EXPLANATORY AND CRITICAL NOTES
John 6:17. Jesus was not yet come.—They had probably understood that He was to meet them at some point on the shore.
John 6:19. As the stretch from the point where they set sail to Tiberias was perhaps seven to eight miles, the disciples had probably made only about half the distance (Mark 6:47). Jesus walking on the sea (ἐπὶ τῆς θαλάσσης).—Not along the shore, as some rationalistic critics suggest. The whole narrative is against such an interpretation (see also Matthew 14:28-33), which is quite conclusive against this conjecture.
John 6:21. They willingly.—They were willing to receive Him, etc.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— John 6:16-21
Christ the hope of the faithful and of His Church in peril.—This narrative of St. John must be taken in connection with the parallel passages in the Synoptists (Matthew 14:22-33; Mark 6:45-52, which see), which give a more full and circumstantial account of this incident. St. John’s purpose, it may be, in his manner of narrating the incident, was to emphasise our Lord’s true kingship. He would not consent to be made a king after the desire of the Jews; but He showed in this miracle His true royal dignity. It was for this reason in part that He constrained His disciples to depart to the other side, whilst He remained behind. He did not wish them to be infected with the carnal enthusiasm of the people, and it was perhaps the rising desire in their hearts that He would comply with the wishes of the people that made it necessary for Him to constrain them (Matthew 14:22) to depart. And besides, He would turn the occasion into a means of strengthening and confirming their faith.
I. Peace on the mountain side.—
1. After the miracle of feeding the five thousand, which had been wrought on some plain near the lake most likely, our Lord retired alone to the mountain (whither He had gone before the miracle, John 6:3), in order to escape the throng of people who wished to proclaim Him a king. But as His kingdom was not of this world, His crown no tinsel or even golden crown of earth, to be placed on His head with acclamation by men, but, so far as this world was concerned, a crown of thorns, He went in the gathering darkness to the solitary mountain side.
2. Yet another purpose also impelled Him thither. It is true the divine Son was ever conscious of His Father’s presence; but as the Son incarnate He needed these periods of restful, undisturbed communion with the Father, whence He came forth strengthened for His work.
3. And especially at such a time would He need this strengthening. The people altogether misunderstood His mission; even His disciples were prone to be led away by the prevailing Messianic conceptions, whilst one of them “had a devil” (John 6:70). Therefore the incarnate Son needed to be strengthened now by close and uninterrupted communion with the Father, as in Gethsemane and in other crises of His ministry.
II. Trouble on the sea.—
1. Meantime the disciples had embarked for Capernaum. It would almost seem as if they had tarried for Him at some point along the eastern shore; but, as He had not come, in obedience to His order, previously given no doubt, they launched forth (John 6:17):
2. One of those sudden storms which sweep down on the deep trough in which this land-locked lake lies arose soon after the disciples set sail, and drove them, in spite of laborious rowing, toward the middle of the lake, so that when the fourth watch of the night began the toiling vessel was still far from its destination.
3. When suddenly, in the “struggling moonbeams’ misty light,” shining intermittently through the storm-rack, they saw that which confounded and terrified them—a human form treading securely over the heaving waters.
III. Peace on the troubled waters.—
1. On the solitary mountain side Jesus did not forget His followers. As before said, His intention was doubtless to strengthen their faith by that night’s experience. He saw them as they toiled in rowing. But they must be prepared for the hour when He should have to go hence, and they should be left alone to buffet with the winds and waves of the world’s opposition.
2. But when the moment He saw fittest had come He appeared near them walking on the storm-tossed waters. The first effect on them of His appearance was a sensation of terror. They forgot their Master’s power—that once before He had risen from sleep and stilled the storm, with words of rebuke to them for the weakness of their faith (comp. Matthew 8:26). They forgot that His power had, but a few hours before, been manifested in the feeding of the multitude. They had now to learn that that power availed though space and storm should for the moment sunder them from Him. And in His cheering hail over the stormy waters, “It is I, be not afraid,” we hear the prelude of the comforting words, “Let not your heart be troubled,” and the resurrection greeting, “Peace be unto you” (John 14:1; John 20:19; John 20:26).
3. Now they joyfully recognised their Lord, and were willing—heartfeltly willing—to receive Him into the ship. And after the incident in which Peter figures conspicuously, and which is recorded by the other Evangelists, Jesus entered the ship, the storm subsided (Matthew 14:32), and the vessel, obeying Him who rules in all the realms of being, was “immediately at the land whither they went.”
