Wednesday 5 January 2022
1 John 4:11-18. Lord, every nation on earth will adore you – Psalm 71(72): 1-2, 10-13. Mark 6:45-52.
His disciples saw him walking on the lake
Some claim that Mark’s Gospel does not depict Jesus as Divine. Today’s reading presents an insurmountable challenge to this proposal. There are of course elements within the story which signal Jesus’ divinity, with him striding on the sea as only God does (Job 9:8) and going to ‘pass by’ the disciples as God did with Moses (Exodus 33:12-34:9). Beyond these though, Mark has framed the story to get his point across.
At the end of this story, Mark calls back to the feeding of the five thousand, a scene dense with allusions to God’s providence for his people in the wilderness, which immediately preceded it. As if to underline it for his hearers, Mark notes that they are only baffled by what they have seen because they have not understood what the feeding meant. If they had understood it properly, as Jesus’ revealing himself as Israel’s God, him walking on water would be comparatively mundane.
Email this Print This Page
