Sunday, June 24, 2018

Mark 4:35-41




Mark 4:35-41

35 On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, "Let us go across to the other side." 36 And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. 37 A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. 38 But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" 39 He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, "Peace! Be still!" Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. 40 He said to them, "Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?" 41 And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, "Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?"

            Mark 4:35-41 is the story of a miracle involving the calming of the storm on the Sea of Galilee. However, some scholars suggest that we properly read the story as an epiphany, a moment that reveals the divine identity of Jesus. The story has clear parallels with Jonah 1:5-6, as both fall asleep during a storm and the travelling companions of both awaken them. Yet, the contrast is just as important. Jonah is in this position because he is running from God. Jesus is in this position because he is fulfilling the purpose of God in serving the rule of God. I am looking at this story as having two messages. One is the nature of discipleship as placing our trust in Jesus. Two is the revelation of the identity of Jesus. We learn of these twin messages through two important questions asked in the passage. In fact, the Bible is such a reliable guide, not so much because of the answers it gives but because of the questions, it raises.

From the divine perspective, I suppose, one could reasonably have peace and calm. The perspective of eternity allows one to think about the struggles of history in a way that allows such calm to be part of divine life. Yet, a human life is full of the storms of life. The storm rages. Evil and chaos can seem overwhelming. The little boats we build may seem all right when the sea is calm. However, if the storm rages, the structures we have built are no longer sufficient.

Of course, only God is God. We cannot have the perfect peace of the divine. However, one of the beautiful truths of Christian teaching is that God has turned toward us in love. As such, the peace and calm that is so much a part of divine life is a gift that God wants us to have. God does not keep this divine peace within God’s possession. God shares it with us. All we need, although this can be a tall order, is to turn toward God in trust. Sometimes, nothing is easier. At other times, few things seem harder. Yet, when we recognize whom it is that we meet in Jesus, trust or faith is the only proper response.

The story of Jesus calming the story reflects the theme of the depreciation of the disciples and a call to trust. The story makes two assertions, one about faith and the other about Jesus.  It declares sovereignty of Jesus over nature and Satan.  It calls for faith in God as creator and sustainer of nature.  It expresses the total abandonment of Jesus to the Father.[1]

            We can also consider this story in light of its context in Mark. Some scholarship has suggested that Mark uses these homogeneous units, such as a parable section followed by a miracle section, to demonstrate a two pronged thrust to Jesus’ ministry as well as to the ministry he conceives for his disciples.  According to this argument, Mark sees preaching and exorcizing as Jesus’ two primary activities.  This text is the first in Mark’s miracle section.  Mark’s preacher-healer Jesus seems always anxious to be off to yet another place.  However, if Jesus seeks to escape the crowds that have gathered about and engulfed him, he fails.  We should note that “other boats were with him.”  Did the storm that so badly battered the boat Jesus and the disciples were in also threaten the lives of those in these other boats?  The storm that whips up out of nowhere is, of course, indicative of more than the changeable weather patterns over the Sea of Galilee. 

            Jesus is provoking strong reactions from nearly everyone with whom he comes into contact. His own family members question his mental state, his neighbors greet him with a hostile welcome, the religious professionals and politicians are plotting ways to kill him and the demons fear him. However, the crowds of people are not following him with the intent to harm him; rather, they are astonished at the authority of his teaching and his miraculous powers. The first 34 verses of chapter 4 are a series of parables. These parables are the first substantial and direct teaching of Jesus found in Mark's gospel.

Jesus is at a favored location: the seashore. It is the end of a long day. In the previous chapter, one learns that Jesus is growing in success and popularity. Not only are the Galileans flocking to hear Jesus and perhaps receive healing through him, but also people from Judea and Idumea, the trans-Jordan and Tyre and Sidon (3:7), both Jews and non-Jews, have come to hear the teacher whose popularity rivals that of John the Baptist. The gathering of people is so large that it seems to force to teach from a boat offshore so that they do not crowd him (3:9 and 4:1); when he goes into a house, it is so crowded that Jesus and his disciples are unable to eat (3:20).

