The Church is the boat. Jesus is not in the boat. Take a moment to see this scene.
Not the splashing around by Peter, not the wonder of walking on the water –
that’s possibly missing everything.
Was it not Dionne Warwick who sang that wonderful song ‘Walk on by‘? Oops, originally produced back in 1963, this is showing my age! Click on the link and listen as you read this blog. 😉 The words don’t exactly fit but the singing is lovely.
In this week’s passage (Matthew 14: 22-33) we have that ‘never gets old’ story of Jesus walking on the water. Cue “let’s all get out of the boat” : hey, let’s not!
This is a story which appears in 3 of the 4 Gospels – but not in Luke’s account. This is known as the ‘Great Omission‘. Luke does mention the calming of the lake, going up a mountain to pray, and Jesus being mistaken for a ghost (albeit much much later in Chapter 24). Some scholars believe that Luke, who used Mark’s Gospel extensively as his source for his own Gospel, wants Jesus to be declared the Messiah after the feeding of the 5000 (last week). In his Gospel, Peter declares Jesus as that Messiah. As we will discover, in Matthew and Mark’s account, Peter seems to follow Jesus and only very much later discern who exactly Jesus is.
So what happened?
In Mark and Matthew’s version, we have the feeding of the 5000 leading us the disciples leaving the place by boat, whereupon a mighty storm looms large on the horizon. Jesus then walks on by. Here, in Matthew’s Gospel, Peter jumps out onto the water, gets his feet wet and needs to be saved. The rest of the disciples start to understand more of this Jesus. However, in Mark’s Gospel, Peter says in the boat, but the disciples are in fear.
This fear is not in the storm, as you and I might be concerned about, so far from the shore.
It isn’t fearful of Jesus, as they fail to recognise him at first – thinking he is a ghost.
It is fear of an unknown man walking on the water.
Who exactly is this man?
The lake is that place of chaos. Taking us back to Genesis, the sea was the very opposite of creation. Jesus is portrayed as walking on by, on his own again – that was the point, not the incredible walking on the water aspect. The disciples were all together in their place of apparent comfort. Albeit my stomach might have been churning in the boat in the midst of that storm.
Where are we going?
The Church is the boat. Jesus is not in the boat. Take a moment to see this scene.
Not the splashing around by Peter, nor the wonder of walking on the water –
that’s possibly missing everything.
There is a gulf between the disciples and Jesus, the Church and God.
Don’t go out alone, for even Peter wasn’t supposed to leave the boat but stay onboard. We are to remain in Community, for that is our fertile ground, or keeping the sea-faring metaphor ebbing and flowing – our home harbour.
Dinae worry how to walk on water. Get and remain into community and go where the people are!
I found the dialogue interesting
Why did Jesus walk away from the church, especially when the people needed him to overcome the storm? What is the advantage of remaining in the community where there is a gulf between the community and God? Also, if heaven was where people are – why did the entire team at my workplace decide to work from home today because of fear of the people protesting in Glasgow? 🙂
Or conversely, why have elements of the church walked away from Jesus? Check out Christian Nationalism. There is that meme which shows a child asking Jesus, “why do you permit so many tragedies in the world?”, to which Jesus responds, “I don’t know why people do?”
Remaining in the community where you are has to be balanced as whether it is safe enough to do so. You alone can make that decision whether it is sufficiently safe enough to remain there. These guys stood their ground https://orthochristian.com/67776.html
I think the last question, I am not thinking directly relates to heaven here on earth as on Wednesday 7th Aug specifically but more so generally, if we dare to look.
I just read it again and realized that Jesus was not in the boat with his disciples prior to his walking on water. So it seems to me that Jesus was revealing himself to his disciples. And so, God does not easily give up on the church, even though church goes away from God for some time.
I read the content here : https://orthochristian.com/67776.html. Amazing how it worked out to resolve the conflict. Yes, to live in a community, we do need to assess our safety.
You have mentioned -“Jesus saw heaven here and now, where he was, where the people were.” Probably, Jesus saw the prospects of building heaven and not that it was already a heaven. “Go where the people are” – is maybe encouraging us to build this heaven by sharing it with the people.
Totally agree with your last paragraph