice on the surface of the lake – so Jesus was actually stepping from one piece of ice to another.
Well, that’s not what Scripture tells us. It’s right there for all of us to read in Matthew, Mark and John – Jesus walked on water.
It’s interesting that when the disciples saw Jesus headed toward them, they didn’t believe it, either. They were tired. They were exhausted. They had been rowing against a strong headwind for hours and hours and hours, from the evening hours of one day to the early morning hours of another, and no matter how hard they rowed, they couldn’t seem to make any progress. Then they saw this figure coming toward them on top of the water! In their tired and troubled minds, the only way that they could explain what they were seeing was to believe that they – all of them – were seeing a ghost. An ancient Jewish superstition held that the appearance of a ghost during the night meant disaster – it meant death. The disciples saw what they thought was a ghost, and they thought they were going to die. And it probably didn’t help matters that this “ghost” looked like it was going to walk right by them!
Martin Luther once wrote that “when God begins to comfort, he always makes things seem terrible.” For example, Luther points out that the Virgin Mary was frightened when the angel Gabriel appeared to tell her that she would give birth to the Son of God. Another example he gives is that of the shepherds in the fields near Bethlehem, who were terrified when the angel of the Lord appeared to announce the birth of Jesus. The third example that Luther mentions is when the disciples saw Jesus walking on the water and they were terrified. They thought – they were certain – that they were going to die.
But then they heard these words, these beautiful words of peace and comfort: “Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.” They hadn’t seen a ghost – they were seeing Jesus. They were seeing the same Jesus who called them to be His disciples, who taught them, who ate with them, who walked from village to village with them, who lived with them. They were seeing the same Jesus who had performed one miracle after another – who had turned water into wine, who had driven out demons, who had healed the sick, who had fed 5,000 men and even more thousands of women and children with just five loaves of bread and two small fish – who had even brought a dead 12-year-old girl back to life. They were seeing the same Jesus who had already calmed another storm in this same lake on another night when they thought they were all going to die – and now, as He climbed into the boat with them, these winds became calm. “Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.”
The problem with the disciples – and all of us are guilty of this, too – is that we focus so much on these incredible miracles that we don’t stop to think about what’s really going on, what’s really taking place. Jesus did not come to this earth just to be some incredibly successful faith healer, traveling from town to town to put on a good show and dazzle the people by doing things that no one else could do. Jesus did not come to this earth to become a celebrity like a David Copperfield or David Blaine or even the Great Houdini so that people would oooh and aaah when they saw Him do things that they couldn’t explain.
My friends in Christ, if we do nothing more than focus on how Jesus could walk on water when we hear today’s Gospel lesson, we’re focusing on the wrong thing. Yes, these and all of the miracles that Jesus performed reveal Him to be the incarnate Son of God. In Psalm 77:14 we read: “You are the God who performs miracles; you display your power among the peoples,” and in Matthew 19:26 Jesus says that “with God all things are possible.” We see the fulfillment of these words over and over again as Jesus did these things that no one other than God could do.
But we’re not hearing what God wants us to hear. When Matthew, Mark and John tell us that Jesus walked on water, they’re just using words to describe how Jesus came to the disciples. Jesus came to rescue His disciples. That’s the focus – that’s what God wants us to hear. Jesus came to the disciples. Jesus saw his beloved followers in their time of need, and He came to them. The important message here is not that Jesus walked on water – but that he came to rescue His people from death.
Like many of the Gospel lessons in our Lectionary series, the final part of today’s Gospel lesson seems to be disconnected – seems to tell an entirely different story altogether. But not really. Here St. Mark again uses words to describe how Jesus comes to His people to care for their needs – to rescue them from their illnesses and afflictions. As we read in verse 56, “And whenever he came, in villages, cities, or countryside, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and implored him that they might touch even the fringe of his garment. And as many as touched it were made well.”
We don’t need to focus on details like the walking on water or the touching of the fringe on Jesus’ garment because Jesus did more – oh, so very much more – to rescue all of His people from death. To rescue His people from the death sentence of sin, the death sentence that each and every one of us so truly deserves. Jesus willingly and obediently obeyed the will of His Father to take our sins on His sinless back, to bear the burden that none of us could bear, and suffer the terrible, horrible death on the cross. As St. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:21, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Jesus carried that sin to the cross and sacrificed His holy, precious body – for us. Jesus died – for us. On the third day, Jesus rose from the dead – for us. And when Jesus rose from the dead on that beautiful Easter morning, sin and death were forever vanquished.
Today Jesus comes to each and every one of us to announce, to proclaim that we, too, have been rescued from death. We have been saved. We need never worry or be afraid of earthly death, because we have Jesus’ promise of eternal life.
Jesus comes to us in the inspired, inerrant words of Holy Scripture. Jesus comes to us in the waters of Holy Baptism, where in a baptismal font like this one – where God combines His life-creating and life-giving Word with seemingly ordinary water – we are born again of water and the Spirit. Jesus comes to us when we kneel at this Communion rail to receive His holy body and precious blood in, with and under the bread and wine. Jesus comes to us – just as He came to those disciples at the end of that long, long night in the middle of that windswept lake – and he rescues us. Our sins are forgiven. “Take heart,” He says. “It is I. Do not be afraid.”
In a few minutes we will receive Christ’s body and blood at this altar rail, given for you and for me for the forgiveness of sins. A few minutes later we will walk through those doors – leaving the peace and the calm of this sanctuary for the hustle and the bustle and the everyday business of our everyday lives. We will be faced by problems – financial problems, health problems, family problems, problems that we all face in this sinful, woeful, corrupt world. Sometimes they may seem to be more than we can bear. They may seem to threaten our very lives. They may make us feel like we’re trapped in a small boat in the middle of a large, dangerous lake – buffeted by winds that threaten to overcome our tired, worn out bodies.
But then we see Jesus – we see our Savior – coming to us not on top of the water, but in a way and with a comfort that only He can provide. We remember that we have been rescued. We remember that we have been saved. “Take heart, it is I. Do not be afraid.”
Return to Pastor page
