A sermon preached by Pastor Lewis Polzin on July 25, 2021 at St. Peter–Immanuel Lutheran Church in Milwaukee, WI, on Mark 6:46-56. You may play the audio of the sermon here.
A mostly unedited transcript of the sermon follows the jump:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
The text this morning is from the Gospel according to St. Mark, the sixth chapter:
Immediately He madeHis disciples get into the boat and go beforeHim to the other side, to Bethsaida, while He dismissed the crowd. And after He had taken leave of them, He went up on the mountain to pray. And when evening came, the boat was out on the sea, and He was alone on the land. And He saw that they were making headway painfully, for the wind was against them. And about the fourth watch of the night He came to them, walking on the sea. He meant to pass by them, but when they sawHim walking on the sea they thought it was a ghost, and cried out, for they all sawHim and were terrified. But immediately He spoke to them and said, “Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.” And He got into the boat with them, and the wind ceased. And they were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened. When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored to the shore. And when they got out of the boat, the people immediately recognizedHim and ran about the whole region and began to bring the sick people on their beds to wherever they heard He was. And wherever He came, in villages, cities, or countryside, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and imploredHim that they might touch even the fringe ofHis garment. And as many as touched it were made well.
Thus far the text.
My dear friends in Christ,
This a passage that I have preached about many times and yet it is something that I just cannot ignore when it comes. I mean, there's so much good to see out of the Genesis passage and out of the Ephesians passage, but this is incredible. I like it. One of the main reasons is because, if you know Greek, it is very clear as to what Jesus is saying; he's not telling the disciples in the boat that, It is I. He says, Take heart. I am, do not be afraid. Jesus here claims the name of God for Himself. In Greek, it’s ego eimi. In Hebrew it’s Yahweh. In English, it’s I Am. So when Jesus says I am, He’s saying, I'm God. Don't be afraid. I'm God, I got this.
Now you would think that the disciples, who have been through storms with Jesus before, storms where Jesus was sleeping and they wokeHim up and He calmed the the wind and the waves, you’d think that they would know that all will be fine. Except you have to remember that in this windstorm, Jesus isn't with them right away. Our passage today follows after last week's reading, which is the feeding of the 5,000, which we really know is the feeding of many, many thousands, right? Enough that 200 denarii worth of bread. 200 years worth of work, would not have paid to feed them all. After this, Jesus sends the disciples away. He makes them get into the boat and go before him. And presumably this is because Jesus desires then to pray, right? It says He went up onto the mountain to do just that. We’ve talked about this before, that, anytime you see a mountain, something holy is about to happen. And the holy thing that happens is not that Jesus walks on the water. It’s not that He calms the wind. Those are certainly miracles, but the point of this passage isn’t that. The holy thing that happens is that He, God, sees the boat even while it is in the middle of the sea.
Remember the sea of Galilee is no small lake. It's pretty large. I'm not saying it's Lake Michigan, large, but it's pretty large. And a boat can easily be los as you're looking down from a mountain into the sea of Galilee. Add in the wind and the waves surrounding the disciples, and it’s easy to miss the boat. That boat is tiny and small. And when you think about it, we are tiny and small. Who are we that God should take notice of us? When you have a God who created the heavens and the earth, He must be greater than all things that He created. The common child's question comes up. How big is God, daddy? Is He bigger than you? Yes. Is He bigger than Pa Pa (because grandpa's taller than I am)? Yes. Is He bigger than our house? Yes. Is He bigger than the clouds? Yes. And we can go, as adults, ad infinitum, right? Is He bigger than the sun? Is He bigger than the solar system, bigger than the galaxy? The galaxies, is He bigger than the universe? Yes. God is bigger, greater than all these things. And yet He hasHis eye on you. He has taken notice of you. And, in the text, Jesus, God, is able to look down onHis disciples and see that they're struggling against the wind, and He has compassion on them. Leaving the mountain, He comes down to where they are in the midst of the storm.
This, not only, is a actual event that happened, but it is the same kind of thing that happened when Jesus ,being God, leftHis place in heaven to come down and be among the people in the midst of our storms, in the midst of all the pain and strife. As we go through all of our struggles, He comes to us as we are. And yet, like the disciples, we do not understand.
They thought that He was some type of phantasm. I think that's a better word than ghost, right? Because ghost today carries a whole lot of baggage. We think about some kind of disembodied spirit from someone who has unfinished business in the world. That wasn’t a thought for the people back then. They didn’t see ghosts as the souls of people, but rather a ghost, a phantasm was a real spiritual being. They lived in a world where spirits and phantasms are active. And in fact, it's the same world that we live in right now; spirits are active all around us. And it's just, we tend to deny the phantasms and spirits, the demons, the angels, those things that have fallen from God and those things that still serve him. We don't see them. The disciples did. And so they thought, walking through the middle of this lake, they saw a phantasm, because when you see a man standing out in the middle of the water, you're going to freak out just a little bit. And so they thought, Well, this must be some type of spirit, it certainly can not be anything that we know.
But instead Jesus, a real man with a real body, looks at them and says, Take heart. I am. Do not be afraid. And so, too, when we see Jesus, we see the mystery of the God-man, the God who has taken humanity into himself, who is bound Himself with humanity forever, that He might advocate for you before the father. And, as we don’t understand this, we must confess I don't understand why is it that you care for me? Why is it that you love me? Why is it that you would lay down your life for me. And He looks at you and He says, Take heart. I am, I am the Lord. I am taking care of you. I am loving you. I have laid down my life for you to forgive your sins and to bring you to eternal life with me forever. Do not be afraid.
