IMMEDIATELY JESUS MADE his disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. 46After leaving them, he went up on a mountainside to pray.
47When evening came, the boat was in the middle of the lake, and he was alone on land. 48He saw the disciples straining at the oars, because the wind was against them. About the fourth watch of the night he went out to them, walking on the lake. He was about to pass by them, 49but when they saw him walking on the lake, they thought he was a ghost. They cried out, 50because they all saw him and were terrified.
Immediately he spoke to them and said, “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.” 51Then he climbed into the boat with them, and the wind died down. They were completely amazed, 52for they had not understood about the loaves; their hearts were hardened.
53When they had crossed over, they landed at Gennesaret and anchored there. 54As soon as they got out of the boat, people recognized Jesus. 55They ran throughout that whole region and carried the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. 56And wherever he went—into villages, towns or countryside—they placed the sick in the marketplaces. They begged him to let them touch even the edge of his cloak, and all who touched him were healed.
Original Meaning
JESUS COMPELS HIS disciples to get into the boat to set sail for Bethsaida before dispersing the crowds, who have eaten their fill. Mark gives us no explanation why he needs to force the disciples to weigh anchor and leave (contrast John 6:15), but he dispatches them along with the crowd and goes up the mountain to pray alone (see 1:35).
Separated from their Master, the disciples undergo an ordeal, fighting against the waves. A storm does not endanger their lives as earlier (4:35–41), but they find themselves stuck in the middle of the lake, fighting against the wind after hours of strenuous rowing. Jesus can see their struggle (one must assume supernaturally in the darkness) and rejoins them during the fourth watch of the night (3:00 A.M.–6:00 A.M.) by walking on the sea. Just as Jesus did not first feed the hungry multitudes but taught them (6:34), so he does not first rescue the disciples from their predicament but tries to teach them something by passing by them. Their eyes and ears are not up to it, however; they see only a phantasm, a ghost. The waves and the wind have not thrown them into a panic, but the sight of Jesus passing by on the water does.
The wind poses no obstacle to Jesus and the waves provide firm footing as he marches across the sea. Treading the waves, however, is something that only God can do (Job 9:8; Isa. 43:16; 51:10; Sir. 24:5–6). When Jesus comes strolling across the waters, he shares in the unlimited power of the Creator. In Habakkuk 3:15, the image of God trampling the sea conveys his power to control the chaos of the seas to save his people Israel (see Ps. 77:19–20; Isa. 51:9–10).
Mark’s explanation that Jesus “wanted to pass by them” (6:48, lit. tr.) has caused confusion and prompted numerous interpretations:
• Jesus intends to overtake the disciples and playfully surprise them on them other side. But it seems rather pitiless on his part to whisk by and leave them floundering and frightened, all in the interest of fun.
• Jesus wants to pass by but does not do so when he sees the disciple’s distress. The problem with this view is that he has already seen them in distress before he sets out on the sea. Why would he want to pass by?
• Jesus is trying to test their faith. But what does such a test comprise?
• The NIV adopts the view that the verb thelo (“to wish, will”) functions as an auxiliary verb like mello (“to be about to”): “he was about to pass by them.” The evidence for this use of the verb is too slim to make this interpretation likely.
• The phrase refers to the disciples’ mistaken impression of Jesus’ intentions—they think he intends to pass by them. The text does not say this, however.
• Some try to relieve the problem by suggesting that he intends simply to go beside them.
• Jesus wants to be seen walking on the sea but wishes to remain unrecognized—something that supposedly fits the author’s theology of the messianic secret. There is no good reason for Jesus to want to frighten hapless disciples and then disappear into the mist.
• Another view takes its cue from Amos 7:1–8:3 and interprets the phrase metaphorically: Jesus wanted to help the disciples in their difficulty.1
None of these explanations adequately explains or explains away the phrase, but the last has the virtue of interpreting Jesus’ action from the background of the Old Testament. This account is not about a rescue of the disciples on the sea. They are frustrated but not in peril. Since walking on the sea is something no ordinary mortal can do, Jesus’ desire to pass by the disciples is not related to some mundane purpose. The verb parerchomai (“to pass by”), when connected to a divinity, refers to an epiphany. The Old Testament records that God made “striking and temporary appearances in the earthly realm to a select individual or group for the purpose of communicating a message.”2
This verb occurs in two key passages in the Old Testament. In Exodus 33:19–34:7, Moses asks God to show him his glory, and God responds by passing before him and proclaiming his identity.
