The Night of Tempest

Results of the recent miracle. The Divine injunction to cross the lake. the gathering storm and the master’s absence. The Form on the waters. Christ reveals Himself. Peter’s request to walk on the sea. His unbelief and fear. christ’s dealings with him. the gentle rebuke.

The feast is o’er, the guests are gone,
And overall that upland loan
The breeze of eve sweeps wildly as of old.
Fain would we grasp the strong right hand
Reached to Thine own by sea and land, — The hand that did Thy saint uphold,
When love had made him overbold;
What time at twilight dawn he stood,
Half -sinking in the boisterous flood.” — KcUe.

“He brought the apostle to the ship, as a bird brings its young on its wings to the nest, when it has attempted to fly before its time, and is about to fall on the ground.” — Chrysostom,

“This tempest-wrought lake, this tiny, tossing bait, the Master appearing, to make a great calm within and without, what a sublime parable in action! It is the very history of the Church in all ages.” — Prmensi.

“Lo! Peter is walking upon the waves. Two hands uphold him, the hand of Chiist’s power, the hand of his own faith: neither of them would do it alone. The hand of Chiist’s power laid hold on him, the hand of his faith laid hold on the power of Christ While he believed, the sea was brass; when once he began to distrust, these waves were water.” — BUhpp Hall,

E may well believe that of the many who could not fail to be impressed by the wondrous miracle described in the close of last chapter, not the least so would be Peter. Perhaps his susceptible and not unfrequently indiscreet nature would be more likely to be perilously wrought upon by the unmistakable feelings and desires of the multitude, who had been spectators of so indubitable a proof of the divinity of the Prophet of Nazareth. Their impulse seemed simultaneous and irresistible to crown Him as their King, even though this would involve the employment of “force.” They would put Him at once at the head of their pilgrim caravan; and, joined by other jubilant throngs on their way through Galilee, march in a Messianic triumph to the approaching feast in Jerusalem. The time, however, was premature. The gracious Wonder-worker, knowing all things that were to come to pass,, firmly declines the proffered crown. Moreover, He takes immediate means to prevent His disciples becoming partisans in the hollow enthusiasm — abetting these excited Galileans in a design which would only precipitate a collision with the .Roman power, and bring His ministry to a premature close. The means He adopts introduces us to one of the most vivid and interesting of Gospel stories, and one which in its sequel brings the son of Jonas conspicuously before us.. He gives directions to His apostles to enter their vessel, and recross the lake to the Western Bethsaida. The point is of no importance; but some have supposed that this dispersing of the yet lingering multitude, as well as embarkation of the disciples, must have taken place earlier in the afternoon than we have imagined at the close of the last chapter. For the next day being the Sabbath — and as the Jewish Sabbath began at six o’clock on the preceding evening, it would not have been lawful to undertake the journey by land or the voyage by water, after the sun had set. Very many of the assembled crowd would doubtless be distant from their homes beyond the prescribed ’ six furlongs ’ of the “Sabbath-day’s journey.” Not to have left, therefore, till the evening had set in, it has been alleged would have involved the alternative of remaining by these lonely reaches of the Jordan without food or shelter till the following sunset. It is probable that His disciples would be the last to linger on the spot.

Either, then, at evening, or anticipating by an hour or two the rapid Eastern twilight (between sunset and darkness), they embarked. Their Lord gives no indication as to how or where He may rejoin them. From the words “He constrained them to get into the ship/1 we may gather that it was with reluctance they consented to this separation. They may have even attempted a remonstrance; preferring the urgent request, either that He would still accompany them, or else permit them again to drop anchor and suspend their voyage over Sabbath. The sky may have already been wearing a threatening aspect; a blood-red sun may have been drooping over the western hills; the hollow moanings familiar to the fishermen’s ears may have been premonitory of a storm. Lowering clouds may have been wreathing the brow of the Gadara heights and the headlands of Tiberias. On a former occasion, when the

l The day I sailed on the Sea of Galilee, the waters were delightfully calm, or little more than a gentle ripple disturbed their surface. Other travellers, more familiar with its capricious ways, have a different story to record. “My experience,” says Dr Thomson, “in this region, enables me to sympathise with the disciples in their long night’s contest with the wind. I - spent a night in that Wady iShuka-iyf, some three miles up it to the left of us. The sun had scarcely set, when ttie wind began to rush down toward the lake, and it continued all night long with constantly increasing violence, so that when we reached the shore next morning, the face of the lake was like a huge boiling caldron. The wind howled down every Wady from the north-east and east with such fury that no efforts of rowers could have brought a boat to shore at any point along that coast. In a wind like that, the disciples must have been driven quite across to Gennesaret, as we know they were. We subsequently pitched our tents at the shore, and remained for three days and nights exposed to this tremendous wind. Ko wonder the disciples toiled and rowed hard all that night. The whole lake, as we had it, was lashed into fury, the waves repeatedly rolled up to our tent door, tumbling on the ropes with such violence as to carry away the tent pins.”

