Mark 6:45-52 — Take Courage! It Is I

FRANK EDWARDS: "I will fear no evil, for You are with me." On step six we heard that line sits at the very center of Psalm 23. Today Mark puts it out on open water, at night, with the wind against the boat and twelve frightened men at the oars. And when Jesus finally speaks to them, he says three short sentences that answer the psalm line almost word for word. LINDA BROWN: Welcome to Dig Deeper. I'm Linda Brown, here with Frank Edwards, and this is step seven of our sixteen steps through Psalm 23. One sentence in today's reading stops nearly everyone. Jesus walks across the lake toward his exhausted friends, and Mark says, "He intended to pass by them." We will get to that. First, the passage. Mark chapter six, verses forty-five to fifty-two. Immediately Jesus made His disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of Him to Bethsaida, while He dismissed the crowd. After bidding them farewell, He went up on the mountain to pray. When evening came, the boat was in the middle of the sea, and Jesus was alone on land. He could see that the disciples were straining to row, because the wind was against them. About the fourth watch of the night, Jesus went out to them, walking on the sea. He intended to pass by them, but when they saw Him walking on the sea, they cried out, thinking He was a ghost— for they all saw Him and were terrified. But Jesus spoke up at once: "Take courage! It is I. Do not be afraid." Then He climbed into the boat with them, and the wind died down. And the disciples were utterly astounded, for they had not understood about the loaves, but their hearts had been hardened. FRANK EDWARDS: Start with the line itself. On step six we heard that "evil" is ra', harm, whatever is bad, and that the psalm does not pretend it is absent. We also heard that the last part has no verb at all in Hebrew: ki atah 'immadi, for You with me. The reason not to fear is not a feeling or a technique. It is a person. Today's reading asks what that means when the person seems to be somewhere else. LINDA BROWN: The reading opens with "immediately," straight after the twelve baskets we heard about on step five. And then "made." Jesus made them get into the boat. FRANK EDWARDS: The verb is anankazo, to compel, to press someone into something they would not choose. John 6 gives one reason: the crowd was "about to come and make Him king by force." Whatever the reason, the disciples did not drift into the wind by mistake. They were in that boat because Jesus put them there. On step six we heard that in the psalm the valley comes straight after "He guides me in the paths of righteousness." The hard place lay on the road the Shepherd chose. So does this lake. LINDA BROWN: Then he goes up the mountain to pray. On step three we heard Mark mention him praying in a solitary place before dawn. FRANK EDWARDS: Mark shows Jesus praying three times: before dawn in chapter one, here on the mountain, and in Gethsemane. All three in the dark, all three at a turning point. And while the disciples fight the wind, the one they are missing is praying. LINDA BROWN: "He could see that the disciples were straining to row, because the wind was against them." From a mountain, at night. FRANK EDWARDS: Straining is basanizo. It first meant testing metal on a touchstone, and it came to mean torment. Mark used it a chapter earlier for the man with the demons, who cried, "I beg You before God not to torture me!" These were fishermen who knew the lake, and Mark's word for their night is torment. They had been out since evening, and Jesus came "about the fourth watch," between three and six in the morning. John says they had rowed "about three or four miles." LINDA BROWN: That is the moment the psalm line is hardest to say, isn't it? When the "You" does not seem to be in the boat. FRANK EDWARDS: Your question is the honest one, and Mark answers it carefully. He does not say when Jesus first saw them, or why he came when he did, and we should not invent a reason. What Mark makes plain is that Jesus saw them. Psalm 121 says, "the Protector of Israel will neither slumber nor sleep." The disciples could not see him. He could see them. "You are with me" was true on that lake before they knew it. LINDA BROWN: Then he comes to them walking on the sea. Mark says it twice. FRANK EDWARDS: In Israel's songs the sea was the wild, dangerous thing only God could master. Psalm 89: "You rule the raging sea; when its waves mount up, You still them." Job 9 says God "alone stretches out the heavens and treads on the waves of the sea," and in the Greek translation of Job the verb is the same one Mark uses for walking. Psalm 77 remembers the exodus: "Your path led through the sea, Your way through the mighty waters, but Your footprints were not to be found." On this lake the footsteps are walking toward a boat. LINDA BROWN: Which brings us to that sentence. "He intended to pass by them." It still sounds as if he meant to walk on past. FRANK EDWARDS: Two Old Testament scenes explain it. On Mount Sinai God told Moses, "when My glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft of the rock." Then "the LORD passed in front of Moses and called out," and he proclaimed his name: "The LORD, the LORD God, is compassionate and gracious." Centuries later God told Elijah, "Behold, the LORD is about to pass by." In the Greek Old Testament those passages use the verb Mark uses here. Passing by is what God does