35 On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, "Let us go across to the other side." Mark pictures Jesus as wanting a break. Nonstop teaching and preaching before huge, pressing crowds had left him drained and exhausted. Note the abruptness. Jesus offers no dismissal to the crowd. He extends no final blessing over them; he simply 36 leaves (or abandoned aphiemi) the crowd behind. Their movement is immediate. Yet, this is no gentle easing away or gradually closing up shop. At Jesus' word, they simply get up and go without any further concern for the crowd. As abrupt as the disciples' actions may appear, however, it seems Jesus is even further ahead of them, for they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. The entire situation is ambiguous to me. On the one hand, it appears the disciples almost physically took Jesus their boat to rescue him from the unrelenting demands of the crowd. It suggests they had no opportunity to prepare for the crossing. On the other hand, Jesus told them it was time to cross the lake. Thus, “just as he was” could mean the disciples did not so much take Jesus away as they went with him. For, according to this text, Jesus was already in the boat, ready to go, waiting for them to catch up. I am not sure which it was. Boat pulpits (as described in 4:1) could be Jesus' response to the size of the crowd. However, as this text reveals, teaching from a boat also gave Jesus the opportunity for a very fast getaway. Other boats were with him. 37 A great windstorm, lailaps, also the word for "whirlwind" in Job, arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the waves already swamped the boat. Storms on the Sea of Galilee can come suddenly. The large freshwater basin traps violent storm winds that come off the Golan Heights and can be deadly even to the most experienced of anglers. As recently as 1992, a windstorm raised 10-foot waves that crashed into the town of Tiberius causing significant damage there. The watery location of the miracle also tips us off to the messianic focus of this text. The power to still the sea is an attribute reserved for God. The power of the Lord stilled the sea (Job 26:2. The Lord can also stir up the sea so that its waves roar (Isaiah 51:15). When the sailors tossed Jonah into the sea, it ceased its raging (Jonah 1:15). Understanding the Old Testament images of raging waters is important. This passage draws on traditional imagery used by the Israelites to speak of God's divine power over nature. The power to control the seas and subdue storms belongs to God. The Lord is the one who rules the raging of the sea so that when its waves rise, the Lord still them (Psalm 89:8-9). The Lord has more majesty than mighty waters and the waves of the sea (Psalm 93:3-4). Controlling the seas also conjures up God's divine action in the Exodus, as the Lord rebukes the Red Sea so that it becomes dry like a desert (Psalm 106:9). Storms become metaphors for evil forces active in the world, evil forces from which only God can save. The Psalmist can God to save him, for the waters have come up to his neck, while he has come into deep waters and floods sweep over him, so that his petition is that God rescue him from deep waters and for God not to allow the flood to swallow him (Psalm 69:1-2, 14-15). Thus the stormy sea in Mark 4:37 is much more than an uncontrollable, unpredictable action of nature.  The sea is a malevolent expression of the power of a destructive force that stalks the created world. 38 However, Jesus was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. Jesus safely snuggles himself down in the stern of the ship, as did Jonah (1:5), though we assume for quite different reasons. He is not only asleep and safely snuggled down in the stern of the ship, but he curls himself up on a comfortable cushion. Archaeological discoveries have led scholars to conclude that the common boat of the time was 26½ feet long, 7½ feet wide, and 4½ feet deep, with a covered area under the helmsman’s station.[2] These measurements are surely small enough to assume that one could remain asleep in the midst of a storm only through the lack of sensory perception or the possession of great trust or willpower. Some scholars have viewed Jesus' command to leave the pressing crowd and his immediate collapse into such a deep and restful sleep as a sign of a very human Jesus' need to rest and regroup after a demanding day. The disciples themselves seem convinced that Jesus is primarily an exhausted man ‑‑ one who does not even respond to a dangerous situation because he is just too tired. If so, his exhaustion, unlike that of Jonah, is the result of his faithfulness to the proclamation of the rule of God. They woke him up and said to him, "Teacher (rabbi, a very common, very human title that suggests no special status, rather than kyrios or Lord as in Matthew), do you not care that we are perishing?" One would assume that with professional anglers sailing the boat they would handle the turbulent weather effectively, not needing the assistance of a carpenter. However, unlike the details provided by the author of Jonah - giving account of the terrible storm through which Jonah also slept - Mark does not tell us what actions the anglers took to save the boat. Believing that the boat is about to sink, the disciples perceive the sleeping Jesus to be indifferent to the peril of the raging storm and the fragile boat. Throughout the Old Testament, sleep is also an important image. The gift of being able to sleep untroubled and peacefully is a sign that one can trust in God's power. The sleep such a person is sweet, for the Lord will be the confidence of such a person (Proverbs 3:23-26). Likewise, when it appeared that God had lost interest in the people, they assumed that God had ceased to watch over them and was asleep. When the people were distressed and troubled, they would call upon God to awaken, fearing that the Lord is asleep (Psalm 44:23-26). These two Old Testament images powerfully overlap with Jesus' sleeping as the storm rages around the frightened disciples. Jesus is asleep, at peace in the care of the Father, as the waves toss the boat about in a frightening and dangerous way.  His faith in God's power to keep him safe remains strong, unlike the panicked disciples. There is an ancient Near Eastern tradition of recognizing that sleep and rest are in fact divine characteristics, activities gained by divine right, not signs of human weakness. In Genesis, as well as in a number of other creation myths from neighboring Near Eastern cultures, the all‑powerful Creator‑God acknowledges the completion of the creative impulse by resting (see Genesis 2:2). Resting is clearly a divine prerogative. Indeed, in Genesis, God's gift of the Sabbath to created men and women indicates the elevated status of these human beings. Like God, the Sabbath commandment calls them to observe a time of rest.[3] 39 He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, "Peace! Be still!" Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. Jesus uses almost the same command to still the sea as he does to squelch the upstart demon in Mark 1:25 ("Be silent"). Neither the demonic storm at sea nor the nagging demon in the synagogue has any power to threaten this divine Jesus. Jesus deals with both swiftly ‑‑ almost as if they were no more than an annoyance. As one possessed of all‑powerful divinity, Jesus can sleep in the midst of the raging sea because his Father in heaven has already conquered it. Jesus muzzles the hostile powers of wind and sea and makes them powerless to harm the disciples. Jesus silences a demonic storm, operating with what can only be the full authority of God. The great calm that occurs after Jesus' command reflects God's power over the waters of chaos, which had risen to cover the mountains, but now reside in their divinely appointed boundaries (Psalm 104:5-9). Such notions lead to a portrayal of Jesus as the one whom God has invested with divine authority and one who has control of demonic forces. We can see the close topological relation to the exorcism and healing genre in the vocabulary Jesus used. However, Jesus’ control over these destructive, life-threatening forces is not merely an expression of sheer power.  When his frightened disciples so rudely rouse the sleeping Jesus, Jesus turns to this watery demon and conquers it ‑‑ not with action, but simply with a word. A genuinely divine rebuke is enough to slap the sea back into submission.

