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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Six tablespoons of water: Some say that six tablespoons of water is all that people have to inhale in order for their breathing to be affected, essentially causing them to “drown”. Not much more than six tablespoons of water were used this morning when God “drowned” Benjamin Scott’s “Old Adam” (or sinful nature) or when we were connected to Jesus’s death and resurrection in Holy Baptism. And, considerably more than six tablespoons of water were involved as Jesus walked out towards His disciples on the Sea of Galilee, as we heard in today’s Gospel Reading, ultimately leaving those disciples utterly astounded. This morning we consider that Gospel Reading under the theme, “Jesus astounds us with water”.
You may recall from the immediately‑preceding verses of St. Mark’s Divinely‑inspired Gospel account, which we heard as last week’s Gospel Reading, that Jesus miraculously used five loaves and two fish in order to feed five-thousand men, not to mention women and children, leaving twelve baskets full of broken pieces (Mark 6:30-44). Then, as we heard today, Jesus, at least potentially knowing what was going to happen, immediately made His disciples get into their boat in order to go before Him to the other side, only they made headway painfully, for the wind was against them. St. Mark earlier had reported Jesus’s stilling a storm when He was in the boat with His disciples (Mark 4:35-41), but this time Jesus was not with them when the wind picked up, and so Jesus first came out towards them walking on the sea, before He got into the boat with them and the wind ceased, and they were utterly astounded.
St. Mark uniquely reports that Jesus meant to pass by the disciples, which may mean more than or other than that Jesus intended to walk past them and keep on going until He got to Bethsaida ahead of them. You may recall that in the Old Testament the Lord passed by both Moses on Mount Sinai (Exodus 33:22; 34:6) and Elijah on Mount Horeb (1 Kings 19:11-13), more-directly revealing Himself and His glory to them. In miracles such as the Feeding of the Five‑thousand, the Lord was revealing Himself in the flesh of the man Jesus, but, as St. Mark said, the disciples did not understand about the loaves. They were like Job, who said, “Behold, [God] passes by me, and I see Him not; He moves on, but I do not perceive Him (Job 9:11). That God, Job had said just before that, had stretched out the heavens and trampled the waves of the sea (Job 9:8). So, Jesus may have thought that, by passing by His disciples walking on the sea, His disciples might have better realized Who exactly Jesus is. Instead, when they all saw Him walking on the sea, they thought it was a ghost and cried out, for they were terrified.
Like Job and like Jesus’s disciples, you and I do not always see God’s passing by us, nor do we always perceive His working in our world. We may take for granted God’s provision and protection, or we may wrongly think that we ourselves are responsible for them. We may look for God to work in ways other than those by which He has promised to work, or we may not “approve” of the things He works or permits, and so we may even wrongly think that He is not working in the world at all. We also may not understand about the loaves, for our hearts may also be hardened. We actually sin in these and in countless other ways, for we are sinful by nature. Our all-seeing God sees our ways, hears our words, and surveys our thoughts (Lutheran Service Book 868). More than the sickness of those whom Jesus us healed at Gennesaret, apart from repentance and faith, we deserve both the temporal death usually associated with water and wind like that the disciples experienced and the eternal death of never-ending torment in hell. But, God calls and thereby enables us to repent and believe, and, when we do so—crying out not in terror in the presence of God as the disciples in their boat but imploring Him for His mercy and healing as the sick of Gennesaret—then God forgives all our sins for Jesus’s sake.
In response to His terrified disciples’ crying out, Jesus speaks to them: “Take heart; it is I; do not be afraid,” and, in response to our repentant plea for mercy, Jesus speaks to us: I forgive you. Jesus’s disciples mistook Him for a ghost, but they were right insofar as He was no mere mortal. Responding to His terrified disciples, Jesus revealed His identity as God in human flesh: He essentially used the Name of God that was initially revealed to Moses as “I am” and then further revealed as the Lord passed by Moses: a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. Jesus’s disciples may have missed it that early morning on the sea of Galilee, but here this morning we do not. In fact, in today’s Epistle Reading (Ephesians 3:14-21), the Divinely‑inspired St. Paul writes about the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. That love our second Distribution Hymn says is “beyond all thought and fantasy”, that “the Son of God should take / Our mortal form for mortal’s sake”: for us He was baptized, daily wrought works seeking us, bore the shameful cross and death, rose again, went on high to reign, and sent His Spirit here (LSB 544)—all for us, that we might be saved from our sins.
In today’s Old Testament Reading (Genesis 9:8-17), we heard God establish His covenant with Noah and his offspring, including Jesus’s disciples and us, the covenant that God would never again flood and destroy the earth. God gave the rainbow as a sign of that covenant, more for Him than for us, as He describes it there, and God has given other signs of other covenants, more for us than for Him. For example, Holy Baptism is not only a sign of our confession of sins and faith but also, and more importantly, Holy Baptism is God’s actually forgiving our sins, rescuing us from death and the devil, and giving eternal salvation to us and to all who believe His promises declared in His Word. That someone else might confess the faith for us and carry us to the Font, as the people in the Gospel Reading brought the sick on their beds, does not matter, for God Himself has first given us that faith by His Holy Spirit working through His Word. We come to the Font children of nature and leave newborn creatures (LSB 593), baptized in the one Name of the Father Who bid the ocean keep its limits, and of the Son Who walked on the foaming deep, and of the Holy Spirit Who at creation brooded upon the chaos dark and deep (LSB 717).
As Jesus made His disciples get into the boat at least potentially knowing what was going to happen to them with the wind against them, so He makes us, His baptized children, in our lives make headway painfully. We may be tested, tortured, and distressed, but nevertheless we can take heart, for God is with us, we do not need to be afraid. We may feel that we are separated from God, but, as He supernaturally saw His disciples struggling across the dark and the distance, so God knows what we are going through. At just the right time and in just the right way, Christ Himself comes to us and gives us what we need. For example, in the Sacrament of the Altar, He is present both in bread and in wine that are His Body and Blood, given and shed for you and for me, for the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. Through our pastors in individual Holy Absolution, He especially forgives the sins that we know and feel in our hearts, the sins that particularly trouble us, the sins that we who repent privately confess. Our “Old Adams” (or sinful natures) should be drowned and die by daily contrition and repentance so that our new man (or redeemed natures) should daily emerge and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever (Small Catechism IV:12). So the baptized live: forgiven only by grace through faith, but increasingly made holy by cooperating with God, such as by coming to His Word and Sacraments through which the Holy Spirit works to make us holy. Apart from His Church and His means of grace around which His Church regularly and faithfully gathers, there is neither salvation nor holiness of life (Large Catechism II:56).
The baptized do not need any more water—not even six tablespoons—to drown their “Old Adams”. Jesus has astounded us with the water of our Holy Baptisms, even as He astounded the disciples by walking on the Sea of Galilee. In both His walking on the sea and in our baptisms, He reveals His divine glory through humble means that He uses to save us. To Him Who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to Him be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +