We Need Never Be Afraid

[This was prepared to be shared during the 10:15 worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

John 6:1-21
Did you notice anything strange in the gospel lesson from John?

The first fifteen verses of the passage deal with Jesus feeding a group of 5000, using just five loaves of barley and two fish to pull it off. In fact, there was a lot of untouched food left over! It’s an incredible miracle, a sign of His authority over the elements of the world, of His compassion for people, of Jesus being more than just a good man.

The last six verses recount a stormy ride on the Sea of Galilee taken by Jesus' disciples. And it’s here that something that may seem strange to us happens. Or, more accurately, something that, after reading the gospels of Matthew and Mark, we might expect to happen, but isn’t mentioned.

Turn please to John 6:16-21. We’re told: “...when evening came, His disciples went down to the sea, got into the boat, and went over the sea toward Capernaum...it was already dark, and Jesus had not come to them. Then the sea arose because a great wind was blowing.” (Just imagine being in a boat out on Lake Erie facing a wind like some of those we’ve been experiencing around here lately.) “So when they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and drawing near the boat and they were afraid. But He said to them, ‘It is I; do not be afraid.’ Then they willingly received Him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land where they were going.”

Neither John nor Mark, in their gospels, mention that after Jesus identified Himself, Peter said, “Lord, if it’s really You, call to me and let me walk on the water to you.” Matthew tells us about this and about how, having taken a few steps, Peter looked at the wind and the waves and lost his faith in Jesus to do the impossible and began to sink into the waters.

Now, these differences in detail shouldn’t rock our worlds! Each of the gospel writers tells us about Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection in his own way, touching on particular themes. John even tells us that he leaves out some details. Turn to John 20:30-31. These words come toward the end of the gospel and they constitute John’s “mission statement,” his reason for writing his gospel. He says: “And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples; but these [that is, the one John recounts in his gospel] are written than you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.”

Keep those two verses tucked in your mind as we look at another detail surrounding Jesus walking on the water that John doesn’t include, but which both Matthew and Mark mention.

Look first at Matthew 14:32. It says: “And when they [Jesus and Peter] got into the boat, the wind ceased.”

Now, please go to Mark 6:51: “Then He [Jesus] went up into the boat to them, and the wind ceased.”

Matthew and Mark both say that the moment Jesus got into the boat, the wind stopped. That’s a pretty amazing occurrence, isn’t it, another sign that Jesus is Lord and God of the universe? Wouldn’t you think that John, who shows us signs of Jesus’ identity so that we can believe in Him and have the forgiveness of sins and new life only Jesus can give, would mention it?

But John doesn’t mention it. All He says is that the disciples rode the waves through the storm, saw Jesus walking on the water, and that their boat landed safely on the other side after Jesus climbed into the boat.

So, why doesn’t John tell us about the calm that came to the Sea of Galilee?

Maybe because it isn’t really important. In fact, my guess is that John deliberately left out the detail about the becalmed wind to make a point. What do I mean?

You know, if I dared to let you listen in when I have my time of personal prayer each day, one minute would not have passed before I would begin to blush in embarrassment. That’s because, on reflection I realize that, more often than I like, my prayers can be so childish, immature. I run into a problem here, a challenge there, and instead of asking God for guidance, or courage, or wisdom, or faith, I ask God to just take away the problem.

Now, don’t get me wrong: God is so compassionate, He’s even willing to hear us when we pray the most childish, even selfish, things. For God, the fact that we pray to Him is a lot more important than what we pray. The God we know in Jesus Christ is a great artist: Our imperfect prayer petitions are like ill-formed messes of clay offered up to God, which God can turn into masterpieces of His design. But when we’re going through storms in our lives, as unpleasant and hard and sad as the storms that may afflict us can be, our ultimate concern shouldn’t be whether Jesus takes the storms away or not, but whether we’re riding the storm out while following Jesus.

I’ve known some people whose lives were mostly spent in pleasant circumstances whose faith in Christ was destroyed by the smallest hint of adversity. But I’ve also known people who have endured more tragedy than most of us can imagine. The storms were fierce in their lives. Yet their faith in Jesus, their belief in His presence with them now and in His promise of eternity to all who repent for sin and believe in Him, actually was strengthened during their storms.

Nobody wants to experience adversity or pain in their lives. But God can use life’s storms to strengthen our faith in Christ.