And when they hear this, we find that their hearts were hard and they did not understand. Mark says that about the loaves. Now, if you had been here on Sunday and some of you were, I think you would have heard this idea that the loaves are God's unmerited grace toward us. Remember Jesus takes the fish and the loaves from the people and distributes them out. In that sermon, we talked about how some has thought of the number five as, God's righteousness, God's grace, and the number two is something that is divided, right? And so if you think of Jesus taking these five loaves and two fish, we're talking about Israel, wandering in a desolate place, away from the righteousness, the redemption of Christ, the redemption of God. And yet when all is broken and distributed and taken back up into the baskets to give to the poor, how much is left but 12 baskets full, 12 being the number of the Church, meaning that when Christ appears, He takes that, which is broken and brings back the Church.
And these disciples, at this time, did not understand this saying, they did not understand about the loaves. They had hardened their hearts because they were more concerned about the Jesus who could provide for their physical needs at this moment than the Jesus who would provide forever for their spiritual needs. They did not understand Jesus in this moment, but Jesus would enlighten their eyes and enlightened their hearts by the power ofHis Spirit, just as He has you, so that they could see the true Jesus.
And I think there's something to be said that, when you see the true Jesus, there is nothing that you're going to do to turn away from Him. You will endure, having been given the gift of faith. After all, you follow in the Apostles’ footsteps. They are you in this story, and you will live a life like theirs. For His sake, for the sake of Him who loves us, the Church has endured in the midst of persecution and beatings and shipwrecks, and all the kinds of things that the apostles faced. The disciples never once denied their God for us. And neither shall you. You might think this is harder for you because you’ve never seen Jesus with your eyes, and only believe in Him by faith. And yet the scriptures say that by faith, the angels look at you and ponder at you that you believe in Jesus though you have not seen him. You hope in what you have not seen. And this is a great and marvelous thing. In fact, the prophets longed to see the day in which you live, for you have it better than they, for now you live in the day of Christ's redemption.
And so when we look at this passage, we can say, of course, this is Jesus. Of course, he's God, of course He will save the disciples, but we forget that He does these things also for us. We trust in him, but we have not seen Him with our eyes. And so we forget that Jesus can do, will do these things also for us. HeHow is it that Jesus will call them the storms in our lives? How is it that Jesus will eliminate the struggles that we face? How is it that Jesus will come to be with us? We don't know all of the answers, because certainly we pray for a temporal delivery, and sometimes it seems Jesus waits on that, but we must trust that He will deliver us.
After all, the disciples still had to struggle against the wind, did they not? It's not as if they never struggled. Jesus will deliver you, but to deliver you, you must go through the struggle. There has to be something from which to deliver you. And, honestly, it might be that, Jesus, to eliminate your temporal struggles is waiting for you to die. Because, honestly, that is a great way to eliminate anything that you have to go through for, to live is Christ, but to die is gain. Could it be that He actually does remove these obstacles from your life through some miraculous intervention? Sure. However it may happen, our Lord does desire to take away your struggle. He does desire to take away your burden. I mean, think of Noah having gone through the most horrific death scene in all of creation, in all of creation's history, Noah comes out on the other side, He comes out, saved through the ark. This is a very good lesson for us because the scriptures say that Noah's ark is not there to be a nice little children's story where we draw nice, pretty little animals, right? But instead we should envision all of the dead, right? And corpses around the ark as the world floods. And yet we are those who are saved through the ark because the ark actually points us to Baptism, the ark points to how God has indeed saved us. I think of Noah going through all of this awful stuff and coming out the other side and seeing this rainbow up in the sky and going, what is is that? Because of course He had never seen one before. And now God tells Him, This is a sign of the covenant that I will never destroy again this world by water. And in fact, all flesh has no reason to fear me, but reasons to love me. All of creation is to look to their Lord, who can save them through all of these things.
And yet, while the world rejects our Jesus, you do not. You have, again, been enlightened by faith, through the power of the Spirit, to see your Jesus in all the ways that He has delivered you, in all the ways that He will deliver you. He is going to do this for you. Though it may through death, which doesn’t seem like the most fun way to say God’s deliverance is coming, He will do it. It's how God works. Death is nothing in this life to you, but a portal to which you are taken to your Jesus. It is a portal through which you leave the trials and tribulations of this awful, sin-filled world behind and you enter into what is the beginning of your rest in Him. You are welcomed into this by Baptism. You are welcomed into this by faith. You are strengthened in this by the Supper. You hold fast to your Jesus, and now, recognizing Him, seeing the God-man in front of you, seeing Him by the eyes of faith, even if it is not the eyes of your head, you recognize Him and you run to Him. just as all those people recognize Him on the shore of and ran to Him and ran out to the ends of the neighboring towns and brought all of the sick and all of those who needed Him, wherever Jesus was, they brought them.
So too, do we. Maybe you are sick. And so you bring yourself to Jesus. And maybe you know those who are sick and you bring them to Jesus, whether by actually bringing them into the church or by reaching out to Jesus by prayer and saying, Lord, bless this one, bless this dear child of yours, bring them to health, bring them to faith. See, you've been given something great.
You've been given the knowledge of Jesus through faith informed by all of the accounts that are in the scriptures. They're all true, but they're not there just so that you know a good history, but that you also can see what it is that you are to do in response to the good news of your Jesus Christ saving you from all the things that plague you. You can see everything that you are to do, to run to Him, to cling to Him, and bring others to Him. God has seen you in your struggles, and He shall save you, He has saved you, and He will save you. Through His death, He has brought Himself to you, and through His resurrection, He brings you to Himself forever. He has seen you, noticed you, loved you, and you are forgiven, you are saved. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all human understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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