Walking Past Them on the Water

He puts the disciples in the boat and sends them on ahead, gets the crowd off the shore, and goes up the mountain by himself to pray. The quiet he wanted that afternoon comes at last, hours late, and he spends it praying.

Evening comes. The boat is out in the middle of the water and he is by himself on the land, and Mark says he could see them straining at the oars because the wind was against them. They are in trouble, and he is watching from the shore.

He comes out to them in the fourth watch, the last stretch of night before daylight. They had been at those oars for hours.

Jesus went out to them, walking on the sea. He intended to pass by them,

That last clause has puzzled readers for a long time, and it makes better sense once you know where the words come from. Moses asked to see God's glory and was put in a cleft of the rock with a hand over him while the glory passed by. Elijah was sent out to stand on the mountain because the LORD was about to pass by, and passing by is what God does when he lets somebody see him. It is a showing, not a walking away.

There is a line in Job as well, saying that God alone stretches out the heavens and treads on the waves of the sea. Mark puts a man on the water doing what Job says God does. He never stops to tell us so.

The men in the boat see none of it. They see a shape moving where nothing should move, take it for a ghost, and cry out, and Mark says every one of them was terrified.

It is I. Do not be afraid.

Some readers hear the divine name underneath those words, because the phrase in the language Mark wrote in is the one God used when he told Moses his name at the burning bush. It does not show in English, and not every reader takes it that way. Mark does not explain it either. He sets three enormous things down in four verses and moves on.

He climbs into the boat and the wind drops. Mark does not say he spoke to it.

Then it ends in a way nobody would choose: they were utterly astounded, and Mark explains their astonishment with a clause about bread.

for they had not understood about the loaves, but their hearts had been hardened.

They had watched five thousand people eat that same afternoon and had gathered up the leftovers with their own hands, and a few hours later, in the dark, they could not tell who was walking toward them.