For Sunday
Proper 7B
Collect
O Lord, make us have perpetual love and reverence for your holy Name, for you never fail to help and govern those whom you have set upon the sure foundation of your loving-kindness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.
Reading
Reflection
This story always makes me laugh. Jesus is sleeping in the back of the boat during a storm. The disciples freak out and shout about how Jesus clearly doesn’t care that they’re all going to die!
We know they aren’t. They should know they aren’t. And it is actually an open question whether they actually believe they are going to die.
But it is funny that they act like it is life and death. And that imperative is juxtaposed by Jesus sleeping, so he probably thinks they’re going to be fine. That is incredibly telling. Not just about the things we believe, but about how different our sense of life and death is from Jesus’s.
They think the storm is the problem and Jesus neither thinks it is a problem or the problem.
This is the comedy of misunderstanding, when we don’t know the score and here is the authority figure, just chilling. Can’t he see we are freaking out?
The real question of this story is not about life and death, but what it is they think Jesus can do about it.
In one sense, they want him to care for their feelings. But I don’t think that’s everything. They want him to care for their bodies. They want him to save all of them. And because death is clearly imminent, they need him to do something. They don’t know what exactly. But something.
The thing is, that he does something. He does protect them. And that scares them more than the storm. What is it they actually wanted, then? What is it that we want?