We come to the first question that unlocks the message of this story. The question comes from Jesus. 40 He said to them, "Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?" The experience now offers to his disciples an opportunity for them to deepen their discipleship and faithfulness.  In scolding the disciples for their fear and faithfulness, Jesus suggests to them what their appropriate response to witnessing this miracle should be, confidence and utter faith in Jesus’ abilities and powers. As great as this miracle is, the climax of the story does not rest here. Instead, the climax is the question that Jesus asks the disciples. Their faith is so different from Jesus' untroubled faith that they mistake it for careless indifference - an interesting contrast that will come later in Mark's gospel when the disciples sleep in the Garden, with careless indifference to what is about to befall Jesus. At the core of the story is an issue of trust. Faith, in the sense we find in Mark, means in part recognition that Jesus is Christ and Son of God (see 1.1 and 5:7). If the disciples feared for their lives because of the storm, and were became silent astonishment by the actions of Jesus, his pointed questions resulted in a truly great fear among the inner group. Jesus asks them why they behaved as cowards. Jesus’ question seems unfair, for the narration indicates that they were in true danger. Possibly, Jesus seems perplexed that his miracles they have viewed and his teachings they have heard have not resulted in a greater trust in God. Jesus’ message has continually been the call to believe in the gospel (1:15). Have those closest to him not yet responded to the call? The reader may argue on behalf of the disciples. They were in true danger, and they do not know all that the narrator has revealed to the audience. It would be unreasonable to ask them to be apathetic in the midst of a storm.