In fact, if we pay attention to the experiences of believers like Job in the Old Testament or Paul in the New Testament, we see that, while Satan is the ultimate author of all evil in the world, sometimes God allows adverse experiences to befall us in order to teach us to rely more deeply on Him and less so on ourselves.

There’s a story told a goldsmith. He was explaining what it takes to refine a piece of gold to turn it into something beautiful and useful. It all has to be done at a precise temperature, he explained. And the timing has to be just so. “How,” someone asked, “do you know when the gold has reached perfection?” “That’s easy,” he said, “when I can see my reflection in it.”

In Jesus Christ, we know that God is a compassionate miracle worker. Each of us can name experiences either in our own lives or in the lives of others where we know that Christ has intervened  to give healing, strength, encouragement, or new starts in our personal lives, our jobs, our relationships.

But sometimes the winds still blow against us.

Sometimes things happen that we will not be able to understand or explain until, after our own deaths and resurrections, we see Jesus face to face.

In the meantime, God allows the circumstances of our lives to re-form our characters so that, one day, in eternity, when He looks at us, He will see Himself--His love, His perfection--reflected in us.

This is what John, the author of our gospel lesson, means when he writes to believers in Christ in another book of the New Testament: “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when He [Jesus] is revealed [when we see Jesus on the Day of the Lord], we will be like Him...” 

One of the biggest misconceptions into which Christians can fall is the notion that being part of the Church is like being a member of a civic club. You know: You join, throw some money into the till, and get goods and services for which you pay. “Membership has its privileges.”

That’s not what being a member of Christ’s eternal fellowship, the Church, is about!

You see, Jesus Christ has already paid our membership dues for the Kingdom of God. He did that when He died on a cross, taking our punishment for sins, and rising from the dead to give life to those who turn from sin as the ultimate authority over their lives and instead, entrust their lives to Jesus as their only God, King, and Savior.

The privilege of being part of Christ’s Church is the privilege of being remade in the image of Christ as we daily surrender our lives and wills to Him.

The privilege of being a Christian is knowing that the God Who, out of His amazing grace, saves from sin and death those who believe in Jesus, isn’t in the business of just getting us out of the pain we encounter in this life. He's playing for much higher stakes! He’s reshaping our characters for eternity!

We still have storms in this life. The adverse, painful winds still rage in this fallen world. People die young, lose their jobs, know the heartache of divorce, go bankrupt, die of starvation, face persecution for their loyalty to Jesus and the Word of God.

But there are two other things that the last six verses of our gospel lesson should teach us.

The first is this: When they received Jesus into the boat, they landed safely on the shore. When we take Jesus into every experience of our lives, whatever adversities we face, we can know that He is with us. Nothing can separate us from Him.

And finally this: The translations of John 6:20 in most English versions of the Bible aren’t good. Our translation says that Jesus told the frightened disciples: “It is I; do not be afraid.” That rendering really misses the point of Jesus’ words. In the Greek in which John wrote, he quotes Jesus as saying, "Ego eimi," meaning literally, "I am." It's a strange thing to say--"I am; do not be afraid." Strange, until you remember the name that God gave Moses to refer to Himself when Moses encountered Him in the burning bush thousands of years before the birth of Jesus. The name was "Yahweh," the Hebrew for I AM.

When storms hit in life, as they inevitably do, those who follow Jesus Christ can remember that we belong not just to the One Who calms storms, as the other gospel writers affirm, but the only One Who can give us strength during the storm and life beyond the storm: God, the great I AM, Who took on flesh and died and rose to give new life to all who believe in Him, Jesus Christ!

We need never be afraid.

Incongruity? (More Thoughts on Yesterday's Gospel Lesson)

Did you notice something that may have seemed incongruous or inconsistent in yesterday's Gospel lesson, something in the last few verses that may not have seemed to fit in with the rest of the passage?

Yesterday, the folks at Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, where I'm the pastor, along with most Christians in North America, had John 6:1-21 as their Gospel lesson. The first fifteen verses of the passage deal with Jesus feeding a group of 5000, using just five loaves of barley and two fish to pull it off. In fact, there was a lot of untouched food left over!

The last six verses, with which I didn't deal in my sermon yesterday, recount a stormy ride on the Sea of Galilee taken by Jesus' disciples. They'd been waiting for Jesus, but He was off on the mountain praying. So, leaving Jesus behind, they launch onto these waters most of them know well. Then the storm hits. They row strenuously, the passage tells us, for three or four miles. They're frightened. Then Jesus shows up, walking on the water. They soon make it to shore. But do you see what doesn't happen in John's account of these events? Jesus doesn't calm the storm.

