Daily Lesson for January 27, 2017

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Mark chapter 6 verses 47 through 51:

47 And when evening came, the boat was out on the sea, and he was alone on the land. 48 And he saw that they were making headway painfully, for the wind was against them. And about the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea. He meant to pass by them, 49 but when they saw him walking on the sea they thought it was a ghost, and cried out, 50 for they all saw him and were terrified. But immediately he spoke to them and said, “Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.” 51 And he got into the boat with them, and the wind ceased.

The Prophet and Teacher, Mystic Man and Messiah moves effortlessly across the water, within Him the Spirit of God which hovered over the face of the waters in Genesis 1. He has the boat in view but the other shoreline in mind. He is going there, to a new place in history, to reach the other side, to reach the Other.

But the boat drags against the current. It struggles at the oars. It fatigues and frightens in the fourth watch of the night. To the boat the Mystic Man is not Messiah or even man but ghost, apparition, phantasm, demon spirit. His passing by frightens them. Where he is going frightens them. They are frightened.

And He, Mystic Man and Messiah, intending first to leave them behind, can now see that they will never get to the other side and to the Other shore, and to the Other peoples, without Him. They will give up. They quit in fatigue. They will turn back in fear. And so, now He pauses, and even stops, and turns around.  "Do not be afraid," He says.  "Take heart; it is I."

And deigning now, the Mystic Man and Messiah climbs into the boat also. In other words, He joins the Church. He joins the Church because while he intends to get to the Other side, to another shore, and another place of expansion and inclusion and reaching out, and altogether another consciousness, He will not go alone. He wants them with Him.  He will arrive in the boat, slower and harder going, but together.

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

"For I have many things to tell you, but you cannot bear them now."



Artwork:

Tanner, Henry Ossawa, 1859-1937. Disciples See Christ Walking on the Water, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55904 [retrieved January 27, 2017]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Henry_Ossawa_Tanner,_The_Disciples_See_Christ_Walking_on_the_Water,_c._1907.jpg.