when he shows himself. LINDA BROWN: They do not take it that way. "They cried out, thinking He was a ghost." The word is phantasma, isn't it? FRANK EDWARDS: An apparition, the root of our word phantom. Mark adds, "for they all saw Him and were terrified." Every one of them. LINDA BROWN: So did they fail the psalm? "I will fear no evil," and these men were terrified. FRANK EDWARDS: The psalms are more honest than that. David prays in Psalm 56, "When I am afraid, I put my trust in You." Fear comes, and trust answers it. Psalm 23:4 is said in a valley by someone who knows exactly what there is to fear. "I will fear no evil" is not a boast that fear never arrives. It is the decision of someone who knows who is with him. The disciples had not yet seen who was coming. LINDA BROWN: Then Jesus speaks, and Mark says he did it "at once." "Take courage! It is I. Do not be afraid." FRANK EDWARDS: Put those three sentences next to the psalm line. "Do not be afraid" is "I will fear no evil" turned into a command. And "It is I" is "You are with me" heard from the other side. In the psalm the sheep says to the Shepherd, "You are with me." On the lake the Shepherd says to the sheep, "It is I." And in Greek "It is I" is two words, ego eimi. On a dark lake it can simply mean, it is me. But those are the words God uses of himself in the Greek of Isaiah 43, "understand that I am He." The same chapter opens, "Do not fear, for I have redeemed you," and promises, "When you pass through the waters, I will be with you." LINDA BROWN: And "It is I" sits in the middle of the three, with a command on either side. On step six you said "You are with me" sits at the exact center of the psalm. FRANK EDWARDS: Twenty-six Hebrew words before it and twenty-six after, counted one standard way. Jesus' answer on the lake has the same shape: take courage, do not be afraid, and in the middle, who has come. Whether or not Mark meant the parallel, the center of both is a presence, and everything around it hangs on that. LINDA BROWN: Jesus uses that same "take courage" on the night before the cross, in John 16. "In the world you will have tribulation. But take courage; I have overcome the world!" FRANK EDWARDS: Courage given by someone, not summoned from inside. And Mark uses ego eimi again at the trial, when the high priest asks if he is the Christ and Jesus answers, "I am." Here it comes as comfort to frightened friends. There it costs him his life. LINDA BROWN: Then the line that sounds most like the psalm to me. "Then He climbed into the boat with them, and the wind died down." FRANK EDWARDS: With them. That is 'immadi, with me, acted out. He does not shout instructions from the water. He gets into the boat. The last words of Matthew's Gospel make the same promise to every disciple after them: "And surely I am with you always, even to the end of the age." And "the wind died down" are the same words Mark used in chapter four, after Jesus "rebuked the wind and the sea." That night the disciples asked, "Who is this, that even the wind and the sea obey Him?" Psalm 107 had already said of sailors in a storm, "He calmed the storm to a whisper," and the "He" is the LORD. Mark 4 left the question hanging. Mark 6 walks across the water and answers it. LINDA BROWN: Isaiah 43 puts the whole line in one breath, doesn't it? "Do not be afraid, for I am with you." FRANK EDWARDS: The command and the reason together, which is exactly the shape of Psalm 23:4 and of Jesus' words on the lake. No fear, because of presence. LINDA BROWN: And yet the story does not end with them worshiping. It ends, "they had not understood about the loaves, but their hearts had been hardened." FRANK EDWARDS: Mark treats their terror as a symptom. The loaves should have told them who was with them. The one who fed five thousand a few hours earlier was the one coming across the water. The word for hardened shares its root with Mark 3, where Jesus looked at the Pharisees "with anger and sorrow at their hardness of heart." Now it describes the Twelve. Two chapters later he asks them again, "Do you have such hard hearts?" LINDA BROWN: Hardness of heart in the same boat as Jesus. Being close to him does not mean seeing who he is. FRANK EDWARDS: Mark does not flatter them. But look at what Jesus does. He climbs into the boat anyway. He does not wait for their hearts to soften before he comes, and he does not leave because they failed to understand. Ezekiel 36 promised that the cure would come from God's side: "I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh." That is why the psalm line can be prayed by anyone who belongs to him, however unsteady they feel. "You are with me" does not rest on how brave the sheep is. It rests on who climbed into the boat, and Hebrews 7 says he "always lives to intercede for them." Hear Jesus' words again, and then the line David wrote. "Take courage! It is I. Do not be afraid." I will fear no evil, for You are with me. [long pause] LINDA BROWN: For a way to take this into an ordinary week, the Apply This Today section in the app picks it up. Next time, Mark chapter eight, where Jesus asks his disciples who they say he is, tells them he must suffer, be killed and rise again, and the first half of verse four: "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death." FRANK EDWARDS: Dig Deeper is a free app, and you can find it at dig deeper dot A I. LINDA BROWN: Thanks for listening, and for spending this night on the lake with Mark.