Jesus miraculously and plentifully feeds 5000 one moment.

The next moment, the disciples' lives hang violently in the balance and Jesus doesn't do anything about it.

One moment Jesus seems capable of making our lives easy and unburdened. The next moment He seems either incapable or unwilling to keep His closest followers safe.

Doesn't that seem incongruous?

On the surface, it may appear so. But I don't think that it is.

One reason for rejecting the notion of inconsistency here is to look at the word used to describe Jesus' miracles: signs. Jesus didn't come into the world in order to heal every invalid or fill every hungry belly in the world. Even after several years of His ministry, there were still many invalids and hungry people in Judea where Jesus lived. And while I believe that we Christians are called by Jesus to bring comfort, healing, companionship, and food to those in need, all of these actions, just like Jesus' miraculous activity, are nothing more than signs.

Signs don't point to themselves. Signs aren't ends in themselves. An "Exit" sign in a building, for example, isn't designed to make us stop and look at it; it's meant to point the way out for us. Other signs have other meanings, but they always point beyond themselves. Jesus' "signs" were meant to point to a deeper truth about Him. They pointed to the fact that the power of God over life and death was at work in Him.

The real crisis of consistency, of seeming incongruity, would come for Jesus' first followers on Good Friday, when they watched their beloved Lord, doer of so many signs, die the death of a lowlife crook on the cross. Was Jesus' power limited?

Of course, all questions about Jesus being limited in His power were blown away by the events of the first Easter. Jesus rose from the dead, a reality witnessed by over 500 once-skeptical and mournful followers. Jesus' death and resurrection assure us that has the power to give new, everlasting life to those who turn from sin and dare to follow Him.

So, why would Jesus feed 5000 one moment and allow terrors and near-death for His closest followers the next? Is Jesus like one of those deities of ancient Greek and Roman myth who viewed tormenting human beings as a kind of sport?

While the God we know in Jesus does occasionally intervene in and upend the laws of nature that normally operate in this world, He does it to point to His power to do far more for us than fill our bellies, heal our diseases, provide us with jobs, or save our marriages. This world, long ago fallen into sin, is ticketed for destruction. Jesus wants to give us citizenship in a new creation.

That's why when, in our Gospel lesson from yesterday, the people whose bellies Jesus filled "threaten" to make Jesus a king, He runs away from them. A king (or a president or a prime minister) in this world might well do good things. They might fill bellies, protect us from terrorists, provide people with health, or give us jobs. Those are all worthy and good things.

But none of them will help us deal with the ultimate issues that daunt us: alienation from God, alienation from others, alienation from ourselves, and death.* Jesus died and rose to deal with those issues for us. He conquers them for all who trust in Him.

But we still have storms in this life. People die young, lose their jobs, know the heartache of divorce, go bankrupt, die of starvation, and so on.

But do you notice two other things in our lesson?

First: The disciples, afraid that they'll die in the storm on the lake look in terror on Jesus. It's while they look at Jesus, after their frenzied rowing, that they anticlimactically land on the shore. Storms happen. But when we look to Jesus, He will get us home...the home that He has prepared for all who believe in Him.

Second: There's a special note of comfort to be found in verse 20. Our NRSV translation here is terrible. It says that Jesus tells the terrified disciples, "It is I; do not be afraid." That rendering utterly misses the point.

In the Greek in which the entire New Testament, including John, was first written, Jesus says, "Ego eimi," meaning literally, "I am."

It's a strange thing to say--"I am; do not be afraid." Strange, until you remember the name that God gave Moses to refer to Himself when Moses encountered Him in the burning bush thousands of years before the birth of Jesus.

Then, Moses, being told by God to go back to Egypt to confront the Pharaoh and gain the freedom of God's people, the Hebrews, wondered how people would react. What would the Pharaoh say? What would the Hebrews say? Who shall I say sent me? "Tell them I AM--Yahweh in the Hebrew of the Old Testament--sent you. Tell them that the One Who is, was, and always will be, the foundational Being of the universe, sent you, Moses."

When storms hit us in life, those who follow Jesus Christ can remember that we belong not just to the One Who calms storms, but the One Who can give us life beyond the storm--the great I AM.

We need never be afraid.

*The condition of alienation is what the Bible calls sin. The term is used in two different ways in the Bible really: (1) First as the condition of separation from God and others; (2) The actions we do that result from that condition.