IV. Christ comes still to His people in storm and trouble.—
1. This miracle, like most of those wrought by our Lord, has a spiritual purpose, as well as that it was immediately intended to effect. His words of cheer, “It is I, be not afraid,” still ring out in the night and storm and tempest to comfort His people, and have done so in all the centuries since that night on Galilee.
2. Christ has passed from our view into the heavenly mount of God, and we have perforce to launch out here on the stormy sea of life. But shall we not, even in the darkest and most troubled hour, remember all He has done for us, His miracles of mercy and power in the past—all His goodness? and can we forget that the Shepherd of Israel, of His own people, neither slumbers nor sleeps, and that in the hour of need He will appear to our aid?
3. And when He does come it may be in unwonted fashion, it may seem as “purposing to pass by” (Mark 6:48), or as to the disciples at Emmaus “as though He would go further.” Yet it is but to quicken our faith and lead us to put confidence in Him, and trust in the fulfilment of His promise that He is with us always (Matthew 28:20), even when we cannot recognise Him in the events and circumstances that surround us. And thus, even in the solemn hour when we must fare forth across the waters of death, we shall, if faithful, know that He is near, and hear His cheering word, “It is I, be not afraid.”
4. The Church has fitly appropriated this incident as a type of her experience at earnest periods of her history. So, in these latter days, when fiercer storms than she has before experienced beat upon her, and her company strain wearily, it may often seem vainly, at the labouring oar, let them take courage, remember the past, and believe that He is near.
“And all is well, tho’ faith and form
Be sunder’d in the night of fear;
Well roars the storm to those that hear
A deeper voice across the storm.”
Tennyson.
HOMILETIC NOTES
John 6:17. The Christian life under the figure of a voyage.—We see:—
I. The peaceful commencement;
II. The stormy progress;
III. The happy termination.
John 6:18. The progress of Christ’s Church on earth like that of a ship.
I. The ship has to contend with the winds and waves;
II. The ship’s company are fainthearted and fearful often;
III. But the Lord leads it by His powerful hand to the quiet haven.—J. L. Sommer.
John 6:18. Storms on the Galilean lake.—The traveller on first viewing the Lake of Galilee, approaching it either from the heights above or the Jordan valley, generally looks on a calm and tranquil scene. Lying far below the level of the Mediterranean Sea (600 feet), shut in by sloping hillsides, which are in reality depressions of great tablelands, it seems always the same peaceful, beautiful sheet of water. Its rippling wavelets glitter in the sunshine and murmur gently along the shore; and over the sunlit reaches the wild aquatic birds wing their flight. It would almost seem as if no wild commotion could break in on and disturb the restful scene. But in Syria and Palestine during winter and spring sudden storms arise at pretty regular intervals, lasting usually two or three or more days. Then the turmoil of the elements is often awe-inspiring and grand. The rains fall with tropical violence, lightning flashes all around, whilst the thunder crashes overhead and reverberates among the valleys and ravines of the hillsides. From those heights the storm-winds rush in fury and roar over the level country, lashing the waters of those inland lakes into stormy commotion, and sending foam-capped waves dashing on the shore. It was probably such a storm as this—one of the last of the season—that met the disciples. We have several hints of this well-known phenomenon of the regularly recurring winter and spring storms in Syria in the gospel narrative, not the least interesting being the graphic description in the concluding parable in the Sermon on the Mount.
John 6:19. The will of Christ potential in the miracle of walking on the sea.—It is a docetic view of the person of Christ which conceives of His body as permanently exempt from the law of gravitation, and in this way explains the miracle; a hard and mechanical view, which places the seat of the miracle in the waters, rendered solid under His feet. Rather was it the will of Christ which bore Him triumphantly above those waters; even as it was the will of Peter, that will, indeed, made in the highest degree active and potential by faith in the Son of God, which should in like manner have enabled him to walk on the great deep, and, though with partial and transient failure, did so enable him. It has been already urged that the miracle, according to its true idea, is not the suspension, still less the violation of law; but the incoming of a higher law, as of a spiritual in the midst of natural laws; and so far as its range and reach extend, the assertion for that higher law of the predominance which it was intended to have, and but for man’s fall it would always have had, over the lower; and with this a prophetic anticipation of the abiding predominance which it shall one day recover. Exactly thus was there here a sign of the lordship of man’s will, when that will is in absolute harmony with God’s will, over external nature. In regard of this very law of gravitation, a feeble remnant of his power, and one for the most part unconsciously possessed, survives to man in the unquestionable fact that his body is lighter when he is awake than sleeping; a fact which every nurse who has carried a child can attest. From this we conclude that the human consciousness, as an inner centre, works as an opposing force to the attraction of the earth and the centripetal force of gravity, however unable in this present time to overbear it.—Archbishop Trench.
