Stranger in the Night

Then, when they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and drawing near to the boat; and they were frightened. But He said to them, "It is I; do not be afraid." (John 6:19-20)

As I noticed last time, the context of this story is the turbulence of emotions that had been stirred up like a giant storm in the minds and hearts of people longing for a Messiah of their own imagination. They were not looking so much for someone to challenge their picture of God as they were in having a superhero come to give them power to dominate over their enemies by use of force and coercion. Seeing the miraculous abilities of Jesus to heal people, raise the dead and feed thousands from nearly nothing, they assumed that they had finally discovered the person that just might fit the bill.

But the people as well as the disciples were missing the main point of why Jesus came as the true Messiah. Their idea was that God was willing and ready to resort to force to get His way when things were not going well for His cause, and they believed that He should use force or whatever means necessary to exalt the people whom He had previously chosen as His special representatives on this earth. But they had lost sight of the surpassing compassion of God and the fact that God does not discriminate but desires all to come into close relationship with Him.

There was a great conflict of interests going on in the minds of everyone involved that day. On the one hand they were starting to see and hear in the words and actions of Jesus principles of a new way of thinking, of relating, of governing that was in sharp contrast with the ways in which they were used to living. This strange new way of thinking had a powerful appeal to their hearts but to their minds it seemed largely impractical for the harsh realities in which their lives were set. Most of them firmly believed that these ideas about loving your enemies and doing good for those who persecute you or abuse you might be fine under some circumstances but would have little effect in overcoming the evil powers that ruled their world with an iron fist.

They underestimated and misunderstood the sort of kingdom that Jesus came to reveal to humanity, just as we still do today. They misunderstood the purpose for the miraculous works of Jesus and instead filtered them through their own beliefs about what they thought they really needed. Their desire to exalt themselves over their enemies and to gain advantage over others reflected typical worldly assumptions about government and kingship. They had adopted the world's standards and woven into their religion the principles of the kingdoms of this world and so were blinded to the real nature of the kingdom that Jesus came to set up.

This enormous conflict between underlying principles created a great tension inside of everyone faced with the events of that day. They started out very excited about the miracle-working abilities of this kind, compassionate teacher who spoke so highly of the ways of love. But at the same time they would not let go of their national patriotism and dreams of greatness in this world and so they sought to figure out how they could exploit the powers of God in this Man for their own national dreams.

In choosing to try to exploit the power of God for their own desires and purposes, they caused Jesus to remove His presence from their midst and frustrated their own purposes in the process. Without the cooperation of Jesus their plans could not be accomplished and they would be left exposed to the harsh reprisals of the Roman government. And because Jesus could not be convinced or even compelled to cooperate with their national aspirations, hopes and dreams, their frustration began to turn to anger and resentment and doubt about His authenticity as the true Messiah. He did not fit their outline of the requirements of a Messiah and so therefore He must be considered as a potential impostor, though a very fascinating one at the least.

This swirling atmosphere of intense but very conflicting feelings created a great storm of emotion and confusion among the crowds and the disciples that day. It did not have to be that way; they could have chosen to believe Jesus as He revealed the true nature of His kingdom. But they would have had to have been willing to lay aside their pride and their cherished dreams of power in this world. Their pride and national patriotism was too deep to let go and as a result they not only became extremely frustrated with Jesus, but by pushing away His presence they allowed Satan opportunity to create parallel storm in the physical realm to threaten their very lives as well.

It is very interesting in verse 17 that Jesus had not yet come to them. Immediately after these words it speaks of the sea being stirred up because a strong wind was blowing. Interestingly in the Bible the sea usually refers prophetically to masses of people. It was already true that this sea of people were already experiencing a storm of emotion because of their frustrated attempts to make Jesus an earthly king by force. Now in the physical realm their spiritual storm was reflected in a storm that threatened their physical existence as well. And this seems directly linked with the fact that Jesus was not with them.

