Jesus Comes
Gospel Reading
I was coming back from lunch on Friday,
November 22, 1963, when my teacher reported that there was news the President
had been shot. Later that afternoon, as I sat through the misery of Algebra II,
the principal spoke over the intercom and announced that President John F.
Kennedy had been assassinated. This was upsetting news, not only at Pensacola High School
My Dad was out of town at the time, overseeing
a construction project in Florence ,
South Carolina
As Christians, we always feel comforted and
secure when Jesus is with us. The account of Jesus’ walking on the water to His
struggling friends assures us that Jesus always comes to His people in their
distress.
I. Context
We need to set the story in context. Mark
tells us that Jesus “made his disciples get in the boat and go before him to
the other to Bethsaida
But Jesus was not that kind of Messiah. He had
not come to give an endless supply of bread or to establish a kingdom like the
kingdoms of this world. He was not a revolutionary. His kingdom, as He said
later, “is not of this world.” Jesus was concerned that His disciples, who show
themselves to be less than discerning in this story, not get caught up in the
spirit of the crowd and get in their minds false ideas about Him and false
expectations of Him. We, too, must guard ourselves lest we operate on false
assumptions about Jesus and the Kingdom. Jesus did not come and does not want a
political kingdom. He came to establish a spiritual kingdom, the Church, which
transcends all borders and all ethnicity and which advances not by means of
political or military might, but by the proclamation of the Gospel.
Jesus dismissed the crowd, too. That may have
been a very difficult accomplishment with this misguided but highly charged
crowd. Then Jesus went up the mountain to pray. The crowd’s reaction may have
been another temptation for Jesus – a temptation to abandon the way that led to
the cross and to take another way to attaining the kingdom. Whatever may have
been going on in the mind and heart of Jesus, this was a crisis moment for Him,
and He needed to pray. We might ask why the Son of God needs to pray to God.
Remember that Jesus was not only fully God but also fully man, and, as a man He
was like us in every way except for sin. He needed communion with God the
Father; He needed wisdom; He needed help; He needed strength. Two of the three
times, when Mark tells us that Jesus prayed are in connection with Jesus
popularity with the crowds. The other is in Gethsemane
when He was facing the cross. Jesus got by Himself and He prayed to the Father.
If Jesus, the God-Man needed to pray, and to
seek help, especially in times of crisis, how much more do we? Yet we often
pray on the run, and try to handle crises by our own strategies and plans. We
need to learn to pray, to seek out our Heavenly Father, who is more ready to
hear than we are to speak, and more ready to give than we are to ask, and more
ready “to be there” for us than we are to seek Him in our distress.
II. Conflict
While Jesus was praying, His disciples were
engaged in a great conflict with the sea. There was a strong headwind, and,
though they had been and were rowing, they were making little headway. As Mark
describes it, “they were making headway painfully.” It took all their strength
to pull the oars, and all their labor seemed to accomplish little or nothing.
They still had a long way to go to reach the shore. They had been in a storm
before when they had thought they were going to die, but Jesus had been in the
boat with them. This time Jesus was not with them, for He had sent them on,
while He stayed behind to pray.
Is this not the place where we find ourselves
so often as individuals and as a congregation? We are straining at the oars and
making progress painfully, and we feel that Jesus is not with us.
Sometimes in life we find that we are not so
much feeling like we are about to be swallowed by the waves, but we are tired
and discouraged. We feel like we are having to make so much effort, and we are
just not getting anywhere. Maybe you are trying to make a marriage work, and
the progress, if any, is painfully slow. Or, you are trying to get a career
going, but you can’t get a foothold. Or, you are trying to make a living, and
you are just barely getting by, if that. Or, you are studying hard and trying
to get through school, but the grades don’t come. Or, you are wrestling with
your health, and it seems that every time you get one thing fixed another
breaks down. And you are wondering where the Lord is – if He has forgotten you
or abandoned you.
But what can be more painful and is surely
more important is the difficulty of progress in the Christian life. Temptation
can seem so irresistible and sin so strong. Prayer can seem so hard, and your
heart so cold. You look for the evidence of the fruit of the Spirit, and you
are not sure you can find any. You long for a greater confidence in your
possession of salvation, and doubts plague you. You try to show more meekness
and less concern with self in relationships, and it feels like there is nothing
but self in your life. You know what it is like to read Paul’s words in Romans
7 and feel that they describe your experience exactly: “I do not understand my
own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate…For I
know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the
desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not
do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep doing…For I
delight in law of God, in my inner being, but I see my members waging war
against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells
in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from this body of
death?” (Romans 7:15, 18, 19, 21-24) And you think to yourself, “If Paul is not
describing part his experience as a Christian, then there is no hope for me.”
And you wonder, “Where is Jesus? Where is the power of His death and
resurrection in my life? Why does he leave my struggling like this?”
Then there is the life of the
church. Sometimes it can seem in the life of the church that we take two steps
backward for every step forward. And again we think to ourselves, “Where is
Jesus? Why is He not blessing? Where is His power? Why, when we are faithful to
Him and His Gospel, are we not blessed, while we see compromising mega-churches
flourishing and attracting multitudes?” Or, we wonder. “Why does the church
have to go through trials? Has the Lord turned His back on us? Is He displeased
with us?”
Life for the Christian and
for the church often seems like straining at the oars against a mighty headwind
and making only painful progress.