John 6:19-21. The threefold word of comfort from our Gospel unto all troubled souls.
I. Be not afraid! for we have near us One who is our Lord and who will be with us even to the end of the world (John 6:19-20).
II. Be not afraid! for however strange and unwonted the manner in which He may come to us, His presence will ever bring us joy (John 6:21; John 6:1 st cl.);
III. Be not afraid! for when He is with us we shall speedily arrive at the desired haven; His presence will bring us success in our labours for Him (John 6:21; John 6:2 nd cl.).
ILLUSTRATIONS
John 6:18. Who is Christ?—Are our opponents right, and has Jesus gone never to return? The ground seems to be giving way beneath our feet! Now, indeed, is the time when faith must “be silent” before the Lord. Yet, what is it comes toward us through the darkness of the night? What kind of appearance is it for whose feet the rolling waters form themselves into a bridge? “It is a spirit”—so imagined the troubled ship’s company on Galilee.… [Equally astray are] those shortsighted interpreters who seek to lead men to trace back the greatness of Christ to a delusion, a seeming greatness, projected on the uncertain and wavering mists of tradition, on the concave mirror of a lively imagination. “He cannot have been really and truly the Son of God; but the superstitious and easily misled multitude proclaimed Him to be so. He did not speak the word of life, nor was He Himself the Word of life, but simply a pious fraud, a spontaneous poetical creation invented by various accomplices. Thus the forgery was executed. He will not quicken us either now or hereafter; but in our common speech and in our thought we may keep Him continually in existence from generation to generation. In all the history there is only a small kernel of fact worthy of belief: the envelope is a floating cometic mantle composed of sheer imaginations, legends, exaggerations, and misunderstandings.” Church of the Lord, can this be the foundation of your confidence!—Translated from Dr. R. Kögel.
John 6:19. “It is I, be not afraid.”—But a familiar voice says, “Be of good cheer,” etc. It is I. Thus spake this same voice to thee, my friend, as thy house became lonely and a bier was carried out, as thy heart felt unspeakably wretched. Then that star in heaven—the faith in thy heart—grew dim. But, trouble which appeared like blind chance—a malignant fate, a spectre—death, that grinning skeleton and king of terrors, laid aside the mask, and behold! it was the Lord. Then in quietness and assurance thou wert helped by Him. “It is I.” So the Lord ever makes Himself known to His Church, when, e.g., the State removes the accustomed supports, when Rome furbishes her weapons and increases her fastnesses, when materialism scornfully seeks the outward and visible; and the multitude with their voice ever-changing, now for, now against, like ebb and flow; and parties with their cry of “Here is Christ, or there,” seek reciprocally to excommunicate each other, and finally are in danger of banishing Christ altogether,—then the ground trembles. But everything will turn out otherwise from what men suppose. Only in Jesus has no one ever been deceived. Do the people of Capernaum ask Him, as it is in our text, Rabbi, when (rather how) camest Thou hither? No philosopher can explain this, that Jesus walks on the waters, making what seems firm to be unstable, and what is fluctuating, stable. The conflict of opinions, the loudness of calumny, the raging of passion, the power and roar of the billows, the thunder-roll of events, will at the decisive moment be overpowered at the word of the Church’s Lord. “Ye, My disciples, be of good cheer. It is I, be not afraid.” “The Lord is in His holy temple; be still before Him, all the earth.”—Translated from Dr. R. Kögel.
John 6:19. Faith amid the storm.—To the confidence and peace reached by the disciples on this occasion Christian people may and do attain, have trusted and not been afraid in storm and trouble (Psalms 46). A missionary thus described an incident on a great steamship during a terrible storm on the Atlantic. A fearful hurricane swept over the ocean, raising a tremendous sea, in the trough of which the great vessel tossed, helpless and unmanageable. It did not seem that if the storm lasted during the night the ship could weather it. The seamen could not cross the wave-swept decks; and the passengers were shut up in the great saloon. A crowd of anxious men and terror-stricken women, they clustered together, holding tightly to any fixed object. Only the children did not seem to realise all the terror of the situation. The minister-missionary was asked to engage in prayer. He did so, kneeling and grasping with his hands the edge of one of the fixed tables. He did not, however, utter any set ordinary form of prayer. It was just a simple talk with his God and Redeemer, just such a talk, as he expressed it, as a child would have with a loving parent. All were calmed and comforted by the simple prayer of faith, and took courage. Toward morning the storm abated, the ship was got under control, and they were safe.
“Thou Framer of the light and dark,
Guide through the tempest Thine own ark;
Amid the howling wintry sea
We are in port if we have Thee.”