Jesus: Known & Unknown
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a sermon on Mark 6.45-52
by David C. Mauldin
Westminster Presbyterian Church, Mobile, Alabama
I haven’t seen the movie Lady in the Water, but once it comes out on DVD I
probably will. It is the latest creation of M. Night Shyamalan, whose previous
movies have delightfully frustrated me. He is the creative genius behind such
movies as The Sixth Sense, Signs (in which Mel Gibson played an Episcopal
priest), Unbreakable, and The Village. You can say one thing for the movies this
guy makes: They are different. Usually in a good way.
I am not plugging him, by the way. I’m building up to something he said once
about Jesus. It is reported by Michael Bamberger in a book about how Mr.
Shyamalan risked his career to make Lady in the Water. Bear in mind that Mr.
Shyamalan is a nominal Hindu, although I am not sure to what extent he practices
that faith. He did attend Catholic and Episcopal schools, however, and
presumably knows something about Christianity. Here is what he said: “I find it
much more poignant to think of Jesus as a man, doing what he did purely on
faith. … By making him a god, he can’t be an example to me. If you have every
piece of magic available to you, and then you walk on water, what’s the big
deal? I can’t emulate that. … If Jesus made a blind man see on faith alone,
that’s awesome. If he went to the cross as an ordinary man with just
unbelievable faith, how inspiring is that? I’d be in awe of that man.”
I share that with you not in order to set up a straw man I can knock down, but
because I think he has put into words something even Christians sometimes
experience. This story about walking on water doesn’t make us feel closer to
Jesus. It makes him seem somehow less accessible. Jesus appears here so
different, so God-like, that we have difficulty relating. We are with the
disciples in their lack of understanding and fear. This is not the happy,
friendly Jesus we remember from that Sunday school picture with children on his
knee. This is not the Jesus of Gethsemane who cries out to his Father in vain,
the way we often do. … Or is it? Jesus comes walking on the water, and we are
not ready for it. Does this story make Jesus known to us, or does it take him
away? What will we do with it? So often we just ignore it.
One reason we ignore it is because it is embarrassing. Your friend says
Christianity is a bunch of mumbo-jumbo superstition, and you say, “No it isn’t!
Come and see!” So your friend comes to church with you and the sermon is about
Jesus walking on water, and your friend says, “I told you so.” For 300 years
scholars and lay folk alike have been picking apart scripture, and this passage
is a slam dunk. Those who are inclined to question the historical worth of parts
of the gospels because they doubt miracles never leave this story intact. I’ll
bet the Jesus Seminar had an easy time with this one. “Of course it didn’t
happen,” the skeptic can say. “Of course people don’t walk on water.” And even
if you are open to unusual—dare we say even miraculous—things happening, does
this even make sense?
Let’s face the question squarely: Did this happen? As you may know, I’m a bit of
a skeptic myself. I am one who will question the gospels. Interrogate the
witnesses. You have to. That’s what made my faith solid. While I will question,
I have reached a place in my journey of faith where I insist on significant
reasons before I will cast something aside as historically dubious. The mere
fact that people do not walk on water is not enough, in my opinion. After all,
if you believe in God, miracles are the easy part. And, as Hamlet said to his
friend, “There are more things in heaven and on earth, Horatio, than are dreamt
of in your philosophy.” If Jesus is who Christians believe he is, then this is
not impossible. If he isn’t, … well, this story is not our biggest problem. You
have to decide that on other grounds, and having done so, I am content to accept
this account as Mark offers it.
Now, with that behind us—or at least behind me—what are we going to do with this
story? I think it helps us to understand, and even to know, Jesus—if we are
thoughtful and careful and not sloppy and lazy. So I want to open this story up
to you in a fresh way, and hopefully we are going to hear what God is saying to
us through it. My goal in this sermon is to help you understand Jesus better,
and more importantly, to get closer to him. Every Christian ought to be able to
articulate the orthodox Christian understanding of who Jesus is. Although
Christians disagree over many issues in theology, there is amazing consensus
about Jesus. And of course, as you get this straight, your relationship with
Jesus will grow. You will find him to be both your Lord and God and your friend.
He will be an example to follow, but also much more than this; he will be your
Savior—something you need far more than an example.
My plan from this point on is simple. I will share with you two mistakes I find
in M. Night Shyamalan’s statement and point out why they are mistakes. Again, I
am not picking on him. I think a lot of Christians stumble at the same places. A
lot of non-Christians do too. Then at the end, I’ll offer a few practical
conclusions we can draw from all this.
Shyamalan’s first mistake is to set Jesus’ divinity against his humanity. Jesus
is either human or divine. If he is human we can relate to him; we can know him;
we can try to be like him. If he is divine, then sure he can do some pretty cool
stuff—like walking on water—but that puts him into a whole different league from
us. What good does that do us?
