In the stilling of the storm in Mark 4:35-41, Jesus opens the disciples to the frightening possibility that they were wrong. And it reminds us that Jesus has the same message for us. “Peace. Be still!”
The fear Jesus gets his disciples to face is not the storm. It’s change.
Proper 7B | Mark 4:35-41
It was a dark and stormy night. And being in a boat is about the last place the disciples should’ve been. The waves, the lightning! Something’s bound to get them.
And the first question anyone should ask when reading this story: why are they out there in the first place? That should be our first question. And I have some really bad news. We don’t really know why. It doesn’t say.
The body of water they are crossing isn’t an ocean. Surely they could see the storm coming. And the sun is going down. If this were a scary movie, we’d be shouting at the screen “don’t get in that boat!”
If anything should clue us into the fact that this is a story about trust then we should pay attention to this first moment: they trust Jesus enough to get in the boat when surely they have a reason not to.
So this story begins with trust.
But something happens.
They get scared.
Of course, they would. Storms are scary enough.
But this isn’t a story about the perfect storm. It’s the story about a group of people who’ve followed Jesus for a while now and trust him with their lives. He has called them, empowered them, and revealed the very power of God to heal and cast out demons. And perhaps most importantly, called them his family.
And they’ve come to trust him, believing that Jesus can do far more than teach them a few things. He’s not a guru offering them their “best life now”. He’s showing them the truth: the beautiful, difficult vision of God through Jesus.
For Jesus, this is it:
The heart of the story is trust.
So their getting scared is at odds with what Jesus is directly showing them. They know what it means to trust. But at the first sign of trouble, they freak out.
Because here’s the thing. Jesus took them out there. Jesus took them into the storm. This isn’t an accident. And he’s in the back of the boat sleeping like its nothing. So from the disciples’ view, Jesus doesn’t care about them and is leading them to die.
And that’s where fear overtakes their faith.
Because they know Jesus protects them, loves them, and is trying to show them about faith. And that’s why they fail. Because they think this moment is an exception rather than a new teaching.
And the kicker for us is we no more want to hear that truth than they do.
In his book Heart and Mind, Alexander Shaia writes:
“His disciples simply presume that Jesus will perform a divine act and in every instance, relieve them of their fear. They seem to completely ignore their responsibilities, which were to endure and attempt to find inner calm through faith.”
According to Shaia, this pursuit of inner calm through trust is central to this gospel we call Mark. He continues:
“Mark’s message, an invaluable lesson for the Roman Messianic Jews, is that the disciples still sought a God who rescued them, who removed obstacles. They wanted to remain safe—as children—with a God who acted as an all-powerful, protective parent. They could not yet fathom a God who not only did not do this, but who actually pushed his followers into dark, nighttime storms. They did not yet have the spiritual maturity from which they could derive inner equilibrium and serenity in the midst of trial. They had not yet discovered an inner place of God.”
This is their midterm exam and they just failed.
Freaking Out
But we haven’t even gotten to the part that I love.
Jesus wakes up, the disciples are freaking out and I picture the sleepy Jesus looking around and saying to himself “Oh, this thing? You’re afraid of this?”
The disciples thought they were in danger. But it doesn’t say they were.
Between those two facts is a great big highway of truth. Based on their experience, the disciples thought they were in a ton of danger and Jesus thought they were in no danger at all. That alone tells you Jesus sees beyond the physical limits of the storm.
So Jesus shouts to the sea ‘“Peace! Be still!” Which, I don’t know about you, seems more like it’s a 50/50 split between the sea and the disciples. “Peace! Be still, storm!” And “Peace! Be still, your fast-beating hearts, you faithless followers!”
And the storm disappears. This is all for them. To help teach them what real trust looks like.
What it says at the end is actually the best part, it cuts to the heart. Our translation doesn’t do it justice. It says “they were filled with great awe” but what it should say instead is great fear.
“they were filled with terror”
They are freaked out.
Fearing God
This word, awe or fear is a tricky word for us in translation because none of the ways we use it captures the real power of Jesus or God. Awe is too wimpy, fear makes Jesus seem like a monster. It doesn’t really work.
But if we come to understand this sensation, we might get the whole point.
Here, the disciples are scared twice: first by the storm and then again by Jesus. Not because he’s dangerous to them, they’re not scared of him, but because he’s far more powerful than they had believed. Jesus just totally changed the game. It’s like he tore up the mission statement, wrote a new prayer book, and made everybody sit in a different pew.
Jesus is freaking them out because this isn’t what they thought they were signing up for. This isn’t what their mothers took them to Sunday school to learn. This is some messed up teaching. They’re saying We liked that stuff about the Sabbath, but this is just too out there.
This is how fear and awe overlap because things that bring great awe and wonder to us aren’t only ever puppies and rainbows and angelic choirs singing “Amazing Grace;” they can be deeply unsettling.
Because our brains treat new ideas about what we already know like personal attacks. The amygdala, which is the part of the brain I call the lizard brain, treats new knowledge about things we feel comfortable about as if a wild animal is coming to get us on the Serengeti.
So when Jesus stills the storm, the amygdalas of all the disciples go crazy.
Jesus is blowing their minds and instead of seeing this transcendent moment for what it is, they’re more freaked out at him than they were at the storm.
This is a story about trust.
And they fail to trust when they let their lizard brains take charge and treat the truth like a threat. This is how the disciples fail and this is how we fail. When we let our little tiny lizard brain take charge of the whole thing.
Jesus is teaching them to trust! Because trust is the antidote to fear. Which means we totally do it wrong. We tend to throw away trust because we’re afraid someone will break it. But Jesus knows that’s a dead end.
Trust transforms that fear into awe and wonder and hope. It helps us see how Jesus knew that God had them the whole time they were in the boat. How God is with us when we don’t know where to turn or who to turn to.
Trust isn’t the response to proof that God was with us. Trust ensures that we can see that God is already here. And that can fill us with true awe and wonder.
This story and our story is about trust. Not about fears or our bodies’ reactions to things; life isn’t about the things which scare us or the structures we build to define God and how the world works. Because God keeps coming around and knocking it all down like a baby or a kitten with building blocks. Nice try! Keep going!
We trust so that we might be still, even when the storms rage. That, maybe rather than freaking out that we’re all going to die, the place we ought to be is in the back of the boat, sleeping. Because that takes trust.