Saturday in the Second Week of Easter, April 22, 2023

John 6, 16-21

When it was evening, the disciples of Jesus went down to the sea, embarked in a boat, and went across the sea to Capernaum. It had already grown dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. The sea was stirred up because a strong wind was blowing. When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they began to be afraid. But he said to them, “It is I. Do not be afraid.” They wanted to take him into the boat, but the boat immediately arrived at the shore to which they were heading.

“When it was evening, the disciples of Jesus went down to the sea.”  This episode takes place after Jesus fed the five thousand and then hid on the mountain so that the people could not seize him and carry him off to make him king.  The Apostles must have found Jesus on the mountain or perhaps the crowd began to break up and he was able to show himself to them in order to instruct them to cross over the sea to Capernaum in their boat.  They would have assumed that he would rejoin them later, crossing the sea in one of the other boats which members of the crowd had used to come to him.  

“It had already grown dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them.”  This is a verse to which all of us can relate: some darkness has come into our lives and we have prayed and were awaiting a response from the Lord but it has not come and it feels like it will not come in time: “The sea was stirred up because a strong wind was blowing.”  “When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they began to be afraid.”  The location where the Lord had fed the crowd to Capernaum, through the Sea of Galilee, comes to about seven miles, so they had traveled halfway.  In other words, miles separated them from the safety of the coast as the winds blew hard and the sea swelled.  But what caused them fear was the sight of Jesus walking on the water.  They must have seen him in the moonlight as it peeked out through breaks in the clouds.  He came near enough to them so that they could make out the figure of a man walking on the water but not so near that they knew who it was.  In Matthew 14, 26, the Evangelist recalls that they thought he was a ghost.  For the Apostles, the stormy conditions and the appearance of a ghost meant their doom and we can excuse them if they began to panic.  We should try to imagine the scene: the wind howling, the darkness, the heaving water, the bounding boat, the scattered moonlight, the figure of a man walking nearby on the water.  He would have appeared to him as very darkened with his clothes whipping about.  He does not struggle to walk, however, but comes across the water as though traversing an open field.  His calmness clashed with the desperation the Apostles were starting to feel.  He must have seemed like an executioner, axe in hand, approaching them, trapped in their jail cell; or as a harbinger of their imminent extinction.

“It is I. Do not be afraid.”  The Lord called out to them in a loud voice, and they knew at once that it was his.  They would have called back to him to come into their boat and they would have tried to row to him, but then another miracle occurred and “the boat immediately arrived at the shore to which they were heading.”  In an instant they were transported from danger in the middle of the sea to the shore, where they could tie up their boat and rest.  The Lord answers our prayers and his good time and when it is best for us for him to do so.  And his answer is better than what we could have imagined praying for.