Christianity asserts that Jesus is both fully human and fully God. This is the
doctrine and the mystery of the incarnation: the Word became flesh and dwelt
among us. The eternal Son of the Father was conceived by the Holy Spirit and
born of the Virgin Mary. He was named Jesus, and because his role in God’s plan
of Salvation was to be the Messiah, he is also called Christ—Christ is not a
name but a job title. So when we talk about Jesus Christ, we are talking about
the eternal Son of the Father. Jesus is God. And yet, he is also fully human. He
was born in a given time and place, with flesh and blood. He faced all the
hardship and limitations we do. He suffered temptation as we do. He knew hunger,
pain, and even death. He is fully God, fully human, with both these natures in
one person. It is beyond our comprehension how God pulled that off, but this is
who Christians know Jesus to be. We cannot explain it to our complete
satisfaction, but we know it to be so.
Many Christians make a mistake similar to this first one by Shyamalan. They read
in the Bible about Jesus being hungry or tired or sad, and they say, “Yes,
that’s the human part of him.” Then they read about him walking on water and
they say, “Well, that’s the divine part.” For them Jesus is like a light switch.
Now he is God. Now he is human. Back and forth. Now I can relate to him. Oops,
now I can’t, but that’s OK because he needs to be God in order to do that
important stuff mere mortals can’t do.
This isn’t correct. Jesus is not part God and part human. He doesn’t alternate
between the two like Superman and Clark Kent. “Look! Out on the water! It’s a
phantom! It’s the disciples’ overactive imagination! No! It’s Jesus!” … Sorry,
couldn’t resist.
Christianity believes Jesus is fully God and fully human all the time. This is
important. Why? Because Jesus is the mediator between God and humanity. He is
the bridge. We can get close to Jesus because he is human, but when we do, we
discover that we are now close to God. When Jesus is hungry and tired, God is
hungry and tired. When Jesus walks on the water, a human being is walking on the
water. This truth is so important. Because of it, God knows what it is like to
be us. “We do not have a high a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our
weaknesses,” Hebrews 4.15. Because of it, we can know God. He has revealed
himself to us. Our knowledge of him and experience of him is not hearsay. It is
direct and immediate. In Jesus, God came—and through his Spirit comes—to us.
This calls for closeness and familiarity, but also respect. Jesus is our friend.
He does sympathize. He loves you and wants you to love him. At the same time, he
is more than just a friend, so that we dare not get presumptuous. He is Lord of
Creation, the eternal God, the Alpha and Omega. So we get close to him without
forgetting the reverence we owe him.
What was it the disciples did not understand about the loaves—referring to Jesus
feeding the 5,000? This story is set in the midst of busy-ness and confusion in
the gospel. First Jesus sent his twelve disciples out on their own to try their
hand at his style of ministry. They returned excited, and Jesus invited them to
get away for a while and rest. So many people were flocking to Jesus that he and
his disciples didn’t even have time to eat. So they got in a boat and crossed
the Sea of Galilee, but the crowds followed them. That’s when Jesus fed the
5,000. Now he sends them off again while he dismisses the crowds and finds a
quiet moment for prayer. What had they missed?
They failed to grasp who Jesus is. The miracle of the loaves should have told
them a lot. Walking on the water seems gratuitous, but it is not. It is a sign
and a lesson. In the Old Testament it is God who rules creation and treads upon
the waves. Because we have our ears tuned to scripture, we hear echoes of the
Old Testament in this gospel story. It says Jesus intended to pass them by. Did
he really? What for? But as we ponder this riddle we hear Exodus 33 in the back
of our minds, where Moses asks to see God and twice God uses the word “pass by”
to describe how he will allow that. We also hear 1 Kings 19.11 ringing in our
ears. Elijah is told the Lord is about to pass by—again the same word in Greek.
Later in the story, Jesus tells the disciples, “It is I.” In the original text
it is literally, “I am.” And although this may be nothing more than Jesus
saying, “Hey, It’s I,” we don’t think so, because we remember God telling Moses
his name is I AM. This passage is telling us something—something the disciples
missed. We will come to that later.
The second mistake Shyamalan makes is to think of Jesus merely as a teacher of
ethics. This is a classic error of liberal Christianity: Assuming Jesus helps us
by teaching us right from wrong and giving us an example to follow. Of course
Jesus did teach us how God wants us to live. And he did provide an example. But,
he did a lot more than that, and if your vision of him is limited to his role as
a teacher, you do not know or understand him.
