Year B — Proper 12

The Rev. Gerald W. Keucher

Today's Gospel is Mark's account of Jesus walking on the water. The disciples were astounded and amazed and terrified at seeing Jesus coming toward them as they were in the boat. They were also terrified by the windstorm they were in. Now Mark says that the disciples were afraid of Jesus' actions on the sea because they did not understand about the loaves.

You will recall that last week we heard the story of Jesus feeding the 5000 with five loaves and two fish. The windstorm and Jesus walking on the water come right after that, late on the evening of the miracle of the loaves and fishes. And Mark says the two stories are related. He says the disciples did not understand the calming of the storm because they did not understand about the loaves.

So the question I want to think about it, "What did the disciples not understand about the loaves?" What, perhaps, have we not understood about the loaves that makes today's Gospel story hard for us to take?

I say that because I think that today's Gospel is hard for lots of us to take. In the last couple of hundred years we've come to have big problems with the miracle stories in the Gospels. I remember talking to a priest who said he wished the story of Jesus walking on the water just wasn't in the Bible. The miracle stories, perhaps especially today's, seem to contradict all kind of things we supposedly know about how the world works.

I realized some time ago that I had always thought about Jesus' miracles as external displays of power—events that are happening out there that are supposed to convince me of something, to prove something. I realized that the questions I'd always brought to the miracle stories were always something like these: Could this have happened? Do displays of power like this happen today?

In short, I realized that I didn't understand about the loaves. All throughout Mark's Gospel Jesus works miracles of healing, miracles of feeding, miracles of calming the storms. But Jesus is never concerned with what the miracles prove out there. He tells people over and over not to talk about the miracles as if they were signs of great divine power.

What did the disciples not understand about the loaves? What do we not understand about the loaves? If Jesus didn't do these mighty works to prove He was God or to become a celebrity, then why did He do them?

Maybe Jesus fed the 5000, not to prove anything, but just because those people were hungry. Maybe Jesus calmed the storm, not so that He'd prove that He was in control of the weather, but just because the disciples needed a calm sea in order to reach their destination. Maybe Jesus healed people, not to prove that He was divine, but just because those people were sick and He was there.

In other words, maybe Jesus simply did what the situation demanded in order to meet the real needs of the people He was with. Maybe He was not trying to prove anything. Maybe He was just being Himself—the incarnation of God's love and His concern for the world He'd made.

What's more, Jesus usually seemed to want the cooperation of the people H e was with in order to minister His love. He didn't just create bread and fish out of nothing; the people had to offer Him the meager resources they had, and then He gave it back to them and it was enough. The disciples recognized Jesus and cried out to Him in their terror, and then He calmed the storm and calmed their fears.

Jesus' teachings and actions cannot teach us anything that we are not willing to learn. I think that the point of the miracles is that Jesus is faithful to meet the real needs of His people. I think that the point of the miracles is that Jesus asked us to give Him whatever resources we have—however inadequate they appear—and they will be enough.

All of us here today have had some kind of experience of God. Otherwise we wouldn't be here. We have responded to our experiences of God's love by organizing our lives so that we are here this morning. We have responded to our experiences of God by organizing our money so that we have pledged to support the church, and I hope we are all at or working toward the tithe.

The more we organize our lives and our relationships in response to our experiences of God, the more we will discover God's faithful, loving action in our lives. The more we recognize what God has done in our lives, the more we will entrust our resources to Him, and the more He will be able to do.

The pattern of God's action that we see in the story of the loaves and the fishes is still the pattern of our life in Christ today. The more we recognize that pattern, the more we will want to conform our lives to that pattern.

Jesus' actions in us and through us will not prove that God exists or the doctrine that Jesus is truly divine and truly human. However, our recognition that God is working in us and through us changes our lives. We are formed and reformed and transformed into people God can work with, people who do God's work. And our changed lives are the only proof of the reality of our faith that there is.

Someone said that you can recognize a life of faith, because the faithful person lives in such a way that makes no sense unless God exists. The lives of faithful people give the only proof there is that the faith is true.

• If God did not exist, then looking out for Number 1 is the only sensible kind of life.
• If God did not exist, then we should grab all the gusto we can, because we'll only go around once.
• If God did not exist, then lives of devotion, generosity and self-sacrifice would make no sense.

But since you have been drawn to God, you know that generous gratitude is the response you want to make.

Since you have seen God's hand in your life, you know that you want to live the way He wants you to live, no matter how senseless and naïve it looks to others.

Since you know the miracle of a converted life, you prove God's existence by living in such a way that makes no sense unless God exists.

What did the disciples not understand about the loaves? What do we not understand? Just that Jesus' miracles by themselves prove nothing. We are the proof of the faith.

I know I have seen that proof in your lives, and I pray that you have glimpsed it in mine.