Spiritual Sunday
Mark Jarman has a simple but powerful poem about today’s Gospel reading, which is about Jesus walking on the water. Here’s the passage from John 6: 16-21:
When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing. When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were terrified. But he said to them, “It is I; do not be afraid.” Then they wanted to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the land toward which they were going.
Jarman’s poem is entitled “Matthew 14,” which is Matthew’s version of the event. The major difference between the two versions is Peter attempting to follow Jesus’s example but sinking. At this point, “Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. ‘You of little faith,’ he said, ‘why did you doubt?’”
Matthew 14
Always the same message out of Matthew.
The water Jesus walks on is life’s turbulence.
He calms our trouble and lifts us up again.To walk on water? That’s what’s puzzling –
that feat of anti-matter, defeat of physics,
those beautiful unshod feet of cosmic truthfor whom the whole performance is child’s play.
And unless one becomes as a little child
the kingdom’s inaccessible by any route.