III. Coming
Between three and six in the morning, while
the disciples were still straining at the oars, Jesus came to them walking on
the water. Those who do not believe in miracles have done a lot of straining to
explain what Mark says occurred. Some have suggested that they saw Him at a
distance walking along the shore, or that He was walking on an unseen sandbar.
But that does not account for the facts as Mark reports them. If he was walking
on the shore or a sandbar, how did the disciples, experienced fishermen on that
lake as some of them were, remain convinced that He had come walking across the
water and had got into the boat with them?
What was going on here? This event has many of
the marks of what we call a “theophany” in the Old Testament. A theophany is an
appearance of God with physical manifestations that make people acutely aware
that they are in His presence. Look at some of the features that are noted by
Mark.
First, He comes, and seems to pass them by. When Moses
asked to see the LORD’s glory on Mt.
Sinai
Second, notice their fear and His comfort. Now the reason for
their fear was not that they knew that they were in the presence of the LORD,
but because they thought they were seeing a water ghost. But Jesus response
uses words very much like what was often spoken by the LORD to Israel Israel Israel
But, third, and most
important, Jesus says to the disciples, “It is I.” Of course, that means, “I am
not a ghost; I am Jesus whom you know.” But it means more. That statement is
the same as God declared to Moses when Moses asked His name, and God answered,
“I AM!” When God in the rest of the Old Testament, says, “It is I’ it is meant
to remind the hearers that the One speaking to them is the great I AM, the God
who exists eternally out of His own power, and who remains the same, faithful
to His covenant in all generations. Jesus here deliberately uses words with His
disciples that will make them think of the Name of the LORD and so to hear Him
using for Himself that great Name. In other words, this is another claim that
He is the Son of God. And, like the great I AM of the Old Testament, He comes
to His struggling people to encourage and help them. When Jesus got into the
boat, the winds abated.
We might think to ourselves, “Well it surely
was a blessing to the struggling disciples to have Jesus come walking across
the water to them, but I don’t see Him walking across the waters of my
struggling life and causing the adverse winds to cease. I don’t see Him coming when His church is
struggling and making pulling the oars easier.” Don’t be so sure, my friend.
The Lord Jesus does come to us, to assure us that He is the Son of God, and
that He cares about our struggles, and will help us.
He comes to us today first by the Word and
sacraments made alive and effective by the Holy Spirit. I know I say this
often, but I do so because it took me a long time to understand, believe, and
experience this. Jesus has promised to come to us as we are gathered in
worship. He comes saying to us, “I am He. Do not be afraid.” The fact that He
comes to us in this way means that the worst thing we can do to ourselves when
we are struggling is to stop coming to worship. When we are struggling, we need
to worship – we need to hear the Word and receive the sacraments – more than
ever. If I would get one essential thing across to believers for their
spiritual welfare, it would be the truth that Jesus always comes to us with
grace by the Holy Spirit when we are gathered as His people gathered in
worship.
Jesus comes to us as well in our troubles as
His Spirit speaks to our hearts the message of the written Word. He says to us,
as He said to Paul in Corinth
He says to us, as He said to Paul in Corinth
But we also must always remember that the
coming of the Lord that will end all our struggles and resolve every problem is
His personal and glorious coming at the end of the age. That is why the
Church’s prayer is, “Maranatha!” “Our Lord, come!” It is unrealistic and
harmful for us to hope or expect that we will live struggle-free lives in this
age. The Lord Himself taught us to expect trouble in this world and from this
world. But, as Peter wrote, “The Lord will not be slow to fulfill his promise,
as some count slowness…” (2 Peter 3:9). He is extending this age of grace that
more people may come to repentance. But at the right time He will come and
deliver His Church and all His people from every evil thing, and give them
perfect, eternal rest.
IV. Confusion
Unfortunately as much comfort as we can draw
from this event, it ends with a note of warning. The disciples were confused by
Jesus coming to them walking on the water. It astounded them. They did not know
what to make of it.
Why? Mark is very frank about their trouble:
“for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.”
This statement may disturb us. We know unbelievers can have hard hearts, but
believers? Yes, believers can to some extent have their hearts hardened, not to
the point of total unbelief, but nevertheless to an extent that leaves them
unable to profit from the revelation that Jesus Christ makes of Himself.
The disciples had not had the spiritual
insight and faith to understand what the miracle of the loaves told them. It
revealed that Jesus is the Shepherd who cares for, feeds, and leads His people.
It revealed more that He was greater than even Moses the great prophet,
mediator, and deliverer of God’s people. He was indeed the One who could take
the scanty supply of food and multiply it to feed 5,000 men. But they were utterly
astonished when He came walking across the water, and got into the boat, and
stopped the headwind.
So many of our troubles can be traced to the
same source as the disciples’. We know a lot about Jesus, who He is, and what
He has done, but we still lack understanding. That is why we have so much
trouble when the winds are blowing against us. We are unable to say to
ourselves, “The very Son of God is with me. He has promised to be with me to
the end of the age. He will never leave or forsake me. I am safe in His care.”
Our hearts are often too hard to hear God’s promises and take them as ours.
That is our great failing as Christians, and it is one we must address for the
sake our own comfort and courage when life becomes a hard struggle.
My brothers and sisters, let us ask the Lord
to soften and open our hearts that we may believe that Jesus, the Son of God
comes to us in our troubles. Let us experience His presence in worship. Let us
know within His presence when the winds of trial are blowing hard. And let us
be confident the one day He will come to us and put an end to the adversities
of this world forever.
whs
5/23/04
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