Notes on "A Gospel story retold"

(Kenny)

Just a few explanatory notes on the retelling of Jesus' walking on water that follows in the next post...

Let me first say that the first couple of versions of this piece received some trenchant and extremely useful criticisms from Reliquiae Israhel, my esteemed co-blogger, at whose urging I wrote the piece to begin with. Each of those criticisms resulted in at least one revision, greatly (I think) improving the historical accuracy and artistic impact of the piece.

Now, here's the thing about reading the Gospels: you ought to be reading them as if they were movie scripts, not as if they were novels. The gospel writers were mostly writing down what they would have said if they were telling to story to a live audience. Not only did they not know anything about how a modern writer of narrative (either fictional or journalistic) communicates in print such things as tones of voice and gestures and emotions, but even if they had, they did not have at their disposal the typographical conventions necessary to capture them on paper. So you have to fill in these details yourself, as best you can, from your own imagination -- the way you have to do when you're reading a play or a movie script. (When you're watching the play, of course, the actor gives you all of that, and when you're reading a novel, the author spells it out for you; but when you're reading the script -- or one of the Gospels -- you're on your own.)

So in Sunday School class this morning we happened to read the story of how Jesus walked on the water, and I came away thinking it would be fun and edifying to retell that story. Which I did, and the result of which you can find here.

There are a couple of things I need to explain to people wanting to know how far my retelling is based on actual fact. First of all, you need to read all three versions: Matthew's, Mark's and John's. John supplies the crucial information that Jesus and the crowds were playing a deadly serious game of cat-and-mouse, thus allowing us to understand that Jesus' motive in choosing to walk across the sea at night instead of riding in the boat with the disciples was an entirely pragmatic and strategic one, and had nothing to do with showing off or (at least as its main motive) improving the disciples' faith.

Mark, on the other hand, tosses in the off-hand, but fascinating, remark that Jesus apparently had every intention of keeping right on going. He seems to have sort of swung by to make sure the disciples were okay; but until they flipped out into a full-scale panic attack on him, Jesus -- according to Mark -- intended to walk right on past them.

This leads to a third point that I think is very often misunderstood. This miracle didn't take place in the middle of a storm. The reason Jesus intended to walk right on by and leave the disciples straining at their oars is simple: they weren't in any trouble. Sure, they were having to work hard; but having to work hard is not at all the same thing as being in danger.

I think people get confused on this point by a lack of personal experience in rowing boats across lakes, and by assumptions that bleed in from a different miracle. It's hard not to conflate this episode with the earlier episode in which Jesus calmed the storm. And so the image that I had as a boy and that I think most of my fellow Christians have, is the image of Jesus walking calmly across the water in the middle of a raging storm. In fact it's much simpler: Jesus is simply walking, and the disciples are simply rowing, into the face of an annoyingly inconvenient headwind. This is why the disciples are making very slow progress; it's also the reason Jesus is making much better time than they are. Those of us who have experience in paddling a canoe or rowing a small boat across a lake when a breeze picks up in our faces, can tell you two things: (1) You can walk into a headwind way faster than you can row into it. (Though, admittedly, one is normally walking on land.) (2) It's extremely frustrating to row into a headwind because you yourself become your own sail. You can't, that is, lie flat and still paddle, because you can't get any leverage...but the moment you sit up straight and put your back into your paddling, the wind catches hold of you and in effect your back (with the wind) pushes you the wrong way as fast as your arms (with the water) can propel you the right way.

One last point. The more years I put in as a father myself, the more amusement, and the less anger, I seem to hear in Jesus' voice as he talks to his silly, confused, bumbling disciples. I find myself more and more reading lines that, as a child, I heard Jesus say (in my imagination) with a sharp edge to his tongue, but now realizing that in a similar situation I'd probably say pretty much the same words Jesus says to the disciples...except that I'd be affectionately teasing my children. I mean, the point would be serious and I would certainly want them to pay attention and get the point; but I find that in such circumstances I am rather more often chuckling to myself about the foibles of the young, not honked off and blasting away at them. "O ye of little faith, why did ye doubt?" "Silly child, did you really think I didn't already know about that?" Perhaps I'm wrong in this; but that's the way it "plays" best when I try to imagine the scene as it actually happened.