9 th August: 10 th Sunday after Pentecost

I wonder how many friends you have who have made plausible reinterpretations of any part of the scriptures. The one I have, Dr (or as he then was, Mr) David Hill, made his suggestion on a sentence in the account of the walking on the water which, in Matthew’s version, forms the Gospel for today. As it happens, his article was published in the Expository Times (in December 1988). ¹

Matthew, Mark, and John all recount this episode and in its general narrative in much the same way. But Mark adds a sentence. After saying that Jesus was coming to the apostles, Mark writes, in the Authorised Version, ‘He would have passed by them’. In the New International Version, ‘He was about to pass.’

There is no lead-up to this suggestion that he intended to pass them, and no follow-on. It seems odd. The evening before, after teaching the crowds, Jesus had sent the apostles on ahead in a boat, clearly intending to rejoin them later. Why, when he did so, after walking more than three miles in rough seas, would He have intended just to pass them by?

Dr Hill pointed out this oddity of the English translation. He also pointed out that the prefix to the Greek verb translated ‘pass by’, while it could mean that, has the more basic meaning of ‘beside’. As in our word ‘parallel’. What he intended to do, Dr Hill argued, was to walk alongside the boat. Well, we can guess why he might have wanted to do that rather than join them in the boat—so as not to add the weight of another body to carry or to cause them to lose way by stopping to pick him up; they had already rowed more than three miles in rough seas with a contrary wind and it must have been very tough going.

But I wonder if the effect of what Mark wrote is really not even that, but just that he intended simply to go ‘to’ them. Especially since, in all three versions by the Gospellers, that is what in the end he did. This then makes sense of the whole Mark passage. ‘Jesus is coming to, i.e., towards (pros), them and would have gone right up to them.’ Then there is the interlude while they think he is a ghost but once that is out of the way, ‘He went up to them’ not ‘past’ nor ‘besides’ but right ‘into the ship’.

This may seem a linguistic question of intellectual interest but not much importance. I think not. If you are looking at the general narrative, it matters which version is the right translation. I shall return to this later to explain why.

Here I say only that we don’t usually heed the general narrative. This is because we think of this account as being about the amazing fact of walking upon water, and concentrate on that. But the Gospellers lay no stress on that. They mention Jesus so doing only briefly and matter-of-fact-ly. ‘Jesus was coming to them walking on the water.’ No explanation. No expression of surprise. Just ‘walking on the water’.

Now the accounts do go on to record the apostles’ unbelief in what they saw. They saw Him but could not believe it. They thought it must be a ghost. And Jesus is gentle with them. He is recorded as doing no more than reassure them. ‘Don’t be afraid. It is I.’

But in Mark’s record they—and so we too if we react in the same way—are chided for that reaction. They had witnessed the feeding of the multitude; they should have known that with Jesus what seems impossible may be possible; why did they not believe that it was He who was walking on water?

Then there is the additional report—only in Matthew’s Gospel—of Peter’s action after the reassurance. We stereotype Peter as being impetuous, but it would take a huge amount of impetuosity to step out of a boat onto the surface of a deep sea even when it was calm, and on that day it was far from calm.

Nor—it is easy to overlook this—is that what Peter did. He did indeed step out of the boat, but not immediately, only after he had first asked Jesus to authorise him to do so and Jesus had told him to come.

I think that Peter dug deep into a well of faith. If Jesus could walk on water, and Peter had no doubt that that was what Jesus was doing, then He could also tell Peter to do the same and Peter would indeed then be able walk on water. And so, until his faith slipped, he did.

As he was later to write (1 Peter 1:5): ‘We are kept by the power of God through faith.’ It is the power of God which acts, but it acts where there is faith.

This faith is that complete trust and confidence in Jesus of which the apostle Paul writes in the Epistle for today when he speaks of the righteousness which comes by faith.

And what of Joseph in our Old Testament reading? Have you ever put yourself into his position as he lay in the pit, abandoned by his brothers? What was he thinking?

As it happens, not long ago, I fell about eight feet into what you could call a pit. Among other injuries, my lungs were punctured, and I had 25 bone fractures. There was someone nearby to call for help and in due course I was taken by ambulance to a hospital. There the doctors proclaimed me too weakened to be operated on and likely to die from the trauma of the fall.

Poor Joseph had no-one to summon help for him, and there were no ambulances or modern hospitals. I don’t know whether his brothers had left him food, but if he was like me, he was too weak even to feed himself. The only thing I could do was breathe, and that not properly. And I fell; Joseph—albeit with the benefit of youth—was thrown into a pit.

What was he thinking as he lay there? Was he only waiting for death and perhaps even hoping for it as relief from the agony of numerous injuries?

I like to think not. He had had dreams and visions which suggested that he would advance to a high position. I suspect that he had great trust in God somehow to save him from his trouble so that that could come about. And I think that this is implied from what many years later, Stephen said to the Sanhedrin when he was martyred. ‘God was with Joseph,’ Stephen said, ‘and delivered him out of all his afflictions.’ (Acts 7:9,10) That surely implies that Joseph had first had great faith in God. Like Peter later, he was kept by the power of God, but first there was faith.

This lesson of faith, faith of such intensity that it enables the power of God to work the seemingly impossible, is the main lesson from today’s readings.

But there is another thought; and for this I want to return, as promised, to the narrative of today’s Gospel, the whole narrative, that is, of which the walking on water is no more than a part and not a pre-eminent one.

The narrative starts with Jesus sending away the crowds and his disciples taking ship to go before him to the other side of the lake. They have a hard time rowing because the seas are boisterous and there is a headwind against them. He then goes up into a mountain to pray. Quite some time later he sets off after his disciples. No other boat could have caught them up, so he walks, and because this is a lake, on water. When he catches them up, after re-assuring them that it is truly he, and after Peter’s leap of faith, he joins them in their ship. There is no hint anywhere that he had changed his mind from an intention not to join them in the ship and no known reason why He should have done such a thing. His plan all along was to rejoin his disciples in their ship and that is what he did.

Now all his is a kind of prophecy of what He later did after his resurrection and is going to do yet. It was essential that He go away, and so He put an end to all physical contact with the multitudes he had been teaching and helping. He went up to heaven to pray, that is, as man to intercede with his Father for us. Meanwhile he left his disciples on earth in the nascent church. Troubled seas are associated in scripture with the tumults of the people (as in Pslams 65:7 and 107:28–30); and it is amidst the manifold tumults of the people and against the headwind of Satan’s efforts to thwart them that they have struggled since.

But he told them that he would come again, though he knew not when, and so he will. The tumults of the people will be continuing then as always but will not obstruct his coming. he will, as it were, walk over them. It is to be hoped that his people will this time believe that it is he who comes and will copy Peter’s great act of faith, but without the later doubting. For when we see him, we shall be as he is. And there is no question at all that his purpose is to come back to his people, who are watching for him and desiring his return. ‘He will take us from the ship, the church, where we are, and so’—the key words ‘we shall ever be with the Lord.’ (1 Thessalonians 4:17).

And what is the first thing that will happen to the benefit of His people? In His revelation to John, Jesus tells us that at His coming Satan will be bound for a thousand years so that he can no longer deceive (Rev.2 0:2, 3). And the narrative of today’s Gospel tells us that too. All three Gospellers tell the same, and we leave the last word to then.

‘And the wind ceased.’