NOTES for Mar 6:45-56

Mark specifically notes the connection between Jesus walking on the water and the miraculous feeding of the people. He speaks of the second as something that should have "made the disciples understand," should have given them insight into something very important that they did not understand. This new thing was the Kingdom that their Teacher had brought into the world. For the disciples, however, all the miracles being performed were precisely miracles: a manifestation of God's power.

Perhaps a manifestation of God's love as well. But they were separate manifestations, and that is the whole point. They still had not seen the main thing: the world was no longer what it had been. Something new had entered it, something called the Kingdom. Meanwhile the disciples were still looking at the Kingdom in the old way. For them it was still an earthly Kingdom, though with a capital letter. With a capital letter because the Messiah, their Teacher, was to head it, and God would be chief in it.

It was earthly because it was supposed to be founded on earth, in every sense of the word. For them the Kingdom did not yet exist; it still had to be built, created, established. They were waiting for their Teacher to begin doing this, and to begin, of course, with a messianic uprising. Yet He keeps delaying, performing miracles and healings, attracting the people, but never declaring His messiahship. Meanwhile the Kingdom had already entered the world together with Him. The disciples did not notice this, which is no wonder, since they were waiting for something entirely different.

They did not understand that the miracles and healings performed by their Teacher were not simply manifestations of God's power connected with His person. They were nothing other than manifestations of the very Kingdom for which they were waiting. In the Kingdom, nature is not the same as it is in the fallen world; there it is not confined within itself. There nature is responsive to the action of God's will and God's breath, and to the action of human will as well, provided, of course, that it is not wounded by sin and acts together with God's will. If more food is needed to feed a multitude of people, then there will be more food.

If a person needs to walk on water, then the water under his feet will become firm, or resilient, in short, whatever it needs to become in order to support a human being. There is no storm in the Kingdom at all; it remains in our fallen world. This is the Kingdom the disciples needed to see, but they were not yet ready for such a vision. They were ready to see the Messiah in their Teacher, but not ready to see the Kingdom He had brought into the world. Not ready at that moment. The time would come, and they would understand everything. But that time would come later.