“The sea-birds,’ says another, M sailed with the roaring blast, which rushed on with foam and fury. This torrent of heavy, cold air was pouring over the mountain crests into the deep caldron of the lake below, a headlong flood of wind like a waterfall into the hollow; just as it is said in Luke (viii. 23), ‘there came down a storm of wind upon the lake.’... The peculiar effects of squalls among mountains are known to all who have boated much on lakes, but on the sea of Galilee the wind has a singular force and suddenness, and this is no doubt because the sea is so disciples encountered another similar storm, they felt that all was safe when their Master had said, “Let us pass over.” Their adorable Lord, the heavenly Pilot, was with them in the vesseL Now it was different. They had before them night and a tempest, and He, whose voice alone could hush its fury, was leaving them apparently to brave it alone. But His word and will were paramount. That great Redeemer whose power and tenderness were so recently manifested to the fainting multitudes, commands them to depart. It is enough; they ask no more. Even Peter, so often outspoken, offers no expostulation. Though the storm may have been already beating high, like brave soldiers at the bidding of their captain, they are in a moment launched on the deep, with seven long miles before them, encountering the crested waves and the gathering darkness.

A fair breeze would soon have run them to the western side; but when midnight came, it fcund them little more than half-way on their voyage. Owing to a furious head wind, their sail was useless; and though

deep In the world, that the gun ratifies the air In it enormously, and the wind speeding swift, above a long and level plateau, gathers much force, as it sweeps through flat deserts, until suddenly it meets this huge gap in the way, and it tumbles down here irresistible. We gained at last the windward, and here we could look with safe amazement at the scud of the gale careering across the lake, and twisting the foam in the air as if tied in knots of spray, which sparkled in the sun like ten thousand diamonds, while the •ea-birds still flew helplessly downward.” — Sob Roy on the Jordan, p. 421.

“To understand,” says Dr Thomson, again to quote this interesting resident in Palestine, “the cause of these sudden and violent tempests, we must remember that the lake lit a low, six hundred feet lower than the ocean; that the vast and naked plateaus of Jaulan rise to a great height, spreading backward to the wilds of the Hauian and upward to snowy Ilermon; that the water courses have cut out profound ravines and wild gorges converging to the head of this lake, and that these act like gigantic funnels to draw down the winds from the mountains. ’ for nine hours Simon an J his brother boatmen toiled manfully at the oars, three o’clock (the fourth watch of the night) found them still pitching in the midst of that roaring sea with their labouring craft; sheets of white spray dashing over the open deck, a few fitful lights (their only compass) glimmering distant as ever on the longed-for shore. Their seamanship is baffled. The lake was forty-five furlongs in breadth, and they had only accomplished “five-and-twenty or thirty furlongs.” The former cry of faithless unbelief may now have been often on their lips, and on none more than on Peter’s, as thfly thought of last evening’s mysterious parting, “Master, Master, carest Thou not that we perish 1” ‘If He had been with us asleep, we may picture the impulsive spokesman saying to his fellows, ‘If He had been with us asleep, as He was before, on an occasion of similar peril, in the hinder part of our ship, then we could have rushed to His side, invoked His aid, and in a moment the storm would have been changed into a calm. Whither He is now gone, we cannot tell. Our cries are inaudible; our prayers are vain; they are drowned in the rage of that tempest. ‘Surely our way is hid from the Lord, and our judgment is passed over from our God!1

But where in reality was their beloved Saviour in the hour they most needed His presence, and most ardently longed for it? He seemed to have hid His face from them, but it was in appearance only. “He puts them into danger, as some loving mother-bird thrusts her fledglings from the nest, that they may find their own wings and learn to use them; and by the issue He will awaken in them a confidence in His ever-ready help.” 1 On the heights of one of these lonely mountains that girdled the north-east corner of the lake, in the silence of midnight, He is alone with His God. As He kneels on the dewy grass, that mountain summit is converted again into an altar of prayer. His eye is at ^rpne moment on the distant sea, at another uplifted to heaven; the breathings of His soul are ascending in behalf of His disciples; He is watching every billow that breaks on their tempest-tossed bark. The darkness cannot hide them from Him; their troubled thoughts “He knoweth afar off.” Though not praying with them, He is praying for them, .that “their faith fail not.”

