8.4.24 Mark 6:45–52 (EHV)
45 Immediately Jesus made his disciples get into the boat and go ahead to the other side, to Bethsaida, while he himself dismissed the crowd. 46 After he had sent them off, he went up the mountain to pray. 47 When it was evening, the boat was in the middle of the sea, and Jesus was alone on the land. 48 He saw them straining at the oars, because the wind was against them. About the fourth watch of the night, he went to them, walking on the sea. He was ready to pass by them. 49 When they saw him walking on the sea, they thought he was a ghost, and they cried out. 50 They all saw him and were terrified. Immediately he spoke with them and said, “Take courage! It is I. Do not be afraid.” 51 Then he climbed up into the boat with them, and the wind stopped. They were completely amazed, 52 because they had not understood about the loaves. Instead, their hearts were hardened.
The Boat Trip to Bethsaida, A Journey to Remember
Some of you may be familiar with the old TV show Gilligan’s Island back in the 1980’s. The Skipper and Gilligan were supposed to give their customers a three hour tour on their boat. The weather started getting rough, and they ended up shipwrecked and getting stranded on an island for years on end.
The boat trip that the disciples went on wasn’t meant to be a luxury three hour tour. Why go? Jesus had just miraculously fed 5,000 men with a few loaves of bread, and the people, perhaps also the disciples, wanted to make Him their bread King. So Jesus promptly acted, shoved them off, and went up on the mountain to pray. It was a simple journey they’d probably done hundreds of times before as fishermen, to cross the Sea of Galilee. It’s only a few miles wide. Jesus said, “Go to Bethsaida.” Easy peezy, lemon squeezy. But this ended up being anything BUT easy. A furious storm came up out of nowhere. The wind was directly against them. They knew how to row a boat, but this was no easy storm.
It’s kind of a microcosm of life, isn’t it? You expect some portions of your life to be nice little trips across a beautiful lake, a nice little three hour tour. But it doesn’t turn out that way. Every goal that you have has headwinds against you. I know of a young man who was a very good athlete, hoping to make it to the pros as a wide receiver. He had some great stats at SVSU. But he basically lost a year due to COVID. He also ended up breaking his toe and needing hip surgery as well. He got through the surgeries well, but he had one other weakness. He couldn’t jump very high. So he never got to even try out for the pros. Now he’s working for a distribution company. He did everything he could to try and achieve his goal, but his body and his circumstances said “no.”
How many times is life like that with MUCH SIMPLER goals? I just want to own a house. I just want to meet a nice Christian person to marry. I just want to have children. I just want to get a decent job. I just want to be able to pay the bills. The simplest of things, even good things that can be God pleasing, aren’t usually easy. You get married, have children, but then you struggle paying the bills. Your spouse works too much, or has postpartum depression. You have health problems. One thing after another gets in your way, and you’re in the middle of the lake rowing as hard as you can, but you don’t seem to be getting anywhere. And you wonder, “Why does this have to be so hard? I’m just trying to live a basic life.”
It gets even more troubling after listening to what Mark says. What is Jesus doing while they are struggling in the middle of the lake? He’s up on the mountain praying! And that’s not all. He saw them straining at the oars. It might seem like a little detail, but it could be a big thing too. Jesus, with His divine vision, SAW THEM straining at the oars. This was at the FOURTH watch, which would mean that it was 3:00 in the morning! I just got back from Wyoming after sitting in a car for two hours, in an airport for five hours, on a plane for 4 hours, and in a car for 2 more hours. We didn’t get home until 1:00 in the morning, and we were tired from just sitting all day. Could you imagine straining at the oars of a boat for maybe six hours, in the wind and the rain, and not getting anywhere in the middle of a lake? You have to admire them for their persistence. They didn’t just give up and go back to shore. They knew where they were supposed to be. But they were just having a hard time getting there. I would have been exhausted. And what was more? Jesus was just sitting there watching them! Shouldn’t he have gotten up earlier and gone down to help them? Were His prayers really that important at the time?
