When Jesus Wept - By Bodie Page 0,41

confirmation that Jesus was the Deliverer promised to Israel in ages past. I felt the first stirring of the wind. The sea slapped against the boat. My stomach began to churn with the rocking.

“Take down the sail!” Peter ordered. “The wind will tear it to shreds!”

Two others helped him lower the sail. I was violently seasick, vomiting over the side. I thought we might die. I was sick enough that I would not have minded being put out of my misery. Matthew, a former tax collector with a fear of the sea, crawled toward me. Side by side, we retched into the water.

“Row harder!” James shouted as the gale increased.

Peter, James, John, and Philip leaned their backs into the oars, but we were tossed like a toy on the violent waves.

Four miles out I scanned the horizon, hoping to see some friendly light close to shore. A wave splashed my face. Judas raised his head and shouted in terror!

Were we about to capsize?

“Look! Look!”

“It’s a ghost!”

“God have mercy!”

“A spirit has come to take us away!”

I squinted at the moonlit surface of the roiling water. There, before our eyes, an apparition like a man walked toward us.

I opened my mouth to cry out like the others.

Then the familiar voice of Jesus shouted out to us, “It is I! Don’t be afraid!”

Not a vision! Not an apparition! Not an evil spirit come to drown us! No! It was the Lord himself, walking on the troubled seas that threatened us.

“It’s Jesus!”

“Jesus on the water!”

“Lord! Save us!”

Jesus approached the vessel at the bow. I reached out my hands and helped him into the boat. He sat down calmly between me and Matthew. The sea grew still as we blinked at him in astonishment. We were afraid to speak. Peter and the others silently set to the oars again.

Within moments we came to shore. The wind had fallen away. The moon reflected on the silver surface of the sea.

I remember someone drawing the boat onto the sand. Exhausted from terror and exertion, we fell asleep.

Chapter 14

The next morning Jesus was up before us all. A fire was crackling not far from the boat. There was fish, roasting on sticks, and warm bread heaped on a stone as we staggered out of the boat.

Boatloads of people began to arrive from Tiberias and across the Sea of Galilee as word got out that Jesus was on the far shore. Others, by the hundreds, came on foot.

Commoners, paid by Temple officials and assigned the task of spying on Jesus, started to question him.

“Rabbi, there was only one boat on the shore, and you did not leave with your disciples. How did you get here?”

All of us who had been on the boat the night before knew the truth of what had happened. We were witnesses that not even a troubled sea could stop Jesus from traveling with us. But we did not speak. We did not dare ask, “How?”

Nor did Jesus answer their question. “There’s no doubt that you came looking for me, not because you witnessed many signs, but because you ate the bread and were filled. Don’t labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to everlasting life. The Son of Man will give this freely to you, because God the Father has set his seal upon him.”

Then they asked, “What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?”

Jesus did not hesitate. “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he sent.”

There was a stirring of resentment. I felt it, like the first breeze over the water before the great storm last night.

“What sign will you perform?”

“We want to see a sign so we can believe you.”

“What work will you do?”

A Pharisee chimed in: “Our fathers ate the manna in the desert. It’s written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ ”

Jesus fixed his gaze on that man, who should have known the full meaning of the words written in Torah. “I tell you, Moses didn’t give you bread from heaven. But my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

I knew Jesus was speaking of himself. He was the bread sent down from heaven; Jesus was the bread that gave us life on our journey.

They believed he was speaking of the miracle of multiplying physical bread. “Lord! Give us this bread always!”

Then Jesus stated flatly,