And the LORD said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.”
Then the LORD said, “There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen.”
… Then the LORD came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the LORD. And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.…”
And in 1 Kings 19:11–12, the Lord tells Elijah to stand on the mountain, “for the LORD is about to pass by.”3 One can conclude from these passages that when Jesus wants to pass by his disciples, he wills for them to see his transcendent majesty as a divine being and to give them reassurance.4
God cannot be fully seen, but Jesus can. The one who comes to them on the sea is not simply a successor to Moses, who fills baskets with bread in the desert. Only God can walk on the sea, and Jesus’ greeting is not simply a cheery hello to assuage the disciples’ fears. He greets them with the divine formula of self-revelation, “I am.”5 Isaiah 43:1–13 is significant as a backdrop for interpreting this passage. The disciples have been summoned by Jesus to pass through the waters, and Jesus is with them (Isa. 43:2).
“You are my witnesses,” declares the LORD,
“and my servant whom I have chosen,
so that you may know and believe me
and understand that I am he.
Before me no god was formed,
nor will there be one after me.
[It is] I, even I, am the LORD,
and apart from me there is no savior.” (43:10–11)
Here is the answer to the disciples’ question in 4:41, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!” This person is the God who needs only say, “I am.” But that answer sails by the disciples.
Jesus displays his divine power further when he gets into the boat. His mere presence causes the wind to cease howling and enables the disciples to continue their journey. It does not calm their apprehension, however. Mark offers a surprising explanation for the disciples’ terror and amazement: “For they had not understood about the loaves; their hearts were hardened” (6:52). The two incidents are somehow connected. What is it that they do not understand about the loaves? What does it have to do with walking on the water? Minear is on target when he comments that the disciples are “blind to the presence of God and his care for men … to the full glory of the revelation of God ‘in the face of Christ.’”6 They do not recognize that the blessing pronounced at the meal, “Praise be Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who causes bread to come forth from the earth,” applies also to Jesus. The condition of hardened hearts refers to disobedience, dullness, and obstinacy and is the predicament of Jesus’ opponents (3:5; see Eph. 4:18). Mark repeats this description in Mark 8:17. The disciples are drawing closer to Jesus’ opponents than to Jesus in their life stance. The difference between them and the opponents is significant, however. The disciples may be confused and blind, but they are not hostile to Jesus.
Jesus sends the disciples off to Bethsaida (6:45), but they land in Gennesaret.7 Perhaps they have been blown off course by the wind, although it was calmed when Jesus entered the boat.8 Perhaps Mark wants the reader to see some significance in their going off course. They are unable to go to Bethsaida, just as they have been unable to understand about the loaves (6:52), and do not reach this destination until later (8:22). Meanwhile, the activities of Jesus comprise a second series of mighty works, intended to help the disciples to see.9 Jesus never gives up on the disciples in spite of their failures, but takes them through the whole process again so that they may understand. He does not require disciples to grasp things immediately. They are not to be condemned for their natural bent to human hardheartedness or for their inability to grasp the mind-boggling reality that God is in their midst in the very person of Jesus. He veils his self-disclosure, and full understanding will not come until after his death and resurrection.
When the people recognize Jesus, they rush about, lug their sick on mattresses, beg to touch the tassels of his garments, and are healed. Some claim that this pursuing of Jesus is only an indication of “the blindness of those whose only interest is in the miraculous.”10 If so, then Jesus meets their misunderstanding with grace by healing them. It is more likely that the pursuit reveals Jesus’ immense popularity. The disciples do not know who he is, but the people of Gennesaret are convinced that he has power to heal. They may not fully understand who heals them either, but their great faith in Jesus’ power contrasts with the little faith of the disciples.