We come to the second question that unlocks the second meaning of this story. 41 Further, what Jesus said filled them with great awe and said to one another, "Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?" The question Jesus asks, rather than the storm, causes Mark to say emphatically that the small group of disciples feared a great fear. Though they had no difficulty asking Jesus a pointed question a few verses before, now they have no answer for him, but instead turn to discuss a pressing question among themselves. “Who is this?” Here is the question Mark wants to answer throughout his gospel. Ultimately, his story is one that suggests that the one who died for others and whom God raised from the dead is the Son of God and promised Messiah. Therefore, at this point, the reader, who has likely already decided who Jesus is, must be itching to provide an answer. This is Jesus, the Lord, the Savior, and the Son of God! Jesus is the one who expels demons, who reveals the mysteries of God’s rule, and the one who controls nature. The member of Mark’s community who first heard this account in its entirety up to the modern-day reader has all the evidence before him or her. This question coming from the mouth of Jesus’ inner group is almost absurd; can they not see who this is? If then the text makes the answer to this question obvious, it only directs the reader back to Jesus’ last question. If you know who I am, do you yet have no faith? The disciples are still terrified, but not at the raging storm. Now they are shocked at the man who holds power over the demonic forces of nature. In its concluding sentence, Mark's text again focuses on the issue of identity, not the moment of miracle. The disciples raise the question that all the clues in Mark's text have already answered. The only answer is obvious.

Barth has an exposition of this passage in which he says that the early church finds its story in it. However, what serious relationship is there between this and their high position as relation to other worldly structures? The disciples impressively staff the ship. Jesus has chosen and called them. The disciples are the towers. They are an experienced crew. They are not alone with tradition, for Jesus is with them. He was asleep. When the storm arose, even this experienced crew was afraid. Everything, even the sleeping Jesus, seems useless. The storm is too violent. The pillar and ground of truth begins to totter. The gates of hell are menacingly open to engulf them. They were terrified that the ship, they themselves, and Jesus, will all perish. It will all be over for them. The situation is too much for the disciples. If Jesus were not in the ship, it would have gone down. However, he is in the ship. The ship cannot go down. He will preserve the disciples. They did not need to awake him. Jesus rebukes them for doing so. The living presence of Jesus should have been enough to assure them that this ship could not go down. Once Jesus has dismissed all cause for fear, revealing it as groundless and showing himself to be the basis of their existence, we find calm. Jesus was their Lord and deliverer. He made peace for them. In the end, the disciples have the type of awe or fear that is the beginning of wisdom. It was fear that led to despair of itself, its apostolate, its faith, and its Lord. The crossing is important because in it, the church sees the self-declaration of the Lord and the knowledge it brings. The church achieves self-understanding in relation to its existence.[4]

Much of the intellectual history of the West suggests that we live in a perpetual storm. Darwin suggested the storm of nature in his theory that evolution of the species involved the storm of the survival of the fittest. Even Darwin admitted, though, his theory led to his blindness to the aesthetic experience of human life. Karl Marx, regardless of how discredited his theory has become, reduced the human struggle to a struggle of economic class. Many of his followers reduce the human struggle to the storm of race or gender. The revolutions inspired by such theories failed because their promises could never become reality. Freud saw storm within in the unconscious struggle of Id, ego, and superego. Our personal desires and drives conflict with the boundaries established by society and introduce the storm that results in the public persona we present to others. Such theories introduce conflict, or the storm, into the natural processes of human life.[5]

Let us assume for a moment that storms are a natural part of human life.

