Calming the Storm - Matt 8:23-27; Mark 4:35-41

I don’t know exactly what happened to the three men who discussed their options as disciples with Jesus, but after speaking with them, Jesus and his disciples “entered into a ship… And, behold, there arose a great tempest in the sea, insomuch that the ship was covered with the waves: but he was asleep.” There are a couple of important points here, the first is that there was a storm of great magnitude on the relatively small sea of Galilee. That’s an interesting weather pattern, here they call it lake effect, but it’s not that significant. The IM gives background saying, “The Sea of Galilee is a freshwater lake in northeastern Israel. It is located in the Jordan Rift Valley at nearly 700 feet below sea level and is surrounded by high mountains on the west, north, and east. Winds can whip down the western slopes and create sudden, intense storms with formidable waves on this relatively small body of water. Fishermen in the middle of the lake can be frightened for their lives.” If there are living creatures in the water and it’s more than 2 feet deep, then I am always afraid for my life, so for a man who goes out onto this water several times a week to put food on the table for his family, this type of storm might have been incredibly unnerving. I saw a paining once, and I guess ancient fishermen used to fish at night and come home in the morning. This painting was of a woman and her daughter standing on the shore in front of their house looking out into the water and the caption said something like “Waiting for the fisherman who’s not coming home,” meaning that sometime during the night the man in their life, assuming their husband and father, drowned and the way they found out was that he just never came home. That was a very powerful scene for me because I think about all the times that they slept through the night and wake up and he came home, but this one night, this was the time that he just stayed out there. And there wasn’t a police officer who showed up at their house with information and asking them to ID the body, there wasn’t a mangled car or a worksite accident to inform them, there was just silence. I thought about what his loss would mean for them as women and children, how their lives would change and the heartbreak involved. It was a very powerful piece for me, and it really helped me relate to this account of the disciples and Jesus on the Sea.

The second important point made is that while this storm was battering the crew to the point that the waves were flooding the ship, Jesus was asleep, as JTC explains, “near the stern of the ship… The circumstance is instructive as it evidences at once the reality of the physical attributes of Christ, and the healthy, normal condition of His body. He was subject to fatigue and bodily exhaustion from other causes, as are all men; without food He grew hungry; without drink He thirsted; by labor He became weary. The fact that after a day of strenuous effort He could calmly sleep, even amidst the turmoil of a tempest, indicates an unimpaired nervous system and a good state of health.” In a class once, the teacher asked about this story and asked “how tired do you think Jesus must have been to sleep through a storm that was knocking the boat around and flooding it? Could you sleep through something like that?” That was a thought provoking question for me because as a teenager at the time I had never been so tired that I could sleep through something like that. He was sleeping in a wooden boat, so the tossing and bumping would have been jarring to put it lightly, and he was getting rained on and splashed with water constantly. I wouldn’t have been able to sleep through that, now that I’m a single mom and older, maybe, but the point is, he must have been past the point of exhaustion in order to sleep through that. Whenever I’m so tired that I just can’t do I anymore, I remind myself of what Jesus slept through and appreciate that he’s been just as tired as me.

The storm became so powerful that the disciples panicked and woke Jesus up and said, rather frantically I’d imagine, “Master, carest thou not that we perish?” Maybe they just thought that Jesus had resigned himself to their fate, I always wondered why they woke him up. Did they need an extra hand dumping water out of the boat; did they need direction on what to do? What did they want him to do when they woke him up? Jesus knew what to do, “and he arose, and rebuked the wind, and said, unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm… And they feared exceedingly, and said one to another, what manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” Whatever they wanted him to do when they woke him up, they clearly did not expect him to say a word and the storm would vanish. They recognized him as the Messiah, but didn’t comprehend the scope of his power at this point, and interestingly, I always wondered why he would have control over the elements like this at this point in his life, it just didn’t seem to make sense to me. The IM quotes President Howard W. Hunter as teaching, “This great Jehovah, in whom we say we trust and whose name we have taken upon us, is he who said, ‘Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.’ And he is also the one who said, ‘Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appears.’ Furthermore, it was he who parted the Red Sea, allowing the Israelites to pass through on dry ground. Certainly it should be no surprise that he could command a few elements acting up in the Sea of Galilee. And our faith should remind us that he can calm the troubled waters of our lives.” This reminded me that this is not the first time that Jesus had commanded the elements.