Bridging Contexts
TO UNDERSTAND THE full significance of Jesus’ walking on the water, one must appreciate the web of Old Testament motifs behind the text. This Old Testament background makes it harder to bridge the contexts. Our unfamiliarity with these traditions, compounded by a tendency to interpret details literally, causes us to miss their symbolic significance. The incident is thus trivialized. Jesus did not walk across the water as an amusing gimmick to astound his friends. His action conveys to the disciples and to the reader schooled in Scripture who he is. He comes as a divine figure to rescue his floundering disciples.
The alternative interpretations that try to make sense of why Jesus wanted to pass by his disciples require much less work to express its meaning. They may therefore be more attractive, because one need not explain Old Testament imagery so foreign to many modern listeners. But these interpretations paint a rather mundane scene that misses the enormous significance of what Mark describes. This is an epiphany, a surprise self-disclosure of Jesus’ deity to bewildered disciples.
This epiphany does not occur on a mountain, the traditional locale for encountering the divine presence, where one’s vision seems unlimited, but on the deep waters, traditionally viewed by Israel as a place of dangerous storms and sinister power, where one’s vision is blinded by fear. The sea, however, was the scene of Israel’s greatest deliverance, when God parted the waters of the Red Sea and revealed his divine power over both the deadly forces of nature and humans. The Old Testament motifs in Mark’s account of Jesus’ walking on the water recall God’s mastery over the waters of chaos as Creator and Savior. Jesus walks on the waves like God and speaks like the one true God, “It is I. Don’t be afraid.” Jesus wants to show his disciples a glimpse of his divinity in order to help them unravel the clues to his identity. They do not follow a great prophet or superhero but the very Son of God. He does what no human can do and will do what no human can do—redeem humankind from the bondage of Satan and sin.
Miracles do not always evoke faith, however; nor do they always communicate. One can make this particular miracle look trite, as in the musical drama Jesus Christ Superstar Herod taunts Jesus to “walk across my swimming pool.” Many may fail to appreciate the Christological implications of this miracle and, in that sense, are like the disciples who do not understand about the loaves. Jesus is not pulling off a staggering visual stunt to amaze his friends. Rather, the miracle attests that God himself has visited us in the flesh. This spine-tingling, knee-buckling reality cannot be captured by a jaded Hollywood and may be overlooked by modern Christians who have lost their sense of awe before the holy. Even those disposed to believe that God meets us in Jesus Christ may find it hard to believe that Jesus walked on the water and may dismiss it as pious legend or look for some rational explanation. Such attempts eviscerate this text of its imagery and power. Christians believe they know God through Jesus Christ. In this account, Mark presents Jesus’ revelation of himself to his disciples as God incarnate. But he comes as “an elusive presence they cannot control.”11
We not only meet God in Jesus Christ, we also learn about ourselves through him. The disciples’ fear and lack of comprehension in response to this miracle says something about the human condition when it comes in contact with the divine. The disciples thought they were seeing a ghost. They did not understand the loaves, and their hearts were hardened. We rarely see God walking past or recognize his blessing, bounty, or presence in our lives. In bridging the contexts we ought to reflect on similar experiences from our past where God met us but we were too dense to see it at the time. Like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, we only recognize in retrospect who it was who appeared in our lives (Luke 24:13–35).
