One Sunday morning, when our oldest son Nathan was about two years old, Kathie and I were setting up before a service in a church in North London. I think she was going to be leading and I was in the band, I can’t remember now, but what I do remember is this: while we were both distracted getting everything ready, little Nathan decided to go exploring.
I thought he was with Kathie and she thought he was with me so we didn’t notice anything was untoward for a few minutes. Once we realised he was with neither of us, we looked around but he was nowhere to be seen.
If you’ve ever lost a child that you’re responsible for you know exactly how this feels. First, you’re quite calm. At least that’s what you project outwardly. Let’s be British and not make a scene... He was here a few minutes ago, he can’t have gone far.
You look in the most obvious places – but see nothing. Then your sense of nervousness goes up a level. Your heart starts to beat a bit faster. You move more quickly. You answer sharply when people ask you really helpful things like “where did you see him last?”
We searched the less obvious places; the vestry, the toilets, behind the communion table... We asked other people to look too. Still, there was no sign of him. Then fear begins to take a grip and you start to pray urgent prayers under your breath. Your heart is racing now, you begin to sweat, and your mind battles with all kinds of unimaginable scenarios.
Some fear is good; the fear of getting run over has trained me to look left and right before walking in a road. Fear helps keep us alive. It’s a natural human emotion. When under stress the nervous system activates a surge of adrenaline. You can’t control it, it’s visceral. It’s known as the acute stress response (fight-or-flight). Essentially, the body is getting ready to either attack or run from whatever threat there might be.
I asked the welcomers on the door if they’d seen Nathan. They hadn’t. But still, Kathie and I walked past them onto the busy main road outside and looked around.
And there he was - in the arms of a very confused motorist, looking up and down the street, his car stopped in the middle of the road and the car door wide open. He had seen Nathan on the road, as he was driving, screeched to a halt and picked him up.
I felt irresponsible, embarrassed, angry, upset; all those things, but most of all, I felt relieved.
That series of emotions; from normal, to apprehension, to fear, to dread, to relief is exactly what Jesus’ disciples experienced in our story this morning.
Let’s briefly set the scene. If you were here last week, you’ll know that the context is exhilarating. Jesus has just fed 5,000 men, plus women and children, with the contents of a child’s lunchbox. By any standards, it has been an amazing day. The disciples have seen with their own eyes, and touched with their own hands, something miraculous. They have seen heaven touching earth.
And Jesus, ever more popular with the crowds, and ever more unpopular with the clergy, is now rising fast to the top of King Herod’s hit list. Things are getting heavy so he decides to take some time out on his own to pray.
So in v45, he tells the twelve to climb into a little boat and head off to the opposite shore. He sends the crowd home. And he walks up into the hills to pray alone. It’s about 5pm.
Eight hours later, at 3am, Jesus is still awake. He looks down at the moonlit lake and he sees white surf washing against the side of boat struggling to make headway. Usually, the boat would have a sail to catch the wind, but this one evidently did not because it says in v48 that they were straining at the oars and that the wind was against them.
If you ever rowed against a wind or a tide you know how hard it is. Picture a dozen men in their prime, putting their backs into it, labouring with all their energy, slogging away for eight hours, blisters appearing on their hands, still only in the middle of the lake, barely halfway, getting to the point of physical exhaustion, becoming slowly and utterly demoralised.
Do you know that feeling of giving it all you’ve got but that not being enough? The business of simply staying alive feeling like a battle...
All the toil, all the grind – the attrition of it, the relentless heaviness… Have you ever come to a point of sheer exhaustion? Do you know what it feels like to admit to yourself after giving 100% that it has got you nowhere? Is that perhaps where you are now? Did it take all your energy to even get here this morning?
These twelve guys in the boat, having witnessed just hours before perhaps the greatest miracle of their lives, are now disheartened, depressed, deflated, dispirited and demoralised.
Sometimes Jesus saves you from the storm; and you don’t have to go through it. But usually he lets you go through it, but he saves you in the storm.