I guess they were. Otherwise Jesus wouldn’t have been prioritizing His prayers. His opposition was about to increase, and the Father was the only One who knew the mission Jesus was on to die for the world. He needed to pray about it. And maybe Jesus wanted them to struggle a little bit more. Maybe He wanted them to be desperate and scared. What can we learn from this? If you’re the one in the middle of the boat, struggling and nearly drowning, it’s easy to get angry at Jesus, and we do. Sometimes we get angry with God and even maybe yell at Him to hurry up. But the disciples didn’t know Jesus was watching. They didn’t know He was coming soon. Yet they still struggled and tried. And maybe there’s something to be said for that too. How often do we FORGET that God is watching, or think that He has no clue of what is going on in our lives, or live as if He wasn’t watching at all, or that getting to our destiny is all dependent on US and how much we struggle against the wind and the waves and pull with all our might. Or how often do we give up on what God calls us to do because it is so hard?
There’s something to be said for having God pleasing goals and plans. But it’s not all up to you, how strong you are, how determined you are, how faithful you are. . . sometimes life will throw you some challenges that are absolutely impossible for you to get through, no matter how many people are on board with you and how hard you are struggling to get there. Sometimes we need to be humbled in life, so that we realize how powerless we really are. God never promised life would be easy. And don’t forget about the devil in all this either. Sometimes he works hard to keep you from getting to God’s goals for you.
It kind of reminds me of getting back home from Wyoming this past week. We were supposed to have a quick turnover from Chicago to Lansing. But the flight from Denver was postponed. We would have had to stay overnight in Chicago and leave the next morning. Not a huge deal, but I didn’t want to do that. I had Bible study on Thursday along with two nursing homes to preach at, noble things. Well, we got on a different flight to Detroit. But then that flight was stuck on the tarmac with a mechanical issue. I couldn’t fix the plane. It wouldn’t do any good to complain that my first flight had already been delayed. I couldn’t do anything but pray. And pray I did. Thankfully, we were able to get into flight and arrive in Detroit safely. Had we not had so many issues, I would not have been so THANKFUL when we finally arrived home on time.
If you think about this whole idea of traveling, it’s much easier to stay at home and do nothing. It seems like that is what we like to do most. But God doesn’t call us to live sedentary lives. He calls us to work. He calls to reach out to others and help others. He calls us to live life as a journey. We are always progressing forward in some way, from childhood to adult. Sunday School to confirmation. Confirmation to teen and adult Bible study. High school to college to a full time job. Single to married to grandparents. Self sufficient to immobile. Healthy to sick. Sick to needing help. Needing help to dying. Earth to heaven. Sooner or later you’ll realize that no matter how hard you pull on the paddles, there’s no crossing the lake without help. You need Jesus in your life. You need God to get you through.
And God comes, right when He needs to. Right at the right time. About the fourth watch of the night, he went to them, walking on the sea. Do you see what Jesus is doing there? In the midst of the winds and the waves, He’s just walking. This is no moment of panic for Him. He’s seen it all. There’s no moment or obstacle that is too great for Him to conquer. He can even defy the laws of physics by walking on water to get to them.
Years ago one of my children had fallen down, and they were screaming in pain. Instead of running, I started walking to him. My aunt was irritated with me and told me to run. But I knew by that time the difference between a real scream and a mediocre scream. I didn’t need to exude panic and act as if it was worse than it was. So I walked. Jesus walked, not because the situation wasn’t serious, but because He was more powerful than the situation, and He knew how it would end. No matter how much we panic, Jesus doesn’t. He’s in control. He knows exactly when to arrive and how to arrive, right at the time HE wants to and needs to. So He walks. Take comfort in the God who walks.
But then what does Mark say when He gets there? He was ready to pass by them. Why is that? Could it be that He was testing them, that He wanted them to cry out to Him for help. Sometimes it seems like God is just passing us by, not even paying attention to us. He does this so that we cry out to Him too. It takes a lot to make a grown man cry, and they are often too ashamed to do so. But God loves it when we call to Him. He doesn’t want us to panic, but He still tells us to come to him even when we do, no matter what the circumstance, how dire it may be. “Call upon me in the day of trouble,” Jesus said. Don’t be too proud to beg, too self sufficient. God loves beggars.
