Mark 6:45-53
J. J.
May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts, be acceptable in Thy sight,
O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
“Awe-full God, Awesome Savior”
Last week we read how Jesus fed a crowd of 5,000 with the 5 small loaves. Now that is finished, the leftovers have been gathered up. He has His disciples to get into a boat, and go across the sea of Galilee ahead of Him. He went back, and dismissed the crowds, and then He went up on the Mountain to pray. We can surmise He was up there for some time, and that He went up in the day time, for Mark writes that “when evening had come,” the boat was out in the sea and He was alone on the land. Jesus could see their boat. How, Mark does not tell you. You can see all the way across the sea of Galilee, so it might be that Jesus was seeing the boat with His eyes. But it was night and dark. So maybe He is seeing them supernaturally. Really, it does not matter much. He sees that they are not getting very far, and wind is blowing strong against them. In fact, it is now past 3 a.m., and there are still in the middle of the sea, a lake actually, which you can see across.
Jesus comes walking on the water. It says, “and He wanted to pass them by.” So, what is this? Jesus had sent them ahead of Him. Now He wants to pass them by? If He wants to get to the other side first, to be there when they arrive, why does He not just go there, appear there? Why walk on the water? Why the need or desire to “pass-by” the disciples?
Remember the Israelites exodus from Egypt? They had crossed the Red Sea and Pharaoh’s army was drowned. They were in the wilderness, and Moses asked God, Let me see your glory. The Lord said, I will hide you in a rock and cover you with My Hand. You can see my backside as I pass by. For now one can look at my face and live.
God is God. He is King of the Universe. And to look upon Him is terrorizing. What does Isaiah say when He has the vision of the throne room of heaven. “Behold I am a person of unclean lips.” There is an illusion, here, then, that in the way God passed by Moses, Jesus was passing by his disciples. But when they looked out, they did not see, and is, they did not recognize, Jesus as Jesus. They thought it were a ghost, a phantom, walking on the water. And they were terrorized by his presence.
There is a time when we, too, know the terror of God. It’s not so much what is seen, but what is not. That is, it’s what we wish and hope goes unseen. I believe in God. Jesus is my Lord and Savior, we say. We even sing, What a Friend we have in Jesus. Yet, we don’t want God in all the times, and places, of our live, in every chamber of our heart, or pathway of our minds. For we have dark places. Places we don’t want God to see. For when we consider Him as He is, we don’t want He to see us as we are. Oh, we want Jesus in our hearts, just not every part of it. I did this. I thought that. I said thus and so. Whether it’s a sin that we want to shed and cannot, or that sin, which, as the apple was to Eve, is beautiful in our sight, and lovely to behold. We know that coming face to face with God is one thing we don’t want to do.
We know, don’t we, that were we to see God in His majesty, we would fall to our faces, that is, if we had not already been knocked backwards to the ground. To even think of seeing God face to face strikes terror through our hearts.
And seeing Jesus walking on the water, the disciples are beholding but a small glimpses of His power and majesty. And they are overwhelmed. But what happens? Jesus calls to them. He says, “It is I. Be of good cheer. Don’t be afraid.” And He comes to them. He get into the boat, and the sea is stilled.
So what does all of this mean? Fortunately, the text gives us the key. At the end, it says, that the disciples were amazed, just as they had not understood the loaves, for their hearts were hardened. Here, we see why they did not understand. And since this is the explanation of not understanding, it is also the key to understanding. To understand this event, our hearts must not be hardened, and we need to understand the multiplication of the loaves.
God’s servant, Moses was leading the children of Israel, from the bondage of Egypt to the Promised Land. They were in the wilderness, in a desolate place. And God sends them manna, bread from heaven. Here, the crowd is in a desolate place, and Jesus provides them bread to eat, more than enough. In doing so, He shows that He is God Himself. He shows that He is one greater than Moses who is to come.
Moses asked to see the glory of God. And the Lord said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy” “Then I will hide you in a rock and pass by you.” Exodus 33.
What had Jesus been doing in the weeks lead up to now? He had sent out the disciples to proclaim repentance, and to do miracles, having mercy and compassion, in His name. In His Name. Not the Name of God, but in His Name, Jesus’s Name. And the disciples did it and even told Jesus about it. When Moses lead the Israelites out of Egypt, he crossed the Red Sea by parting it, so they walked on dry ground. Here Jesus is crossing the Sea of Galilee, not by parting it, but by walking on it. By doing more than a prophet can do, by doing what only God can do. When we see this, all of this together, we see how Jesus is the One sent by God, how He is the one greater than Moses, and He is Himself God.
But why then, were the disciples so terrorized? The hardness of their hearts. No one can see the face of God and live. When they looked out on the sea, because of their resistance to the truth, their resistance to the Gospel, their insistence on seeing things the way they had always seen them, they did not see Jesus. They saw only the majesty of God, and were terrified. For, as St. Paul writes, the fullness of the Godhead dwell bodily in Him.
What then of us? Jesus did not leave them in terror. He called to them, “Be of good cheer, it is I, Jesus.” The One you know, and the One who knows you and loves you. And He came to them. We cannot approach God. But God comes to us. Not in the fullness of His power, might, and glory, for we could not bear it. But He comes to us in Christ. He comes to us in our sin and brokenness. The Creator of the Universe, He comes saying, Fear Not. It is I.
While the storm ended, this text does not say that Christ stills all the storms of our lives, and we know from our own lives that just is not so. Life is full of storms. But in Christ, we have God-with-us. In Christ, can see God, face to face, and live. In Christ, we need not be terrorized, but can be of good cheer. Not because of life’s circumstances – which may be stormy or may be calm. But because He is greater than Moses. He has come to deliver us. On land, on sea, wherever we are in life. And He is God with us.
One day, the world shall see the awe-full face of God, and tremble in judgment, crying mountains fall on us, and cover us. But we, Church, have already been covered by His blood. We shall see the face of our awesome Savior. We shall live in His kingdom forever. He is with us, and we are of good cheer. For Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ shall come again. Amen.
S. D. G.