Extravagant God

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

John 6:1-21
True story. A rural congregation was dying. Its membership was dwindling and growing older. They asked a church consultant from their denomination to spend some time with them and help them to figure out what to do. Some of the members thought it might be time to close up shop and almost nobody believed that they could afford a pastor. The consultant worshiped with the people there on a Sunday morning and then, through the week, interviewed them and also spent time in their community. Then, he met with the church members one night at a potluck, to give them his recommendations.

“You have a decision to make,” the consultant told the people. “You must decide whether or not you trust that God still has a mission for you.” Blank faces abounded. “Sometimes,” the consultant persisted, “it boils down to finding the one thing you have that God can use. What’s the one thing you have here right now that might help you share God’s love and so, grow spiritually or numerically as a church?”

There was silence for a while. Then, one man spoke up. “Well, we’re really good at potlucks.” Everybody laughed. They laughed, in part, because they recognized the man’s comment to be true. They were good at potlucks. But there was another reason: It seemed like such a small thing, so inconsequential. They were facing a mountain of red ink, the expenses associated with keeping their building facilities going, weariness and discouragement, and maybe even closing down altogether. What good were potlucks?

“Wait a minute!” the consultant said. “Do you all agree that your church is good at potlucks?” People nodded in affirmation all around. “Folks,” he said, “God can use the one thing He’s given to you. You have the spiritual gift of potlucks. Why don’t you become known as the potluck church?”

The congregation decided to have potlucks once a month. They determined a good time of the week when others in the community could join them for these events. The members were intentional about inviting their friends and neighbors. They geared each potluck to some occasion—Saint Patrick’s Day, the start of baseball season, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Independence Day, and so on. Within a few months, whenever these potlucks happened, their fellowship hall was filled with people, some of whom had never before darkened the door of a church building. There were no altar calls or hymns, no Creeds, or tracts, or Bible studies during the potlucks, just a Christian congregation welcoming people for a time of fellowship with its neighbors.

A year after his first meetings with them, the consultant returned to the little rural church. A couple of new families had joined and there had been several baptisms, all from households that, out of curiosity, had come to one of the potlucks and had stuck around because they found in the church that was good at potlucks a new faith in Christ and a new congregational family.

When I first heard that church consultant tell the story of the congregation at a conference I attended, I thought of another true story, that of Jesus feeding the 5000. All four of the gospel writers—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—tell about this incident. The account we’re looking at today is from John.

According to John, Jesus is just sitting down with His disciples when He looks up and sees this throng of people, attracted to Him by His miracles of healing, which they’d seen or heard about.

In first century Judea, where Jesus lived, teachers sat down whenever they were ready to teach. That’s what Jesus was about to do when He noticed the crowd. Whatever Jesus might have otherwise told the disciples in words, He now teaches them in action.

With the crowd coming toward them, Jesus turns to Philip. This, by the way, isn’t the Philip we met in one of our lessons from the New Testament book of Acts a few months ago; you know, the lay person who helped the Ethiopian eunuch to understand what the prophet Isaiah had written about Jesus hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus.

Instead, this is Philip the Apostle. He was one of the first people to follow Jesus. He was the guy who ran to his friend Nathanael and said of Jesus, “We’ve found the one that Moses and the prophets said would come, the Messiah: Jesus of Nazareth.” He was the one of whom Nathanael asked his question, “Can anything good come out of teeny, tiny, insignificant Nazareth?” And Philip had been so convinced that Jesus was the Savior of the world, he had told Nathanael simply, “Come and see.”

But now, sitting on a mountain that many Bible scholars believe was close to Philip’s hometown of Bethsaida on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee, seeing 5000 people surging toward him, Philip’s faith isn’t quite so sure. To test that faith, Jesus asks Philip, “Where are we going to get the bread we need to feed this brood?” Philip says, “You couldn’t buy enough for all of them with half a year’s worth of laborer’s wages!” Philip can’t imagine how the Lord he’s already seen do so much could possibly feed all these people.

And he’s not the only disciple whose faith comes up short in our lesson. Andrew, another of Jesus’ first followers, evidently makes a quick survey and tells Jesus, “There’s a little kid here with five small loaves of barley and two fish. Can’t do much with that!”

Philip and Andrew were like the members of that rural church. They couldn’t imagine what God might be able to do if they simply yielded themselves to the God they already knew in Jesus. “All we’re really good at is potlucks,” the people of the rural church had said. “All we’ve got is a few scraps of bread and some fish,” Andrew said.