One thing no one can miss in this miracle: Jesus clearly cares for his disciples. He sees their distress and comes to them during the darkest part of the night, when they are having trouble in the deepest part of the lake. He shows patience when they fail to see what it all means but recoil in fear. There is no rebuke, only calm assurance. He then delivers them safely to the shore. The disciples see more than God’s back, as Moses did; they saw the face of God in the face of his Son. He is the Savior, who brings calm and deliverance. One can imagine the early Christians who heard this story taking great comfort in it as they applied it to their own distressed situation. As Rawlinson imagines it:
… faint hearts may even have begun to wonder whether the Lord Himself had not abandoned them to their fate, or to doubt the reality of Christ. They are to learn from this story that they are not “forsaken,” that the Lord watches over them unseen, and that He Himself—no phantom, but the Living One, Master of wind and waves—will surely come quickly for their salvation, even though it be in the “fourth watch of the night.”12
JESUS’ RETREAT FROM the throngs and his disciples shows that all humans need solitude, rest, and prayer (1:35; 6:31). In such moments we can meet ourselves face to face and hear God speaking most clearly. Unfortunately, many parishioners do not value that experience enough to ensure that their ministry staff gets it, and many ministers try to get by without it. The pastor’s study is more frequently known as the church office. We value busyness, and by it we measure our effectiveness. Few schedule time for solitude and meditation in the church calendar, usually chock full of activities. Many feel besieged by persons constantly pulling at their sleeves and hearts strings and never take time to recharge their batteries with study, prayer, and rest. The whirlwind of activity spins them like tops, and they end up becoming bone weary physically and bone dry spiritually. They may feel like the disciples—rowing furiously against the wind but getting nowhere, and blind to the God who calls out and says, “I am.”
We can also look at this passage from the perspective of the disciples, who face adversity, feel separated from Jesus, and are distressed in the rowing. Many people may feel that way as they serve in the church. They keep rowing but seem to make no progress. Discouragement sets in when one always seems headed into a gale. They feel cast adrift and may ask why they ever left the shore in the first place; they long to go back. Rowers grow tired and then slack. Or they become so involved in the task that they cannot see the revelation of Jesus’ power and the care that he also gives them.
Some may find comfort in knowing that even when they do not see Jesus, Jesus sees them and comes in the hour of need. He is like Aslan, the lion/Christ figure in C. S. Lewis’s Narnia Chronicles, who appears from over the sea without warning but exactly when he is needed: “Aslan was among them though no one had seen him coming.”13
Jesus does not rescue his disciples out of the sea but enables them to continue the voyage.14 His coming is like the letters to the churches in the Apocalypse. The churches receive the word that the Lord knows what they have endured and are encouraged to continue to endure. The Lord knows the works, toil, and endurance of Ephesus (Rev. 2:2), the affliction and poverty of Smyrna (2:9), the faithful witness of Pergamum in the midst of Satan’s throne (2:13), the patient endurance of Thyatira (2:18), and the little power of Philadelphia (3:8). He does not relieve them of their struggle but promises victory if they are faithful. They must keep rowing, but the power to cross over the sea of life and reach the final destination is not theirs. It belongs to God. The congregation of which I am a member has a church hymn composed by two gifted friends. The last stanza captures the significance of this passage in Mark:
Not our choice the wind’s direction,
unforeseen the calm or gale.
The great ocean swells before us,
and our ship seems small and frail.
Fierce and gleaming is Thy mystery
drawing us to shores unknown:
plunge us on with hope and courage
’till Thy harbor is our home.15
A disturbing element of this miracle is the response of the disciples to Jesus’ sudden appearance. They do not recognize him and are more frightened by his presence than his absence. He comes with all the power of God who controls the mighty forces of the wind and the sea. He tries to reassure them by making himself known in his glory and power. It fails to calm their hearts. Instead, they are stupefied, frightened, and confused. Often Christ may pass by our lives in ways that we fail to see and that might frighten us. How do we see him while we struggle in the dim hours of the night in this present age, besieged by windy opposition? It may only become clear in retrospect, as it did for those first disciples. We realize that in that horrible hour we were in the very presence of God and that Christ revealed his glory to us. We were too blind, too petrified to see it. One should then be alert that in the times of discouragement and greatest fears Christ is passing by, showing his love and power and leading us across troubled waters.
We must admit that we do not live in an age where we witness theophanies. Some may claim today to have been abducted by aliens and whisked away into their spacecraft, but few profess that they have been caught up to the third heaven and seen visions. Most would not believe either one and dismiss both as delusional. God may not encounter us in this way anymore because the cross and resurrection are the clearest revelation of God. It may also be that our vision is weak and dim and we are not attuned to God’s presence. Maybe there are different intensities of the human vision of God at different times in history.