Mark 4:41 They were terrified and asked each other, “Who is this?”
This passage has several phrases that offer a way into meditation and reflection. For example, as someone in the evening years of life I read the opening verse of this passage as a potential epitaph. Evening came and Jesus said, “Let us go to the other side.” It comforts to imagine those words from the lips of Jesus.
I recently heard that a particular church was suffering a loss of attendance. That can be a disturbing sign or perhaps we read these words in Mark 4:36 and see it differently. “Leaving the crowds behind they took him along.” The disciples were with Jesus. In some cases we may need to lose attendance or depart the crowds in order to go with Jesus.
The passage turns on the sudden appearance of a storm as the disciples cross the lake. Their boat is nearly swamped. This squall recalls to my mind the way God spoke to Job out of a whirlwind (Job 38:1). The storms of life, actual and metaphorical, often become the means by which God gets our attention so that we listen to his word.
The disciples woke Jesus with the question, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?” Our doubts are sometimes along the same lines. We know that God exists, just as the disciples knew that Jesus was with them in the boat. We question, not God’s existence, but God’s concern for us. Does God want to heal us? Does God want to save our marriage or protect our children or give meaning to our work? The disciples were not the first ones to plead with God to wake up and do something, to show that he cared for them. The psalmists made similar pleas. For example, Psalm 44:23, reads, “Awake, Lord! Why do you sleep? Rouse yourself!”
“Peace, be still.” (KJV, v. 39) Those words of Jesus used to calm the storm have become the words of an uplifting hymn Master the Tempest Is Raging www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmLtRae65Bg
Jesus asked the disciples why they were afraid and he probed further asking, “Do you still have no faith?” (v. 40) Trust and obedience in the Lord removes our fear. When we are with Jesus we are safe. The winds will calm. The boat will get to the other side, the other side of the lake or the other side of this life. Either way we are safe with Jesus. That is the faith to which he called the disciples.
They struggled and so do we. Yet they were amazed at the calming of the storm and, at least tentatively, declared their faith with the question, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!” They had much ahead in their journey with Jesus to amaze them. After the cross and the resurrection they no longer asked, “Who is this?” They proclaimed the Gospel, Jesus is Lord! We live with that same Gospel which is able to give us faith and freedom from fear. God grant it!
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