Maybe part of what prevented Andrew and Philip from believing that Jesus could or would do anything about feeding the 5000, apart from the sheer numbers, is that feeding them was so unnecessary. They were just a few miles from a sea teeming with fish, not far from towns where they could buy bread and fish for themselves. John, our Gospel writer, gives no indication that the people were hungry or were even asking for food.

But the Lord Who teaches us to acknowledge that God is the giver, in the words of Jesus’ brother, James, “of every good and perfect gift,” the Lord Who teaches us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread” as a way of confessing that God provides for the daily needs of every person on the planet, daily needs that would be fulfilled if it weren’t for the sin and selfishness of the human race, this Lord wants to teach us something else.

Jesus has the 5000 people sit down and, you know what happens next. He manages to feed all of the people with twelve baskets left over.

Jesus wants to do more than just provide us with our daily bread. He wants to bless us extravagantly, overabundantly. In our second lesson, taken from the New Testament book of Ephesians, we read a doxology, a word of glory to God, that includes these words: “Now to Him Who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to Him be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus to all generations…”

A little boy gives Jesus what He has and Jesus not only blesses Him with an extravagant sign of His grace and love, Jesus uses the offering to bless 5000 people.

A struggling rural church offers Jesus the one thing they feel that they can do and Jesus uses it to spread the good news that all who will turn from sin and believe in Him will have life with Him and His Church for eternity.

Someone gives $1.30 to the work of Gideons International, covering the cost of a New Testament that changes the life of some child in Africa or Asia by introducing them to Christ.*

What offerings to God might we make to act as conduits of God’s extravagant love and grace?

A good friend of mine took a trip by plane recently. He was struggling with the question of how God could possibly use him in his life. What good could he do that others might not do better? He found himself seated next to a young woman with whom he struck up a conversation. There were a lot of bad things going on in this earnest young woman’s life and my friend spent most of their flight just listening. While she spoke, he asked God how he might help this young woman. As their flight neared its end, frustrated that there had seemed to be no answer to his prayer, my friend asked the young woman if she would like to pray. Clearly touched, she said, “Yes, I would.” They prayed. Then came the hubbub of announcements before the plane made its final descent and then the crush of people, all anxious to get off the plane. My friend didn’t see the young woman or have any more opportunity to speak with her…until she found him in the terminal. She walked up to him and held out her hand to shake his. “Thank you so much. I feel better now,” she told him. “You were my angel.” My friend knew that God has blessed him as well as that young woman.

God wants to bless you. God wants to use you to be a blessing to others, extravagantly, more than we can think to pray for or imagine. Each day, before your feet hit the floor, give your life to the God you know through the risen Jesus. You may be surprised by the big things God can do with what may seem little insignificant to you. Amen

*We welcomed Mr. Homer Baxley, who made a presentation on the Gideons during our worship today.

My Tweets on John 6:1-21

John 6:1-21 is the Gospel lesson for this coming Sunday. Here are my Tweets from Twitter on the passage:

Location? Many think just northwest of Sea of Galilee or Gennesarat. Later called, as [John] has it, Tiberias.

R.E. Brown sees parallels between this passage, from v. 5 on with Numbers 11, involving Moses. Very interesting.

v.2: Crowd saw signs, rather than the reality to which the signs point. That is central to this section of John.

[v.3] "the mountain": As...Brown points out, this is impossible to localize. Mountains important in OT and NT. Moses/Mt. Sinai important here.

v.3: "sat down": Teachers usually sat down. Today, pope sits down [for pronouncements]: ex cathedra.

v.4: Passover, festival God instituted through Moses, is at hand. Also important. God will compare/contrast.

v.5: Why ask Philip? If event happend NW of Sea of G, this would be close to his home territory. Some think, based on Jesus' itinerary that this happened near Bethsaida, Philip's home town.

My late mentor, B. Schein, thought this happened near Tericheae, a town whose name meant 'Dried Fish.' [The town] specialized in this export commodity. The issue [in this account then would not be] inaccessibility of food to crowd. Terichaea only 20-minute round trip by foot from where Schein thought this incident took place. Thus, feeding of 5000 here has less to do with 'daily bread' than the extravagant, unnecessary grace, blessing, and provision of God in Jesus Christ. Just as life and the world were, from God's perspective, unnecessary, so are all these things.