Only one-half, if so much, of their voyage had been accomplished, when (may we suppose, through a rift in the driving clouds) the starlight discloses a mysterious, radiant Object peering out in the gloom, moving on the crest of the waves. Jesus approaches, walking silently but majestically across the billows. The Lord of the sea and the storm “made darkness His secret place, His pavilion round about Him are dark waters and thick clouds of the sky; “and as the expression in the original seems to denote, leading the way for them to their desired landing place.2 He is so near His disciples, that His form might at once have been recognised. The joyous utterance might well have passed from tongue to tongue —” The Master has come! p the watchword led, as was wont, by Peter, “It is the Lord!”

But strange: His appearance seems to trouble and agitate them more than that vexed and agitated sea. With those superstitious feelings so proverbially common among sailors and fishermen, they think they descry in

1 Trench. See BUicott, in loo. the hazy darkness, and amid the moaning night winds, no “good angel “of the waters, only some unwelcome messenger from the spirit-world. They imagine, possibly, in their dread, either that one of the demons of darkness, roaming so lately the gorges of Gadara, is now evoked from the depths of the lake, where it had plunged with the mountain-herd; or else that the hour of their own death and destruction had arrived, and a premonitory herald from the regions of Hades — some terrible shape or phantom, such as the Jewish fancy was wont to picture — has come from the world of the dead to give them warning of their approaching end. The Phantom-shape, moreover, appeared as if it were” passing by them.” Faith is for a moment eclipsed. The oars hitherto manfully plied are dropped.” They were troubled, saying, It is a spirit; and they cried out for fear.*

How great the contrast; the heaving waters, the perturbed disciples, and the calm, majestic tranquillity of the great Lord 1 Loud above the riot of the storm sound the soothing familiar tones, “Be of good cheer, it is I; be not afraid.” Their gracious Master’s form they had mistaken in the gloom, but the voice was well known to them. Peter now becomes the central figure in the night picture. Indeed, had no name been mentioned in this passage, we should at once have been led to fix on Simon as the apostle who went in impetuous haste down from the vessel’s side, braved the stormy sea, walked upon it, sank in terror, and rose again in faith. Bold, hasty, forward, ardent, with a soul full of deep emotion, he would, in the fever of the moment, do a brave and hazardous thing from which in a calmer mood he would be deterred. Had he been a soldier by profession, he would have been suited for the brilliant sally, the sudden foray, the impetuous assault (some daring feat of arms); not for the slow, wasting, decimating siege and trench work. His enthusiasm and ardour, honest and sincere at the time, were apt to be damped in the moment of trial and danger. For emergencies to which he fancied himself equal, the event proved he was not. A child of Ephraim boldly “carrying his bow,” he turned faint in the day of battle! Judging from his peculiar temperament, perhaps when the mysterious Phantom-form was first seen on the waters, he may have been the most craven-hearted of all. While the calm John, or Thomas, may have looked their danger sternly in the face, he may have seen in the shadowy Figure nothing but the messenger of death, and fled, cowering in terror, to the hold of the vessel. But no sooner does he listen to the comforting “It is I,” than shame and sorrow overwhelm him that he had been so u slow of heart,” and in the very rebound from faithlessness to newly-awakened joy, he resolves by an heroic act to atone for these moments of pusillanimity. “Lord,” says he, “if it be Thou, bid me come unto Thee on the water.”

