Mark 6
The chapter opens with the rejection at Nazareth — the hometown cannot see the prophet for the carpenter, Jesus is amazed at their unbelief and can do almost no miracles there — before expanding to the commissioning and return of the twelve, the death of John the Baptist, and the two great miracles of the sea. The twelve are sent out two by two with authority over impure spirits and minimal provisions, told to depend on the hospitality of whatever household first receives them and to shake the dust from their feet at towns that reject the kingdom. The flashback to John's beheading frames the scene: Herod, like the rocky-ground hearer who enjoyed John's teaching without being transformed by it, is trapped by his public oath and Herodias's premeditated revenge — John's head on a platter is the consequence. The feeding of the five thousand (five loaves, two fish, five thousand men plus women and children, twelve basketfuls of leftovers) is the Exodus manna in the Galilean countryside: Jesus organizes the crowd as Moses organized Israel, looks up to heaven, gives thanks, breaks, and distributes through the disciples in the fourfold Eucharistic action, and the abundance exceeds the need. The sea-walking follows: Jesus comes to the disciples straining at the oars against the wind, walking on the water, about to pass by them (the theophanic phrase of Exodus 33), and when he enters the boat the wind dies. Mark's diagnostic sentence closes the sequence: they were completely amazed — for they had not understood about the loaves; their hearts were hardened.
Mark 6:56
And wherever he went — into villages, towns or countryside — they placed the sick in the marketplaces. They begged him to let them touch even the edge of his cloak, and all who touched it were healed — the summary verse generalizes the Gennesaret experience to the entire Galilean campaign: every location (villages, towns, countryside), every person who managed to touch even the edge of his cloak (the hem, the tassel, the minimum contact possible) was healed. The touch of the cloak's edge echoes the bleeding woman's faith in Mark 5:28 — the same faith-contact that produced her healing now characterizes the entire Galilean response.
Mark 6:48
He saw the disciples straining at the oars, because the wind was against them. Shortly before dawn he went out to them, walking on the lake. He was about to pass by them — the seeing from the shore communicates Jesus' awareness of the disciples' struggle even at distance and in darkness. Walking on the lake — the same Greek verb (peripatōn) used for ordinary walking, applied to the surface of the sea. He was about to pass by them is a theophanic phrase: in Exodus 33:22 and 1 Kings 19:11, God passes by in glory. Jesus' sea-walking is a divine self-manifestation — he is not merely rescuing the disciples but revealing himself.
Mark 6:49
When they saw him walking on the lake, they thought he was a ghost. They cried out — the disciples' response to Jesus walking on the water is to identify him as a ghost (phantasma, apparition). Their cried out is the cry of fear, not recognition. They have just experienced the feeding miracle and are now in a wind-beaten boat, and the figure walking on the water does not register as Jesus but as a supernatural threat. The category available to them (ghost) cannot hold the reality they are encountering (the Son of God).