Even apart from Schein's interpretation we see this when, at end, there is so much untouched food. Overabundance.

[v. 7]: Philip is practical. 200 denarii is the figure he cites. A denarius was the common pay for a day of wage labor then.

v.8: Meanwhile, Simon's been scouting for food among the crowd.

v.9: "a boy": The term in Gk., R.E. Brown points out is paidarion, double diminutive for boy. This is just a little guy.

Paidarion is same term used in Septuagint, Greek NT produced in Alexandria before Jesus, commonly used, for Elisha's assistant, Gehazi. Elisha feeding incident is our 1st lesson this Sunday. Peter Leithart sees Elisha as "protoincarnational" character, a forerunning type of Jesus. Makes sense if John the Baptist is of the same type as Elijah.

v.8: Of course, Andrew doubts that the boy's bit of food is more than drop in the bucket. If Schein is right, the crowd could easily have been sent away [and they could have purchased their own fish in a place where abundant supplies of it existed.]

v.11: Jesus isn't said to "bless" the food the way it's reported in other Gospels. Instead, [in the original Greek of our text], He "gives thanks," a form of eucharisto, [the verb form of] one of the titles we give to Holy Communion, the Eucharist. This definitely foreshadows, [as did Passover].

v.11: "as much as they wanted": Again God's extravagant, unnecessary blessing.

[T]he Apocrypha] imagines a time when God's people will feast on leviathan, the monster of the deep...the deep representing primordial chaos, sin, life without God. Think: fishers of people. Think: Jesus frying fish on John 21.

v.12: Similar to Moses' instructions in Numbers 11.

v.14: The crowd associate this sign with Moses. They fail to see what the sign points to, make a wrong assumption. They see Jesus as "the prophet," a Moses-figure. John 1:17: Law came from Moses; grace--overwhelming amplitude of undeserved blessings, forgiveness, provision--comes from Jesus. In fact, in Jesus, we receive "grace upon grace" (John 1:16), [something Moses never could provide. Only God can do that.] Also: John 1:12-13: All who received Him became children of God, born not of flesh but of God. [Moses can't bring new birth, John 3:3, either.]

v.15: Jesus realized that crowd wanted to pound Him into their compartment for him--a king of the earthly sort, one who raises armies, levies taxes, and does the bidding of his supporters. Instead of accepting their nomination, Jesus went to "the mountain" to pray. Jesus' signs weren't plays for earthly power; they demonstrated the power He already had. Had He become a puny king, all our hope for life, forgiveness, healing would be lost. Through the cross Jesus would claim the Kingship that can save us for all eternity.

vv.16-17: The disciples decide to forge on though Jesus hasn't returned from praying. They must have been accustomed to his absences for this purpose.

v.18: Those of us who have ridden in a boat on Lake Erie during a storm know how storms can whip up on a lake like Galilee.

v.19: John doesn't explicitly say WHY the disciples were afraid. Other gospel says they thought that Jesus was a ghost.

v.20: Literally, Jesus says not, "It is I," but, "I AM," in Hebrew this would be, "Yahweh," the very Name to which God refers to Himself to Moses at the Burning Bush. Jesus is not some prophet, not some puny king. Jesus is I AM, the maker of the universe. His self-identification is a counterpoint to the beliefs of the crowd. Jesus is God.

v.21: This is comical--a bit like Peter throwing on his clothes in John 21, when he recognizes the risen Jesus on the shore. After Jesus makes things explicit, the disciples want to take Him into the boat. But they're already at the shore.

Stoffregen points out that here, Jesus doesn't calm the storm. Not all storms get calmed. But we can still reach the other shore.

A Look at This Coming Sunday's Bible Lessons

Most weeks, I try to present some background information on the Bible lessons for the succeeding Sundays. This week, at least for starters, I share a few links to some great commentaries on the assigned texts. I may write a few of my own comments as the week progresses. Hopefully, these comments help you prepare for worship:

Elna Solvang's comments on 2 Kings 4:42-44, here.
Nancy deClaisse-Walford on Psalm 145:10-18, here.
Arland Hultgren's presentation on Ephesians 3:14-21, here.
Brian Stoffregen on John 6:1-21, here.
Brian Peterson, also on John 6:1-21, here.

This coming Sunday's Prayer of the Day, for the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, is:

Gracious God, You have placed within the hearts of all Your children a longing for Your Word and a hunger for Your truth. Grant that we may know Your Son to the true bread from heaven and share this bread with all the world, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. Amen