Any church can get discouraged like the twelve did in that boat. It’s possible to exhaust ourselves to death running tired old programmes, pouring energy into diocesan initiatives, organising complicated missions, putting on amazing events, throwing all we’ve got into the latest big idea that worked brilliantly somewhere else…
It’s draining just talking about it! I’m not saying “don’t do mission”, far from it, I want to do a lot more, in fact.
But oh, the lengths we go to, and the energy we expend, and the hours we strain against the wind to the point of collapse before it occurs to us that Jesus isn’t on board – no wonder it’s all so soul-destroying!
Here’s the first and last question every ministry should ask regularly: “Is Jesus in the boat?” If he is, thank God! If he isn’t, for heaven’s sake shut it down, don’t waste any more time on it.
So anyway, Jesus looks down at his exhausted lads from his vantage point and he sees that they need a bit of encouragement.
We used to have an old Citroën 2CV. That was our first car. It had an engine the size of a hair dryer, it sounded like a moped, and it reached a top speed (downhill with a tail wind) of 70 mph. It was so lightweight and flimsy; it handled completely differently on the rare occasion it had a full tank of petrol. We had a sticker on the back window that said “Don’t laugh: Jesus went by donkey.”
Actually, Jesus only ever went by donkey once as far as we know, on Palm Sunday. He sometimes travelled by boat. But most of the time he walked. And that’s what he felt he should do that night. No boat was available so he thought “I’ll just take a stroll out on the lake, stretch my legs.
Actually, there are several species of animal that can walk on water including the Brazilian pygmy gecko, the fishing spider, the western grebe, the water skipper, and best of all the basilisk lizard (also known as the Jesus Christ lizard) and if you have never met this little fella, here’s a short National Geographic video… … Isn’t he great?
Jesus, though, is the only human being to have walked on water (alright, Matthew’s gospel says Peter did briefly, but he would have drowned if Jesus had not saved him).
It’s an amazing miracle, all four Gospel writers include it, and it shows those guys in the boat beyond doubt that they are looking at the Son of God.
Which they had ample evidence of already, and that’s the point.
Given what the twelve disciples have already witnessed, they should not really be all that surprised.
Someone who can heal with a word, who can send evil spirits packing, who can raise a child from the dead, who can bring instant healing just because someone touches his clothes in a crowd, and who can feed a great crowd with a boy’s picnic – someone like that should be able to walk on water. But they are surprised – and we are too.
As they strain and pull on the oars, Jesus comes up alongside them. It seems he just wants them to know he is there. He just wants to reassure them of his presence. “But not only are they not assured by his presence, they don’t even recognise it!”
Their response is sheer terror. They are paralysed by fear – it’s where we get the expression ‘scared stiff.’
I talked earlier about healthy fear. Fear of losing a young child. But there is unhealthy fear too.
The word in Greek is phobos from which we get the word phobia. This is when the fear we experience is disproportionate to danger involved. Pogonophobia is the fear of beards. Coulrophobia is the fear of clowns. Anatidaephobia is the fear of being watched or stalked by a duck.
There is an epidemic of fear and anxiety in our society. Millennials (those born around the Year 2000) have been called the generation of fear.
But fear is nothing new. There was a Jewish old wives’ tale at the time of Christ that said if you see a ghost, you’re going to die. It’s a bit like seeing the grim reaper. That’s why they’re all scared witless – they all see Jesus, think it’s a ghost and they all think their number’s up.
Have you ever felt in danger of death? When I was four, on holiday in San Remo, Italy, my mum and dad warned my brother and me that the beach under the water had a gentle slope and then a sudden dip.
We were paddling in the surf when suddenly we both lost our footing and we were under the water, out of our depth, and unable to swim. I looked up and saw two hands plunge into the water and… they picked up my toddler brother and left me to drown. I was just coming to terms with the rejection when suddenly two hands grabbed me and pulled me to safety.
It must have all happened in a few seconds but it felt like ages. The feeling that you’re going to die can be terrifying.
Jesus sees that they are petrified and says, “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.” In the midst of our fear, Jesus draws near. Jesus approaches them specifically to bring encouragement. He sets everything else in perspective. With Jesus by your side you can look at the world around you and, whatever is happening, take courage, and fear nothing.