The truth is, an example is not our greatest need. What we need most is a
Savior. The problem is not that we don’t know right from wrong. The problem is
our hearts are evil. Even if we had an ethical teacher who provided a perfect
example for us to follow—who was in no way divine, so that no one could weasel
out of doing what he (or she—our example could be a woman) did and whom
everybody in the world agreed we ought to follow—it wouldn’t matter. The world
would still be as big a mess as it is now. Why? Because human nature is broken.
We are sinful. The problem is not that we don’t know how to do good. The problem
is we choose evil. And for this reason we need a Savior.
Jesus is God’s perfect Savior for our needs. Because he is God, he can save. And
because he is human, he can save us. He did for us what we could not do for
ourselves. Through him we have forgiveness, reconciliation with God, and
ultimately healing. He is making us to be a new creation. Yes, he teaches us
right from wrong. Yes, he gave us an example to follow—a very challenging one.
But none of that would matter if he had not died for us. …
OK, granted that what we need most is a Savior, and Jesus is that. Is he also a
realistic role model? Phrased another way: If Jesus is God, can he be an example
to us? This was the concern of Shyamalan. If Jesus is divine, he has an unfair
advantage. We could never be like him. Why try? Interestingly, Shyamalan holds
out the possibility that as a mere human, Jesus might have made a blind man see
through the power of faith. That’s a fascinating thought that would never have
occurred to me. I’m simply too much of a skeptic. And I want to know what the
object of that kind of faith would be. Faith always has an object, the thing you
have faith in. Plus, if a merely-human Jesus could cure the blind with faith,
why would walking on water be magic? Why couldn’t that be faith too?
Yet the question stands: If Jesus is God, is he still an example for us to
follow? A few years back Jesus’ status as a role model was affirmed by the WWJD
fad. “What would Jesus do?” everybody was asking. And they asked it on
bracelets, T-shirts, bumper stickers, and almost anything that could be sold. It
was catchy, but those who seriously tried to apply it to their problems found it
was easier said than done. I remember a conversation once in which a woman was
talking about what an unbearable jerk her boss was. She wanted advice for
dealing with him. A well-meaning colleague spoke up and asked, “What would Jesus
do?” Without missing a beat the woman answered, “Jesus would cast the demons out
of this guy and set him straight!” Maybe, maybe not. You can talk about
forgiving, speaking the truth in love, standing up against evil, and all sorts
of things Jesus did. That doesn’t necessarily provide clear guidance for dealing
with a difficult boss.
You know I am going to say Jesus is a realistic role model for us because the
New Testament so often encourages us to follow his example—“Let the same mind be
in you that was also in Christ Jesus.” And because Christians have always looked
to Jesus for practical guidance about how to live. He is a role model for us
because he is fully human. In fact, he is the most truly human who ever lived.
He was everything God intended human beings to be. He is the prototype of
renewed humanity. He is how God wants all of us ultimately to be. So yes, we can
and must be like him, but two quick warnings.
One is, following him means we are to be like him, not necessarily that we must
do just what he did or would do. Whatever it is God wants you to do with your
life, your job is not Savior of the world. What you need to do instead is get to
know Jesus. Learn his heart. Then think and feel as he does. The right actions
will follow. In other words, don’t do what he did. Be like him. So you cannot
feed the multitudes with five loaves and two fish. What matters is: When you see
those people, like sheep without a shepherd, do you have compassion for them as
Jesus did?
The second warning is more of an encouragement. It is only as Jesus’ Spirit
takes up residence within us and begins to change us that following him becomes
a possibility. Jesus is hard to emulate, in part because he is different from
us. He is without sin. His human nature is whole and sound and just what God
intended. Ours has fallen and it can’t get up. Not without God picking us up.
God’s work in us makes it possible for us to be like Jesus. Because our sinful
nature is slow in dying (we never entirely lose it in this lifetime) we will
follow imperfectly. But we can follow. When God’s work in us is completed, we
will be like Jesus. Until then, we can at least get closer and closer.
Now … to conclude with a couple of things I hear God saying to us in this
passage. The first one is: Believe! Believe in Jesus, just as he wanted his
disciples to. He walks on the water. He says, “I AM.” This passage demands that
we either come to terms with the fact that Jesus is more than human—he is God—or
we just laugh at this story and throw it away. Believe!
Second, what Jesus says to his disciples in the boat, God says to us: “Have
courage! Do not be afraid!” This is the most frequent command in the Bible.
Whenever God’s glory is made known, people are told: “Do not be afraid.” And
God’s glory is being made known. Jesus no longer walks the waves of Galilee, but
he has poured his Spirit out upon the church and sent it into the world. God’s
glory is made known. Someday it will be fully revealed. Believe, therefore, and
do not be afraid. Jesus is fully human and fully divine. His is our friend. He
is our Savior. Amen.
rev_mauldin@yahoo.com
August 13, 2006
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