Even yet, however, his voice trembles as he speaks. Neither his faith nor his motives will bear rigid scrutiny. The very word with which he begins his presumptuous request implies a secret doubt — “If jt be Thou.*’ His own thought, doubtless, was to make an avowal of his faith, but what he did display was not faith, but a base, degenerate semblance and figure of the true. Rightly named, it was forwardness, fool-hardihood, the haughty spirit which is inevitably succeeded by a falL His confidence in his Divine Master would have been tempered with a wiser discretion, and a kindlier regard for the feelings of his fellow-apostles, had he simply joined with them in inviting Jesus into their ship. But there was an implied assumption of superiority in the request, “Bid me.” Farther, he utters on his own authority, and more in the tone of a mandate than a proposal “Bid me couie.” There is a struggle for pre-eminence, a craving to win the highest encomium from his Master, and to make himself out the boldest and bravest of the apostle-crew. It is the saying and the failure of a future occasion put in another form and other words — “Though all be offended, yet shall not I.”1 Doubtless, had an injunction to leave the vessel emanated from the lips of Christ, it would have been alike his duty and his joy to obey; there would then have been no sinking, no faltering. If the Lord had “given the word,” He would have made Peter’s “feet like hinds’ feet,” and set him upon these “high places.” But forgetful of his frailty, he himself takes the initiative; he makes his own will and wish antecedent to the will of his Lord, and he must pay the penalty of his daring.

How kindly and considerately does Jesus deal with the bold find rash, yet ardent and devoted man! “Lord, bid me come.” He forbids him not. Had He done so, there would have been lost to Peter the most valuable lesson his Master ever taught him. Christ uses the present opportunity to discipline him by his failure to become, as he afterwards did, a spiritual giant and hero. Peter makes his request. A single word is all he gels in reply. The same Voice which, a few moments before, gently quieted by a threefold assurance the fears of all the affrighted boatmen, says, in

l Arch. Trench, in loo. answer to the outspoken one — “Come! 99 He does not refuse, but neither does He give any warrant or promise of upholding power. Peter had said, “Bid me;* Christ does not say, “I bid.” Peter had said, “on the water;” Jesus speaks of no footway there. Peter had said, “unto Thee;” Jesus gives no such invitation. He utters only the one indefinite word, “Come!” “Come,” He seems to say, “bold one, make trial of thy strength; come if thou canst; but it is on thine own responsibility; I give no pledge or warrant of success to thy carnal presumption.”

He does come! He descends the side of the lurching vessel. The next moment his feet are on the unstable waves. His faith is for the moment strong, and fixing his countenance on his great Redeemer, though drenched and dripping with the spray, he travels in safety along that strangest of pathways: — “Christ thus,” says Chry8ostom, “adding to a great miracle one even greater.” But a wandering eye is the first symptom of a mournful reverse. He turns his face from his Master; he transfers his glance to the rolling waves; with their black chasms at his feet, and the storm sighing overhead. “When he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid.” It was no new tempest that had sprung up; the sea was not opening its mouth wider than before; the sky was no gloomier; the hurricane no louder; the waves were beating as high when he first sallied forth. But with his eye and his heart on the Lord of the storm, he had no room then for a thought of danger. Now it was different: gazing on the tempestuous elements, he trembled at his own courage. He took his eye off the Secret of his support, and down he sank like lead in that raging sea.

i tee Stier and Trench, in loc But pass we now to a more favourable turn in Peter’s case. He had presumed, faltered, was fast sinking. Is all to end in ignominious failure 1 or by some strong effort will he yet retrieve his honour, and convert that midnight sea into a moral battlefield where a great fall is turned into a great victory? Yes; as unbelief sank, so faith is to raise him again. How is he raised I He honours Christ throughout in this memorable crisis. He might have dreamt at that moment of other ways of extricating himself from his periL Was there no rope in the hold of the boat f Could he not have asked one of the apostle-rowers to stretch him one of those oars with which, a few minutes before, they had been toiling in vain to make head against the storm? Or where was his natural or acquired skill in swimming, of which we read afterwards, when, near the beach of the same lake on a later occasion, he plunged headlong into the water and swam manfully ashore. But he resorts to none of these expedients. Having dishonoured Jesus by distrusting Him, he will honour Him once more by fresh confidence in His power and love. He cries, “Lord, save me, else I perish! “No artificial props can raise up the battered, down-trodden flower so well as the genial sunshine. So this drooping flower turns his leaves to the Great Sun of Righteousness. The apostle is sinking, but even” as he sinks, he sinks ( looking unto Jesus !,w

And as the servant honoured his Master; as the disciple honoured his Lord; so does the Lord and Master honour and deal tenderly with him in return.

