We continue our sermon series on the Miracles of Jesus by looking at the famous incident when Jesus comes out to his disciples’ boat on Lake Galilee by walking on the water.

When we look at how this story is handled by the gospel writers, we can be left with more questions than answers.  There is only one event in Jesus’s ministry which appears in all four gospels: the feeding of the five thousand.  And in three of the gospel accounts, the story of the storm on the lake and Jesus walking out to the boat follows on immediately during that same night that the 5000 people were fed on the hillside.  

Mark, the earliest gospel to be circulated, includes it - as we heard in today’s reading.  John, the last gospel to be circulated, includes it.  Matthew, whose gospel came after Mark’s - and who uses a lot of Mark’s material in his own gospel - includes it.  But Luke, the next to the last gospel to be written - and who also uses a lot of Mark’s material in his own gospel - did not include the incident of Jesus walking on the water.  Luke covers the feeding of the crowd, but must have actively rejected the tradition about the miracle on the lake.  Perhaps he felt that his intended readers, who were mainly non-Jews, would not pick up on the subtleties of the Jewish background to the story.

In a number of places within the Hebrew scriptures, power over the wind and the waves is a sign of divine authority.  Episodes in the Old Testament books of Job, Isaiah and Psalms speak of God’s mastery over the sea and describe it in terms of power to walk on or through the waves.  The gospel writers who included the miracle on the lake in their accounts were intentionally saying to their Jewish readers, ‘If your tradition tells you that God has the power to walk on the waves, then who must this Jesus have been?’

We will never know exactly what it was about this tradition which didn’t suit Luke’s agenda or why the story didn’t help Luke to portray the Jesus that he was seeking to offer to his readers.  What we do know is that miracles in the gospels usually have many layers of meaning beyond the simple act which appears to defy the laws of nature.  Each miracle usually has a deeper message, a teaching point, something designed to resonate within the culture of the gospel’s intended readership.  There is a reason why the story held its place in the historic tradition which has come down to us.  The response which is expected from the reader is not so much, ‘Look, he performed a miracle - how can that be?’, but more ‘Look at what that miracle reveals about the person who performed it and the people who witnessed it’.

The miracle on the lake offers us two great revelations about Jesus and his disciples - two particular insights which the historic tradition held onto and respected.  Firstly, Jesus actively came to his disciples when they needed him.  We are more used to stories where people came to Jesus - they followed him, they sought him out, they came to him by night and in secret to protect their reputations, they encountered him in the public squares, they waited for him to pass by and buttonholed him, they even on one occasion removed the roof from a building and lowered themselves into his presence.  Yet, in this story, when the sudden winds get up on Lake Galilee and the disciples are in danger of losing control of their boat, Jesus comes to them and restores calm.

It seems that the purpose behind the story is to reassure disciples of Jesus that their Lord will come to them whenever danger threatens or when they have need of him.  Even when Jesus may seem distant or withdrawn, even when the struggle is long and may last through most of the night, he knows our needs and can calm our fears.  And, miraculously, nothing is impossible when it comes to Jesus’s expression of love for all who follow him.   Looking at the story in those terms, perhaps it not surprising that such a response from Jesus held its place in the tradition which was eventually recorded by the gospel writers.

The second insight offered by the miracle on the lake is that Jesus once again removed the disciples’ fear.  We hear again those resonant words ‘Fear not’, and this story immediately takes its place within the pattern of one of Jesus’s primary aims throughout his ministry: to dispel fear.  

After a battle for their lives lasting into the early hours of the morning, the disciples were understandably afraid. When they saw Jesus walking toward them, they were terrified, confused and even more disturbed.  Jesus greets them and responds to their fear with the command, "Fear not!".

Powerful words!  The angel says, "Fear not," to Mary when she is given news of her pregnancy; a young man in white says, "Fear not," to the women in the empty tomb; and the risen Jesus says, "Fear not," to the women as they leave the empty tomb. "Fear not!  Do not be afraid" are words of divine assurance in the midst of danger or fear, when there is reason to be afraid.  By quoting these reassuring words of great power, the gospel connects the scene on the lake with Jesus’s lifelong ministry to dispel fear.  The miracle becomes an illustration within a larger picture, and its significance would have been clear to those early followers within the Jesus tradition.

And the gospel brings that tradition to us today with the same deeper meanings as the gospel writers originally preserved.  Perhaps we can reflect on times when Jesus felt remote from us, or withdrawn; times when we felt alone in our boat on stormy waters and we were gripped by fear.  

Perhaps we can recall times when we were constantly running to catch sight of Jesus passing by; when we felt that we were always on the edge of the crowd; but we failed to notice the times of turmoil and raging when Jesus came to us - through his Word, through prayer, through the sacraments of his church - and simply held us in his love until we found peace again.  

Perhaps it was through those words of power, ‘Fear not’, that we might have sometimes found release from our anxiety and our distress, and found a stillness to help us experience God - or, as John Whittier describes it, ‘the silence of eternity, interpreted by Love’.

Every miracle story is symbolic of deeper truths about Jesus, about God, and about ourselves.  They always repay some reflection about what they really say to us.  

Next Sunday a dead man will sit up in his coffin and start talking because Jesus was moved by the grief of his widowed mother.  This time the story is unique to Luke and absent from the other gospels.  Is there more to this than meets the eye?  I think you can guess the answer, and Jak Davis from our sister church in South London will be explaining all.

Amen.