Do Not Be Afraid
Lent Day 11
“It is I. Do not be afraid.”
— John 6:20—
The Bible does not cater to our assumptions. It is a complicated book full of paradoxes. One of these is the paradox of fearing God. Throughout the Bible, man is exhorted to fear God. Proverbs 9:10 says, “The beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” Yet, Jesus says, “Do not be afraid,” and this is after Christ invokes his “divine name” — “It is I,” literally meaning “I AM.”1
Here is the scene for those who may not be aware. The Jewish crowds have just attempted to make Christ their king, but he sneaks away and goes to be alone. The disciples get into a boat, cross the sea, and meet up with Christ later.2 John describes the scene this way,
“It had already grown dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. The sea was stirred up because a strong wind was blowing…they saw Jesus walking on the seas and coming near the boat, and they begn to be afraid” — Jn. 6:17-19
There are many amazing allusions to Christ’s divinity here, but we will miss them if we are not well-read in our scriptures. First, there is the allusion to the transfiguration depicted in the other Gospels. In Matthew’s Gospel, we see a similar description,
“[Jesus] was still speaking when, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.’ When the disciples heard this, they fell on their faces and were terrified.” — Mt. 17:5-6
Jesus then tells his disciples, “Do not be afraid.” We also see an allusion to the Old Testament in both the story of Creation and Moses at the Parting of the Red Sea.
The Creation account describes the “Spirit of God” hovering over the waters (Gen. 1:1). In the New Testament, the Spirit of God overshadows people, specifically Mary, the Mother of God. The waters of the womb are overshadowed by the Spirit of God, and the Son of God is conceived.
In Moses, we see a prefigurement or foreshadowing of Christ. Moses is the first deliverer of Israel, and in this story, he finds himself in a precarious situation. They had their enemy, the Egyptians, on one side and the Red Sea blocking their escape on the other. Here, we see the same themes in John’s account of the disciples in the storm:
Fear — “Greatly frightened, the Israelites cried out to the Lord” (Ex. 14:10).
Do not fear! — “But Moses answered the people, ‘Do not fear! Stand your ground and see the victory the Lord will win for you today’” (14:13).
Darkness — “And when it became dark, the cloud illumined the night…”(14:20).
The Lord commands the sea — “the Lord drove back the sea…” (14:21a)
Traversing the sea at night — “…with a strong east wind all night long and turned the sea into dry ground” (14:21b).
In Genesis, we see the Lord hovering over the waters and making a home for his creatures. In Exodus, we see the Lord separating the waters by the word of his servant Moses and making a way for his people. In John’s Gospel, this same Word of God neither hovers nor separates the water but is walking on it. In this act, Jesus demonstrates that he is both God and man; he is the King of Heaven and the King of Earth, and water is just one of his many subjects.
But how can water bow to her King? She cannot. So the only submissive posture this servant of chaos can take is to offer her waves as a road for Christ’s mortal feat. At his presence, not his word, she fearfully submits by offering up her back upon which the King’s feet will trod — “He alone stretches out the heavens
and treads upon the back of the sea” (Job. 9:8).
“Do not be afraid” is a paradox. On the one hand, we should be afraid in our encounters with the Lord. It would be foolish to presume we are free to treat God like our “buddy.” At the same time, the only one who could calm our fears is the very one whose being requires it and whose very presence evokes it. But how would we ever know this if he did not tell us, “Do not be afraid”?
These truths make sense, not because some philosopher wrote them down, but because God showed us these truths by living them out before our mortal eyes. Pardoxes are not possible to understand outside of real life. If we only meditate on paradoxes conceptually, we will find ourselves favoring one pole of the conundrum over the other; we will either be cowards or fools, but it is only in walking on the same path our savior walked that we find the way between these two options. It is a narrow way, but thank God he walked it first.
The World hates the Truth, but it is only the Truth that can save the World. If we keep the Christian faith only in the psychological or abstract, it will become meaningless. Christianity is an incarnate truth. Our faith must become fleshy, something we can see, taste, touch, and smell, and upon receiving it, our souls will be elevated to the transcendent. This is what happens when we encounter Christ in the Eucharist: we find ourselves in a “space between”, that is, a space between heaven and earth; The Son of God “walks upon our altars” and says, “It is I. Do not be afraid.” The only question for us is, will we allow him into our bodies and souls, to heal and transform us into the saint he has predestined us to be?
— DR
Martin, F., & Wright, W. M. (2015). The Gospel of John. Baker Academic. 89, 118.
There are geographical details here that may be relevant to other interesting theological types and symbols, but for our purposes, we just want to focus on Christ coming to the disciples on the water.