After Jesus calms the storm, he turns to his disciples, who probably feel like they’ve just been kicked in the face, and says, “Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?” That’s a pretty stinging rebuke from someone who clearly controls nature to those who have just battled for their lives against it. It begs the question, what should have their response been? If they had enough faith, what should they have done instead? And what was their flaw? Was it waking him up? Was it panicking? Was it working with the ship to try to mitigate their losses? What exactly did hey do wrong and what exactly should they have done instead? They definitely should have done what they can with the boat to try and save themselves from the storm damage, because God expects us to do all we can for ourselves. To just sit on the boat and say, “if God wills it we will make it,” would not be what God expects us to do in a circumstance where something can be done. On the other hand, once they were engaged in what they could have done, maybe the “inshallah” (If God wills it, we will make it phrase used in Arab countries) attitude was the one that should have taken over. The disciples didn’t just go out on the boat during bad weather, when they started out it was probably sunny, they didn’t make any negligent choices, they were skilled fishermen and Jesus had asked them to take him to the other side, they were being obedient. There was nothing that the disciples were doing that could have contributed to their demise in this storm, so it would have definitely fallen into the category of tragic, but unpreventable acts of God.

President Hunter gave some of the most thought provoking imagery regarding the life of the Savior that I have ever considered, as he is quoted in the IM as saying, “Jesus was not spared grief and pain and anguish and buffeting… His ship was tossed most of his life, and at least to mortal eyes, it crashed fatally on the rocky coast of Calvary.” Knowing what we know about Jesus Christ and the plan of salvation, where we came from, why we are here, and where we are going, it’s difficult for me to look on his life and think, “wow, what a bummer ending for him.” It’s only through the eternal perspective that we can view the life of the Savior and our own lives for that matter as it really is, a beautiful experience on the road to eternal life. What a disaster it would be if, in fact, Jesus’ existence to us ended as it seemingly “crashed fatally on the rocky coast of Calvary.” President Hunter continues, “We are asked not to look on life with mortal eyes; with spiritual vision we know something quite different was happening upon the cross. Peace was on the lips and in the heart of the Savior no matter how fiercely the tempest was raging. May it so be with us- in our own hearts, in our own homes, in our nations of the world, and even in the buffetings face from time to time by the Church. We should not expect to get through life individually or collectively without some opposition.”

The disciples should have had peace in their hearts, they should have known that if they were meant to die in that storm then it would have been because of God’s will and that all things would have been for their good. That’s a very tall order, to stare death in the face and say “bring it.” But then looking at their lives later as they carried on the ministry, I think the vast majority of them were martyred while preaching the gospel. They had progressed spiritually to the point where they were ready to accept God’s will for them, even if it meant death in a most horrific fashion. How do we always have peace in our hearts, regardless of the craziness around us? What about sending our children off to war? How do we have peace in our hearts then? I know that when I sent my then-husband off to war, I was not worried. I knew that he was well trained, and I knew that he was more likely to be saved miraculously than to be killed in action. I feel like we all have so many times in our lives where we should have died, I know that looking back there are many times I think, “wow that was close, it was a miracle that I’m still here.” We have probably seen more miracles in our lives keeping us alive than we have seen freak accidents that take someone back to Jesus when it was completely unexpected. Statistically speaking, we are more likely to experience life saving miracles than life taking tragedies. And I don’t think that these disciples were any different. Especially living in the hazardous conditions that prevailed in the ancient world, they probably could have recited many times when they had lived when they shouldn’t have.

This is a very interesting commentary on the eternal perspective and I’m going to have to think about it a little bit more.