Will Vaus

Mark Twain and his wife once visited the Holy Land. Among other places, they stayed in Tiberius on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. It was a moonlit night, and the weather was perfect, so Twain got the romantic idea of taking his wife for a boat ride on the lake. They walked down to the shoreline, and Twain inquired of a man sitting in a rowboat how much he would charge to row them out on the water. Twain was dressed in his usual white suit, white shoes, and white Texas hat. The oarsman, presuming him to be a wealthy rancher from the USA, said, “Well, I guess about twenty-five dollars.” Mark Twain thanked him, and, as he turned away with his wife on his arm, he was heard to exclaim, “Now I know why Jesus walked on the water!” [1] Well, that is Mark Twain’s perspective on the story about Jesus we are going to read today. I would like to look with you at three more perspectives on this same story: that of Jesus, that of the disciples, and that of the crowd. Listen to Mark

One of my first experiences in ministry was teaching a fifth-grade Sunday school class when I was still in high school. On one occasion, I invited the entire class of thirty students to my house for a party. My parents kindly obliged by opening their home for the event. My mother made 80 enchiladas to serve the horde, and then my parents went out for the evening, leaving me in charge. I thought I had enough activities to keep thirty fifth-graders busy for a couple of hours, between games, movies, and food, but apparently, I was wrong. By the end of the evening, they were doing back-flips over the sofa in our living room. When the parents arrived in the middle of this chaos to pick up their children, my parents arrived home as well. Standing in our foyer, looking out over the masses, one of the fifth-grade parents turned to my parents and asked them, “So which one is yours?” My mother replied nonchalantly, “The tall one over there.” Sometimes feeding and entertaining large grou