Can we trust or have faith when the storm rages? Many people are in the midst of storms right now.  Fifteen million Americans attend half-a-million support groups weekly.  A song puts it this way:

I'd better change my wandrin' ways,
I know I've seen my better days,
Always gettin' high when I get low
Well, I left my soul out in the rain,
Lord, what a price I've had to pay
The storms of life are washin' me away.[6]

John Wesley lost his nerve while crossing the Atlantic.  Wesley grew anxious during the storm, while the Moravians were unperturbed by the winds and waves.  What made those Moravians so peaceful in the face of the tempest? He may well have an example that the punishment of every disordered mind is its own disorder.[7] Many of us long to have the faith in which nothing disturbs or frightens us. We might do so if we realize that everything in human experience passes, but the faithfulness of the love of God toward us does not change. We need patience, of course. We might attain a level of spirituality in which we realize that if we trust in God, we lack nothing we need for that moment. God alone is enough.[8]

In the midst of the chaotic, destructive, stormy conditions of human life, it does not surprise me that we sometimes have little faith. Yet, I think we can agree that, in spite of all the reasons for us to be anxious about our lives, we will not find much growth toward health, wholeness, and meaningfulness without learning to trust.

Titanic, the 1997 movie starring Kate Winslow and Leonardo DiCaprio, is a fictionalized story of passengers who sailed on that fateful voyage, especially the story of a self-reliant young man, Jack, and a society maiden, Rose, who is being forced to marry for money. It won 11 Academy Awards, including best picture.

In one scene (Title 1, chapter 14), Rose, as an elderly woman, becomes the narrator, saying that no one seemed to notice the pain she was going through as a teen. In the evening, she runs the length of the ship, goes to the rear of the ship, and gets ready to jump off the ship. Jack sees her, and says, “Do not do it.” She responds, “I will jump.” Jack says, “You won’t do it.” She responds, “Who are you to tell me what to do?” She wants him to leave. Jack responds, “I am too involved. If you jump, I jump.” That is crazy, she says. He says, “Pardon me, but I am not the one ready to jump.” They start talking. He says the water is cold. He hopes she will come back on the ship. “You don’t want to do this.” She then takes his hand. However, she slips, struggles, and screams. “Take hold of my hand. I have got you. Trust me, Rose.” In fact, it surprised me how much trust will figure into this relationship. Later in the movie, she turns away from Jack, ready to marry for money because her mother told her to do so. However, she changes her mind again. They are at the front of the ship. In a rather memorable scene, Jack has her to stand at the head of the ship and close her eyes. He takes her hand. “Trust me,” he says. He places her on the railing at the front. He asks her to open her eyes to the beautiful view the ocean presented.

I suspect most of us would acknowledge that trust is important in human relationships. Even these uneducated, ancient people, whose business is fishing, knew how difficult trust could be. We can gain a form of peace in the ways of the world, I imagine. The security of the palace and prosperity could bring a form of peace. Yet, the spiritual tradition would invite us to consider that when we are at peace with God, we also begin the journey of being at peace with our fellow human beings.

Yet, can we trust a sleeping Jesus?

Now if you were in a boat in a raging sea, whom would you trust? Who would you want to be there? Would it be sailors of lifelong experience or a small town boy sleeping in the hold? Is this not the dilemma we face? Am I willing and ready to trust a sleeping Jesus?[9] When the storms of life rage, when chaos and evil threaten to overwhelm us, can we trust a sleeping Jesus? Where is your faith?

