Arguing with Jesus After the Storm
Mark 4:35-41
Gospel Reading for the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost (Year B)
“Have you still no faith?”
That is what Jesus said to his disciples after they woke him up in the middle of a raging storm and he calmed the sea with a word. It is a question that does not land well with me. I want to argue a bit with Jesus: “Go easy on them, they thought they were going to die.” There are times when it seems like Jesus does not quite understand humanity. The pious counterargument is that he does not understand a humanity that lacks a complete trust in God. Yet piety is tough when your mouth is full of brackish water.
The disciples were afraid for their lives. They were on a boat at sea in a storm. They were fighting for their very existence. And I imagine that at least some of them were not just afraid of losing their own lives but the life on the one that they believed was the hope for their people. The life that was asleep on the boat.
One might as why they were so afraid if they truly believed that Jesus was the hope of their people. Would God not protect them? But you have to remember how much loss was baked into their history. Women and men of God met untimely ends all the time. The past was littered with the bodies of dead prophets. Someone being of God was not guarantee of safe or complete passage through this world. It still isn’t.
All of which is to say that I think the disciples ample concern in that sea-swamped ship was quite reasonable. It is what makes Jesus’ response after his miracle feel so cold. That is a strange place to be because I don’t want Jesus to sound cold. He usually does not sound so uncaring, which is what makes this moment or his conversation with the Syro-Phoenician woman so jarring. It disrupts a picture of a constantly compassionate Jesus; a picture I need to be quite honest.
Scripture states that Jesus was without sin. I don’t know if his lack of sensitivity here constitutes a sin or whether he was just cranky after being awakened from a nap. Even though I maintain a belief in a Jesus who did not sin, my argument with this episode is not about defending a tenet of faith but in wondering, maybe hoping that there is something to learn.
I wonder if Jesus lacked perspective here. Because he believed that his mission was heading toward Jerusalem, did he assume that he was indestructible? Did he not take into account how very destructible his friends believed themselves to be? Perhaps as his ministry carried on, he more deeply understood how fragile and frail this life can be. I wonder if his perspective on this event changed over time. Sitting beside fires at night, did Jesus ask Peter or James: “Seriously, what did it feel like when you thought the ship would sink?” Did he seek understanding? I wonder as he cried at Lazarus’ graveside or faced intense fear in Gethsemane, if he appreciated the tall walls that our faith must scale before they find trust. That he understood how one could faith even as the storms of fear threatened to flood our souls.
Basically, I wonder if Jesus matured past this pointed remark about his friends’ perceived lack of faith. I hope that he did. We see small moments in the gospels where things shift in Jesus. Like the aforementioned moment with the woman from Syro-Phoenicia when he is cold towards her but she shows him that his ministry goes beyond the boundaries he previously thought.
Many times we paper over these episodes in Jesus’ ministry because it makes people uncomfortable. How can one be the Son of God if he, gasp, learned something? As you can tell, it does not diminish Jesus in my eyes if he did learn and grow. To be fully human—as Christians believe Jesus to be—means to learn and grow. And so though I want to argue with Jesus and perceive his words to be uncaring, I hope growth is what happened here. For if even the Son of God learned and grew, then it gives hope for a regularly-messed-up-always-in-need-of-growth person like me.