But there is another interesting aspect of the dynamics here. For when Jesus did finally come near them during the storm, their reaction was one of fear, not of joy. We usually look at this story and emphasize the fact that they did not know it was Jesus coming near them, but instead thought He was a ghost and assumed they were about to die. But I believe there are much deeper implications here if we look at the context and see implications that have strong reverberations in our own experience.

How often does God try to come near to us in our own storms but instead of being welcomed as a friend and deliverer we perceive Him as an evil omen of things getting worse? We do not perceive that it is God drawing near to us but can only see pain and disaster ahead. Like Jacob reacting violently to the sudden presence of someone trying to give him the hug of his dreams, we only think that everyone is out to harm us including God. The face of Jesus is shrouded in darkness and we only can see a dim outline of some figure coming closer and closer. The strangeness of the circumstances only add to our initial fears for this figure is doing things that we have never seen happen before. Jesus was walking on top of water (and the water was not frozen in the least). All indications seemed to point to disaster ahead according to their logical reasoning and their emotions took all those facts and wove them into the worst possible scenarios.

It is in these moments though, that God is trying to incubate genuine, saving faith in our hearts if we will allow Him to do so. It may well be that the times of greatest fear in our lives are the times when God is drawing ever closer to us but in ways we have never imagined from our previous experiences with Him. We may be living in great pain or deprivation; we may be living under the threat of a disaster that threatens to reduce our lives to poverty or even extinction. We find ourselves in an atmosphere of great fear and suddenly all of our prayers for deliverance seem to be threatened by the sudden appearance of Someone totally strange to us and acting in ways that seem to only intensify our fears. Our prayers are certainly not being answered in the ways we want to see happen. How then are we going to interpret the movements of God?

But He said to them, "It is I; do not be afraid." So they were willing to receive Him into the boat.... (John 6:20-21)

God has to meet us where we are. But sometimes He also has to allow us to experience things in life that force us to adjust our perspectives enough to be willing to see Him differently than we have in the past. When our own beliefs about God and His ways and His methods of governing are so out of harmony with His true ways and His Spirit, He sometimes has to allow us to experience in another dimension of our life an illustration of what our ideas might look like if He were to allow our plans to preempt His plans.

Jesus could not go along with the plans the Jews had for their Messiah without losing the larger battle with the real enemy, Satan himself. The real problems for God's people in that day as well as in our day, was not the Romans or any other evil government no matter how abusive or corrupt. The real problem all of us face that causes all these other problems to pale in comparison is the battle for control of our hearts, the war that is constantly happening deep inside our souls. It was this battlefield that Jesus came to conquer and with methods and weapons that often seem to us to be ineffective and inappropriate.

Today we have the great advantage of having all of these lessons available to us from the past. We do not have to repeat all the mistakes of those who have gone before us; we do have the option to learn from other's experiences and to make different choices than what they made. These stories in the Bible are given for our admonition and instruction for a reason. As we look at these experiences from heaven's perspective as they are recorded here, we can begin to see a different agenda on the part of God and begin to perceive new ways to relate to similar circumstances in our own lives if we are willing to learn to choose differently than the disciples did.

It will often be true that in our own storms, whether emotional, physical or any other dimension in our lives, we will experience initial fear when Jesus begins to draw near to us. It may be that the reason He seems so distant in the first place is because we have insisted on our ideas of how His kingdom should be run instead of deferring to His plans and His timing. Either way, Jesus still does not leave us alone or abandoned.

When our hearts are crying out in fear and our logical minds can find no reasonable explanation for what our senses are telling us, we have the choice to trust in God's heart no matter what all the evidence seems to be trying to tell us. We cannot trust in our logic to bring us the truth all the time any more than we can trust our emotions to find the truth about God. We must learn to trust His heart and believe in His goodness and compassion and faithful love for us no matter what is going on in our lives. And as we choose to express and confess this belief in the face of all opposing evidence by praising God in the darkness and pain like Paul and Silas did in the dungeon, we can have a very different relationship to God and to our circumstances just as Paul and Silas experienced during their stormy night of events.