Mark 6:45-56: Walking on water and changing hearts

In this series, we are covering miracles in Mark, but which ones? I’ll tell you: representative ones. There are physical healings. We looked at one. There is resurrection. We looked at that. We will look at the spiritual realm as Jesus casts out demons. And then there is this category where Jesus displays his power over creation. In that category, we get this miracle: Jesus walking on the water and calming the storm.

Our hardened hearts

Let’s start by recognizing that this miracle is unique. How? Do you know what almost all of Jesus’ miracles have in common? He never once did them for himself. In fact, when Satan came to tempt Jesus (Luke 4:1-13), that was one of his temptations: “Jesus, do a miracle only for yourself. Make bread out of stone.” Jesus would not. It could look like Jesus is doing this miracle for himself—that he’s walking on water because it was the shortest trip across the lake. But this miracle wasn’t to shorten Jesus’ journey. It was to restore the hearts of his disciples.

But it did not work. Their hearts did not get better. They got worse. Here’s Mark’s stunning interpretative comment: “They were completely amazed, for they had not understood about the loaves; their hearts were hardened” (Mark 6:51-52).

Maybe you thought that only happened to people like Pharaoh. Wrong. Jesus’ own disciples experienced hearts that were calcifying, ossifying—turning into spiritual rocks. This is horrifying, especially when we see the cause. It didn’t come from the place we expect—from listening too hard to the culture or getting involved with special sin. It happened because the disciples had seen Jesus feed the five thousand and they had not taken it in. They had not “understood.”

Here’s a hard truth meant to crack up our hardness: Church, the Bible, and the sacraments in our lives do not just make us better. They can also make us worse. How so? The poet, George MacDonald, put it like this: “Nothing is so deadening to the divine as an habitual dealing with the outsides of holy things.” It’s the same thing here—not understanding. There is a hearing of Jesus. And then there is hearing Jesus. There is taking Holy Communion. And then there is receiving Holy Communion. One will make you worse. The other will save.

Enter the restorative miracle. The disciples are out on the lake, and the wind is torturing them, the Greek says. Jesus “sees” them (Mark 6:48). The sky is just getting to a shade of purple in the dawn. The pink is coming next, and Jesus starts his water walk. He has it in his mind to pass them by. Let’s come back to that so we can focus on the disciples’ reaction. They act like a bunch of kindergartners in a haunted house and start crying out.

Maybe you think I’m being harsh. I doubt it. Their reaction is outlandish on so many levels. Every Bible-believing person should know that ghosts are not a thing. Angels and demons? Absolutely. Ghosts, as in humans who lost their bodies and are now hanging around places on earth? No. The disciples should have known better. But this is a special kind of outlandishness: They see Jesus walk on water and come to a belief that even some pagans would not have. Why? Even if we accept a pagan’s premise that there are ghosts, do you know what some pagans knew? Just as many good Americans know that sunlight is harmful to vampires and water is hard on witches, some Greco-Roman people knew that spirits could not cross water. In other words, the disciples saw Jesus walk on water and ended up adopting a belief worse than some pagans’.

One of the best ways we know that the heart is hardening is when we make a move like that. Like the disciples, we leap to the worst conclusions when the storms of life rage. This is not Jesus moving in my life right now. It’s a ghost! Even some pagans tell themselves better stories than that the worst is coming true.

Our Savior’s restorative power

Thank God, there’s a cure! Remember the odd comment from Mark? Jesus had planned to pass them by. Some theorize Jesus planned to do that to make it look like he didn’t care and that he was testing them. There’s a better way to read it. The Lord passed by once earlier in the Scriptures too. When he passed Moses by (Exodus 33: 12-23), it was expressly to reveal himself, not to act like he didn’t care. In short, Jesus passes them by for the same reason that Maverick in Top Gun buzzes the flight tower. He wants to be seen for who he really is so that they will understand. “If he can walk on water—if he can walk on the most dangerous, most uncontrollable, most terrifying piece of creation that exists—then truly he is the Son of God. He can do anything. And truly, he will do anything for me.”

But they don’t see that. So Jesus keeps working on their hearts. He speaks to them: “It is I” (Mark 6:50). Read that with depth. It’s I—the one who was, and is, and always will be. It’s I—your source, Savior, God, and Lord. But Jesus doesn’t just do that. He gets into the boat with them. But Jesus doesn’t just do that. The wind dies down. He was showing them so much. I love that. Jesus just won’t quit. Keep reading in Mark, and you’ll see just how far he’ll go to break open the hearts of his disciples. He suffers. He dies. He rises.

All of this means that, finally, we arrive from our initial miracle of walking on water to two others. The first is the love of Jesus, which won’t stop coming for our hearts. He longs to pass us by and reveal himself. The second is his gospel power that removes our hearts of stone and gives us hearts of flesh, restoring us through this miracle to the way our hearts were always designed to be: fully alive to who he is for us.

What should we do with all of that? Do what the Scriptures say to do: “Today, if only you would hear his voice, ‘Do not harden your hearts’ ” (Psalm 95:7-8). Or, as Jesus himself put it, “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear” (Mark 4:9).

This is the second article in a five-part series on Jesus’ miracles in the gospel of Mark. Read part one. 

Author: Jonathan Bourman
Volume 113, Number 02
Issue: February 2026

Defining a miracle

What is a miracle? Here’s a common definition: A miracle is when God breaks the apparent laws of this world to do something supernatural. In other words, there is the usual way that things work, and Jesus does something way out of the norm.

But isn’t it true that we could understand restorative miracles in the exact opposite sense? Couldn’t we say that a miracle isn’t God breaking what’s usually normal but instead God intervening to return abnormal things to their normal condition? Because disease from God’s perspective isn’t normal. Neither is death nor storms nor demons on the loose.

What is happening in a miracle? It’s not a violation of the norm. In a more profound and Christian sense, it is a restoration to the normal—God’s normal. It is God returning things to the way they were always supposed to be.