Saturday
in the
Second
Week of Easter
April
25th
With apologies if you
wanted a refection on either ANZAC Day[1] or The Feast of St Mark. I
am however keen to maintain continuity with the weekday Eucharistic readings.
READING: John 6: 16-21
When evening came, his
disciples went down to the sea, got into a boat, and started across the sea to
Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. The sea became
rough 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 were terrified. But he said to them, “It is I [In Greek: I am] do
not be afraid.” Then they wanted to take him into the boat, and immediately the
boat reached the land toward which they were going.
REFLECTION
I noted early in this series that I take a more or
less “literary critical” and “reader-response” approach to scripture. This
possibly needs expansion at some stage, but I may have pushed a friendship far
enough already! When it comes to the “nature miracles” such as that of this
passage my meaning will become a little more apparent: I believe that the
critical issue here is not the “thinginess” of what happened, but the deeper
truth that John is seeking to convey to his faith-community, and in the
purposes of God, to us.
Again, there was a school of thought, particularly in
the 1950s, that “de-miraculized” this passage altogether: Jesus was walking on
stepping stones beneath the water’s surface, not visible in the dark to the
frightened disciples (Peter and his net-fishing mates were smarter than that I
think?). William Barclay, beloved of many, has Jesus walking “by the seashore,”[2] drawing in the author’s
use of the same words at John 21:1. (Sadly at this point I cannot reach for
more credible commentaries, currently under lock-down in Peter Mann house …
another time, maybe). I am unconvinced.
There is anyway something here much more
important than the mechanics of Jesus’ shortcut. The shortcut’s miraculous
element has to be consistent with the first Christians’ experience of the risen
Lord – remembering that John was writing decades later. While there have been a
few sightings of Elvis, not many have been consistent with the experiences of
those who knew him, especially Priscilla and Lisa Marie Presley. Claims were
made about Hitler, too, with equal credibility. Perhaps standards of proof were
less rigorous in John’s day, but for the gospel message that John treasured to seize
hearts and minds, his story had to resonate with the expectations and
experiences of the faithful. The experience John’s people had of the presence
of the Risen Lord was powerful enough for them to be certain he was capable of
subduing nature to his will, that his stakes on the divinity register, revealed
in his life, death, teachings and above all their experience of his
resurrection, was sufficiently powerful to give this most outrageous claim sufficient
credibility to live and die for.
It is worth noting, too that the scene follows the
feeding miracle I wrote about yesterday: social justice and mystical experience
all rolled into one, and again consistent with the experience of John’s
audience. It happens, too, after a powerful moment of prayer in Jesus’ journey;
is John flagging the importance of connection with the energies of God in the
times of trial (such as we are now experiencing)? Above all, John records Jesus’
powerful words to the (understandably) frightened disciples: “I am”. This is
one of many “I am” sayings by Jesus (and there’s a few “I am not” by John the
Baptist), The most remarkable is John 8:58, “before Abraham was, I am." For John to
float that daring claim it had to be consistent with his audience’s experience
of the Risen Lord.
[1]
My thoughts on the ANZAC
tradition can be seen at https://pivotalpokes.blogspot.com/2017/04/ and https://pivotalpokes.blogspot.com/2018/04/.
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