“Why are you so timid?” Mark 4:35-41
There’s a famous line from a famous movie about a shark where one of the shark hunters sees the shark for the first time and exclaims, “We’re gonna need a bigger boat!” To the disciples caught in a sudden fierce storm, a bigger boat may have been tempting, but what they really needed was a bigger dose of faith.
They had had a long, busy day dealing with the crowds that thronged Jesus. His teaching had been in new, hard to understand parables. Now, as the day ended, he wanted to go to the other side of the lake. They quickly complied and were soon underway. Jesus, just as quickly, fell asleep in the back of the boat.
They had all seen these storms before. Some from the shore snug behind shuttered doors and windows. Some had experienced them on the water in this boat. These fishermen knew firsthand that this night would be no fun, just a long, slow and wet slog against the wind.
This storm was different. The wind bore down on them fiercely. The waves surged over and through the gunnels as if the boat didn’t even exist. It didn’t take long for all on board – seasoned mariner and landlubber alike – to realize that this voyage was doomed.
The ceaseless waves filled the boat faster than they could even begin to bail. The wind showered them with spray and the jerky pitching of the creaking boat constantly tried to throw them overboard. They were at the end of their resources. Sheer determination was all they had left and that was quickly overwhelmed by the enormity of the storm’s violence. Their hope vanished like a stone sinking down through the waters.
Better let Jesus know. He might want to say something comforting and inspirational before… Confound it! Why wasn’t he up helping them? At least he could bail – didn’t he care that they were drowning?
It was hard to remember what happened next. It all came so sudden and at once. Someone woke Jesus and he spoke to the wind and waves, just as he might scold an over excited child, “Hush, be still.” The wind died down. The sea became calm. Perfectly calm.
But he wasn’t finished. The storm within the hearts and minds of the disciples was still raging. “Why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith?”
Was that fair? They had good reasons to despair. Everything they had known and experienced told them it was foolish to expect to survive this storm. They had no way of knowing he could do anything like this. Unless he was truly, actually God. God in the flesh, living among men.
The same God who, by the way, had done this before. He rebuked the sea and made it dry (Nahum 1:4ff). He raised up a stormy wind, which lifted up the waves of the sea (Psalm 107:35). He dried up the Red Sea and led their ancestors through it on dry ground (Psalm 106:9; Exodus 14). And this really scared them.
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1)
Copyright 2019 David J. Cooley