On the Water
By John Tvedtnes

[Supplement to Gospel Doctrine New Testament lesson 12]

Some of Jesus’ most impressive miracles were performed in and around the Sea of Galilee. Here, he cast out a legion of evil spirits into a herd of swine that “ran violently down into the sea.” [1] On another occasion, he calmed a storm that threatened to sink the fishing boat that carried him and some of his disciples across the lake. [2]

Once, he sent the apostles away in a boat while he remained behind and later rejoined them by walking on the water.[3] A less dramatic miracle was when Christ told the disciples where to throw out their net and they caught a great number of fish in one draught.[4]

During the 8+ years that I lived in Israel with my family, I visited the Sea of Galilee several dozen times. On one occasion, I was on a boat with about a hundred Latter-day Saints going from Tiberias to Capernaum, reading, as I regularly did during such times, the stories of these miracles on the sea.

The water was rough that day, with a strong wind and waves up to a yard high. I was in the upper part of the boat, reading into a microphone, while most of the tourists were on the lower deck. I read the account of Jesus walking on the water and calling to Peter to join him.

When I got to the words “But when he saw the wind boisterous” (Matthew 14:30), a huge wave engulfed the boat and soaked the Bible from which I was reading. When I finished reading, I looked up to the sky and said, “You can turn off the special effects now.” I expected laughter, but was surprised when the wind instantly stopped and the waves disappeared, leaving the sea almost as smooth as glass. After the “oohs” and “aahs” from the passengers, I jokingly said, “Don’t any of you call me a false prophet again.”

On another occasion, most of the members of the Jerusalem Branch attended a baptismal service at the Jordan River, just where it comes out of the Sea of Galilee to flow south to the Dead Sea. Jean Hooks, whose husband worked at the U.S. Embassy, was baptized, along with 8-year-old Rivka Galbraith, whose father David was branch president. That afternoon, the Galbraiths and my family came to the youth hostel at Kare-Deshe on the northern shore of the lake and swam before eating dinner and settling down for an overnight stay.

As he swam past me, David paraphrased a beloved song and said, “I swam today where Jesus swam.” I corrected him, “No, David, that’s wrong. It should be ‘I swam today where Jesus walked.’”

Though intended to be humorous, my words remained with me in the coming days and I reflected on how the story of Jesus walking on the water resembled our sojourn in mortality. We come to the earth in a state of innocence, [5] just as Peter was able to begin walking on the water. As time goes by, we begin sinking into sins in the same way that Peter began sinking into the water.

Jesus, on the other hand, walked on the water and was not engulfed by it; similarly, he lived unaffected by the sins of the world. As we begin to be swallowed up in sin, we have the same recourse as Peter, who cried out “Lord, save me” (Matthew 14:30). Our Savior rescued Peter from the water and his atonement can rescue all of us from sin.[6]

For an introduction to the books of the New Testament and in-depth discussions of each verse in the New Testament, see Kevin L. Barney (ed.), John H. Jenkins, and John A. Tvedtnes, “ Footnotes to the New Testament for Latter-day Saints,” go to: http://feastupontheword.org/Site:NTFootnotes