He might righteously have left him for a while in his anguish and trepidation to feel the consequences of his rashness. With the horrors of death taking hold on

* John xzi. 7.

him, He might have addressed him in words of cutting rebuke and upbraiding. But He will first restore his confidence. “Immediately Jesus stretched forth His hand and caught him.” The Lord’s hand was not shortened that it could not save. Peter’s experience was that of the Psalmist — “When my foot slipped, Thy mercy, O Lord, held me up I”

And now comes the gentle rebuke. It would not have been well for Peter — it would not have been well for the Church of the future, which was to read and ponder this scene — had the salutary, needed reproof been allowed to pass. Gentle, however, it was! He does not address him as the presumptuous unbeliever; neither does He reprimand him for making the attempt to come. This might have had the effect of damping his energies for bolder deeds yet in reserve for him. Thus is he addressed by Him who “breaketh not the bruised reed, nor quencheth the smoking flax” — “O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt 1” That sensitive heart required no harsh or severe word to enforce the appeal. A look — a glance, in impressive silence, yet of deep significancy — we shall find afterwards covered his face with bitter tears. So now, that one brief question would bring before him the memory of many other acts of love and power, all of which would aggravate the unkindness of distrusting that gracious Saviour. It was equivalent to saying, “Peter, after what I have done for thee in the past, why hast thou now dishonoured Me? Why refuse reliance now on My all-powerful arm? I still acknowledge thou hast faith, but in this critical emergency it has shown itself to be small. Wherefore hast thou wounded Me so by this unworthy doubting?”

The accused is silent. He attempts no reply. Perhaps his tears forbid it. Doubtless he returned to the vessel a humbled man. It was a night which to his dying hour would be much remembered. Yet, could it fail to rivet his affections more strongly than ever around that Saviour? If we put a “song of the night * into his lips, may it not be appropriately that of the great prophet — “Behold, God is my salvation. I will trust and not be afraid, for the Lord Jehovah is my strength and my song. He also is become my salvation,”

Then was Peter received into the vessel along with his Divine Lord. The gusty squall is over. The disciples no longer cower in terror. No miracle of their Master seems to have exercised a greater power over them than this. The contrast has been noted between the effect produced on their minds by the miraculous multiplication of the loaves and fishes, and the stilling of the tempest. Even though they were the spectators and ministers of the former, Peter himself, in his relation of the scene by Mark, notices and acknowledges their dull perception of the Lord’s power in the feeding of the five thousand (Mark vi. 52). But “here was something that appealed to those hardy boatmen as nought else could have appealed, and made them, both with their lips and by their outward and unforbidden posture of worship, avow for the first time collectively that their Master was, what one of them had long since separately declared himself to be, not only ’ the King of Israel,’ but ’ the Son of God.’”1 The waves of the lake resume their wonted quiet play. The sun is breaking with his first faint ray over the Gadara hills, and probably at Ain et-Tin they reach the shore. Often as in future they called to remembrance the Voice which chained the tempest on Tiberias and laid to sleep its waters, would l EUicott, p. 210. they employ the words of the Psalmist in a nobler than their primary meaning — “O Lord God of hosts, who is a strong Lord like unto Thee 1 Thou rulest the raging of the sea; when the waves thereof arise, Thou stillest them.”1

Who knows but this scene and incident may have peen specially memorable — specially comforting — to them on its first anniversary; that next Passover season when they were to be tossed and driven by a more awful tempest — the Master apparently gone, and the frail bark He had “constrained” them to enter, the sport pf the wild waves; — that Passover moon shining down pn the agonies of Gethsemane; and Peter, belying his boasted bravery, sinking in deeper waters of faithlessness and despair? In that darkest of all nights, moreover, might not the sequel to this parable of the lake possibly occur to some of them — the Master returning in the hour of hopeless despondency? And when He did return, would they not recognise His u Peace be unto you,” as but a repetition, in another phrase, of the “It is I, be not afraid 1 * Would not the special message which we shall find was sent on that great Easter day to our Apostle, be the echo of the present rebuke on the moonlit sea — “O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?”

i The greater portion of the preceding is also abridged from “Memories of Gennesaret.” It may not be out of place here to note that “Christ walking on the sea” formed, from the pictorial elements in it, a favourite subject with the painters of the Middle Ages. “The most ancient and most celebrated representation is Giotto s Mosaic (a. d. 1298), now placed in the portico of St Peter s, over the arch opposite to the principal door. The sentiment in the composition of this subject is generally ‘Lord, help me, or I perish.’ St Peter is sinking, and Christ is stretching out His hand to save him. It is considered a type of the Church in danger, assailed by enemies, and saved by the miraculous interposition of the Redeemer; and in this sense must the frequent representations in churches be understood.” — Jf r* Jamieson’* Sacred and Legendary Art, p. 1»6.