In fact, Jesus asks his disciples an important question. They have already decided to have enough faith to follow Jesus. Why are they still fearful? We might expand the question. Why are we who follow Jesus still so anxious? Why do the experiences of life teach us that our faith is still so small? If we were to consider the important questions that the Bible asks, this would be an example of an insightful question. We look for answers to answers to our questions. Yet, maybe a good way to read the Bible is to listen for the questions it asks. When we hear the question that is our question, then we have already begun to hear much. We are now ready to hear the answer the Bible gives, even if we do not like its answer or reject its answer.[10]

In fact, we discover the reason for this story in the question the disciples ask of Jesus. If I were listing the most important questions in the Bible, this question would make the list. Who is this man? Every story and saying in this gospel seeks to answer that question. We owe to God wonder and awe. Is God at work in Jesus? In saving their lives in the midst of the storm, Jesus gives the disciples the opportunity to trust more in him. We know they will abandon Jesus at the hour of crucifixion. Yet, after God raises Jesus from the dead, they receive the gift of revelation into who Jesus is. They begin the journey of discipleship of learning trust Jesus.

So how do we come to place our trust in someone, or in Jesus? We want to trust, we want to have faith, but sometimes, it is the hardest thing. We will learn some lessons.  Jesus will calm some of our storms. Jesus will not calm all of our storms. We have to trust that Jesus knows which storms need calming. Why believe in him? Why trust him? Although I could imagine a sermon on each of these five points, let me just mention some reasons to trust Jesus. 1) We trust him because others have trusted him before us. 2) We trust him because he is trustworthy. 3) We trust him because he gave his life for us. 4) We trust him because he has demonstrated his love for us. 5) We trust him because his word is true.

Whatever storm we are facing, may we do so knowing that the One who is in the boat with us will one day retire all those named and unnamed maelstroms and memories forever.



[1] Jesus Seminar
[2](Joel Marcus, “Mark 1-8”, Anchor Bible Commentary, 27 [New York: Doubleday, 2000], 332-333).
[3] (For a more complete discussion of these concepts see Bernard F. Batto, "The Sleeping God: An Ancient Near Eastern Motif of Divine Sovereignty," Biblica 68 [1987], 153‑177.) Near Eastern narratives consistently used the sea as a symbol of chaos, evil and demonic power. In all near-Eastern mythologies, the sea plays an important role, identified often as both god and serpent. In ancient Near Eastern theology, the Creator God can rest because cosmic chaos has been transformed into divinely ordained order. However, there is yet another reason behind the image of the slumbering Lord. A sleeping God indicated divinity that was undisturbed by other powers. Only an unchallenged, supremely authoritative deity dare lie down and sleep soundly. God sleeps because God has no concern about any challenges to his divinity.
[4] Barth, Church Dogmatics IV.3 [72.1] 733-4.
[5] Darwin’s journey into the animal kingdom, which humans till then believed to exist for their benefit, switched attention to the struggle for life, which was increasingly seen as dominating every aspect of existence. But Darwin himself complained that his doctrines made him feel ‘like a man who has become colour-blind,’ who has lost ‘the higher aesthetic tastes,’ and that his mind had become ‘a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, causing a ‘loss of happiness’; and an ‘enfeebling [of] the emotional part of our nature’. Marx’s journey into the sufferings of the working class, and his invitation to revolution, tore the world apart for a hundred years, though it soon became obvious that revolutions are incapable of keeping their promises, however honestly made. Then, in the last years of the century, Freud embarked on a journey into the unconscious of the neurotics of Vienna, which changed what people saw inside themselves, what they worried about, and whom they blamed, but the hope that they would forgive once they understood has not been realized. All these thinkers put the idea of conflict at the center of their vision. The world continues to be haunted by that idea. Even those who want to abolish conflict use its methods to fight it. (Theodore Zeldin, An Intimate History of Humanity [New York: HarperCollins Pub., 1994], p. 15.)
[6] --Chorus of "Storms of Life," a song written by Troy Harold Seals and Max Duane Barnes, recorded by Randy Travis for his debut album, "Storms of Life" in 1986.
[7] The punishment of every disordered mind is its own disorder. --Augustine of Hippo, Confessions.
[8] Teresa of Avila: Let nothing disturb you, Nothing frighten you, All is passing, God does not change, Patience attains to all; One who holds to God Lacks nothing: God alone is enough.
[9] Pastor Kevin McHarg of First Christian Church in Benton, Kentucky
[10] (Frederick Buechner, Listening to Your Life [Harper, San Francisco], p. 98.)

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