Verse 51 says that they were “completely amazed.” The commentators say that that expression in Greek is even stronger than the one in 5.42. After Jesus raised a little girl from the dead it says they were “completely astonished.” But this is further up the scale; it means totally and utterly and completely and absolutely amazed, and astounded, and speechless, and awed.
“Because”, it says, “they had not understood about the loaves; their hearts were hardened.”
Now, I’ve told you before that these guys are not the sharpest knives in the drawer. To tell the truth, they couldn’t pour water out of a shoe even if the instructions were written on the heel!
But when it says they didn’t understand about the loaves what it means is this: Mark's gospel has shown Jesus' authority over disaster, over disease, over demons, over danger, and over death. Now, having seen all that, the twelve witness first-hand the multiplication of five bread rolls into a square meal for 5,000 men with more left over than they started with - they are personally involved in the miracle; they actually handle the bread - and they still don’t really get it that Jesus is special, and that what he did then he can do now, and that there is no limit, no limit, to his awesome power.
I can poke fun at the twelve apostles, and there’s more than enough material here for weeks, but in truth I’m just… like… them. How many times have I seen God answer prayer, sometimes instantly, but then been totally shocked that he actually answered another one! “Wow! An answered prayer!”
But how different it all feels in the middle of the night, when the wind is howling, when you’re rowing hard, when your safety is under threat… when events disappoint us, when illness or loneliness overtake us, when trusted friends hurt us, and when spiritual dryness oppresses us.
Is that where you are today? Are you in that place? Jesus’ presence draws near. Don’t be afraid, it is really him.
We arrive now at a decisive point in Mark’s Gospel. Verse 56 signals the end of Jesus’ Galilean ministry. These first six chapters condense about two years of Jesus’ life, spent almost entirely in the area around the Sea of Galilee.
And mostly amongst Jewish people, but not exclusively. Broadly speaking, Jesus was overwhelmingly popular and attracted a huge following, but opposition against him increased steadily over this time too. And very soon, he will leave this area and move out to surrounding regions; increasingly into Gentile territory.
Why the change? Because Jesus didn’t come only to heal. He came to save. As Mark’s Gospel unfolds, the atmosphere will darken. The plot will thicken. Jesus will increasingly divide opinion. The conspiracy to do away with him will intensify. He will become, for the powers that be, public enemy number one. And he will lay down his precious life to save us all from sin, and eternal death, and hell.
But before that, Jesus and the twelve disciples get to the other shore and anchor at Gennesaret. Straightaway, of course, there’s a crowd.
You may wonder why there were so many sick people. It’s because the town of Tiberias, on the western shore of the lake, was a health spa with thermal baths.
Actually, it still is today. The website of one of the many hotels in that town says this:
“In the thermal baths at Tiberias, you’ll find waters containing unique properties found in no other spa in the world. The hot springs are said to be beneficial for a variety of ailments such as skin infections and arthritis, muscle diseases and more... Tiberias Hot Spring water boasts a unique mineral composition, containing nearly 100 natural minerals… The sulphur-rich water affects the body's metabolism while the warm temperature accelerates the healing process.”
So these people, desperate for a cure for their ailments, recognise Jesus and it says in v55 onwards that they carry the infirm on mats, they place their sick in his way, they try to touch his cloak; they swarm around him like ants around jam.
Everybody comes wanting to get something from him. Let me touch you! Come here! Do this! Do that! Give me health. Give me wholeness. Give me happiness. Give me inner peace. Give me what I want. Help me!
Do you need to learn to set aside your pride and hold your hands out to receive from the Lord? “How much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask?”
Mark 6 ends by affirming this wonderful truth: “all who touched him were healed.” Will you reach out to him today?
But I want to end on a slightly different note. It saddens me that nobody comes to Jesus here saying, “What can I do for you?” “Will you let me follow you?” “What might you want from me?”
They know he is a healer. But many think he is only a healer. Their interest is superficial. They are consumers, no more.
Lord, “What can I do for you?” “Can I follow you?” “What might you want from me?”
Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 24 September 2017
