The Sea is Stilled

 Mark 4:36-41

35 On that day, when evening came, He *said to them, “Let’s go over to the other side.” 36 After dismissing the crowd, they *took Him along with them in the boat, just as He was; and other boats were with Him. 37 And a fierce gale of wind *developed, and the waves were breaking over the boat so much that the boat was already filling with water. 38 And yet JesusHimself was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they *woke Him and *said to Him, “Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?” 39 And He got up and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Hush, be still.” And the wind died down and [l]it became perfectly calm. 40 And He said to them, “Why are you [m]afraid? Do you still have no faith?” 41 They became very much afraid and said to one another, “Who, then, is this, that even the wind and the sea obey Him?”

Not that there’ll be anything new in the following, but this passage which is included in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, struck me strongly lately as a kind of living parable, within which great truth is embodied. I chose this version of the three for its inclusion of the disciples’ plea, “Do you not care that we are perishing?” 

The fierce winds and waves threatening to overwhelm can be in our times the deranged ideologies and obvious spirit of despotism that seem to be in the process of swamping western society. This is “the world” which Jesus says will hate you for my sake. Meanwhile God seems to be sleeping, oblivious; and thus the despair of the believers that God or Christ is sleeping, or doesn’t apparently even care that they are perishing.

But he responds, where is your faith, why are afraid, having seen in their case the power he has which is stronger than “the world.” Their faith as shown by their own future martyrdoms, will extend even unto death, but of course here Christ stills the storm by a simple command; and in the ultimate sense of life this silencing of the apparently triumphant “world” will occur at the moment of his choosing also. So it is in his sleeping that our faith is tested and deepens, though I’m very wary of the platitudinal blandness saying this can suggest - as if this were something straightforward, a simple formula that we should obviously adhere to. It’s no simple thing in the midst of some of these storms! And Dostoevsky’s line stands out to me that his faith had come through “a great furnace of doubt.”