But even when He comes to the disciples walking on water, what do they do? In the midst of the wind and the rain, they mistake Him for a ghost. They all saw him and were terrified. It’s a group panic. The disciples unknowingly treated Jesus as nothing more than an empty shell.
How easy it is to panic, especially when everyone else is. Whether it’s a disease or a death or a vacancy, people like to panic. “What are we going to do now?” And when God tells us to turn to Him, what do we do? Do we act as if we have been abandoned, and forget what happened at our baptism, when the Holy Spirit entered into us and clothed us with Christ? We pray, but we don’t really expect a flesh and bones God to come to us and rescue us or actually do anything? We take the Lord’s Supper, but do we truly expect anything divine or powerful to happen there?
Jesus would have every right to say, “You want to treat me like a ghost, then I will ghost you.” But what does Jesus do? Immediately (He doesn’t wait!) he spoke with them and said, “Take courage! It is I. Do not be afraid.” 51 Then he climbed up into the boat with them, and the wind stopped. They were completely amazed, 52 because they had not understood about the loaves. Instead, their hearts were hardened. Jesus orders them to do something that was impossible. “Don’t be afraid!” How couldn’t they be afraid? Because of what He says next. “It is I.” The literal way Jesus says it is simply, “I am.” And that’s the way God described Himself to Moses many years prior. “I am.” The God who always was, always is, and always will be, to the end of the time. I am the One who created this world and who will ultimately end this world. Later on, Jesus would be the One who would pay for their sins and rise from the dead, defying even the laws of death, coming back from the grave. So they had no reason to panic and no reason to fear. God was with them right there.
And what did Jesus then do? He climbed right into the boat with them! Such a neat picture, right. Imagine if your child woke up crying in the middle of the night, and you went to their room, told them to be quiet, and closed their door. Wouldn’t you rather lay in bed with them, assuring them that everything is ok? And isn’t that what Jesus did for the disciples by climbing into their boat with them? And once He does so, the wind gives up.
It all works in sequence. Jesus speaks. Jesus entered into a boat made of wood to calm the disciples, and He entered onto a cross of wood to calm us. He put you on the boat of the church, in your baptism. Jesus speaks words of comfort to us. “It is finished. I am with you always. I am the resurrection and the life, whoever believes in me will live. Do not fear, for I am with you.” And as He speaks these words, He enters. He enters into our flesh through the water. He enters into our souls through the bread and the wine. He enters into our death and our hell on the cross. He enters into our life in the resurrection. And He promises us that this was all for us. He calms the storms of worry and doubt in the process, through His gentle and powerful Word and sacrament.
John tells us that another miracle then took place for the disciples. Once Jesus gets into the boat, they immediately reached the other side of the lake. No more rowing needed. Jesus took them directly where they needed to go. Jesus takes us to our final destination, to the other side of life, through faith in Him. He makes the journey short and easy, a free ride to heaven.
I used to enjoy going out on my friend’s pontoon on the lake when I was in high school. It was so calm and relaxing. Maybe you’d prefer a speedboat with some skis and tubes? Or perhaps a fishing boat with a nice trolling motor on a little river? If you had any boat to choose from, not many of us would choose a rowboat. Nor would we choose to row against the wind in the middle of the night. But that’s what the disciples had through no choice of their own. It wasn’t an easy trip across the lake. It was terrifying and exhausting, a near death experience. But it was also a wonderful experience when all was said and done, because Jesus showed up and got them across.
Sooner or later, you’ll find yourself in a similar situation in life. As the Israelites had to cross the Red Sea and the Jordan River, and the disciples had to cross the Sea of Galilee, you too will have your own journey to make. Some trips will be serene and beautiful as the sun sets on a beautifully clear night. Other times you’ll be tired and weak from trying to keep the boat afloat amidst all kinds of trouble. A moment of panic. A moment of death. What do you do? Listen to Jesus speak to you. He is not a ghost. See Him for who He is, a real flesh and blood God who has come to rescue you. He has come to you. He is not far away from you, walking away. He is right here with you, and all of us, on the boat of the church. He has paid for your sins. Your life is in His hands. Cry out to Him in confidence. Do not panic. Do not be afraid, Jesus says. It is I. I am. . . . still here . . . for you. Amen.
