In summary, the
disciples are in the boat with Jesus, when a storm brews up. Jesus is asleep,
and they wake him up, demanding to know whether He is going to let them die.
Jesus calms the storm and criticises them for their lack of faith.
I am intrigued by a
number of points in this story, but I will try to keep to just one of these.
This question could be represented by “Were they rewarded for their lack of
faith?” After all, by generally panicking, Jesus saved them; If was not the
appropriate response, what should their response have been? How would Moses,
for example, have reacted if he had been on the boat?
One of the lessons
that is typically given from this story is that we should have more faith and
trust in God. This is a good lesson. When things get tough, we should turn to
God, but not in a desperate panic like the disciples “Are you going to let us
die?”
One possible implication
of Jesus’ criticism is that the response should have been to wake up Jesus, but
in faith. Would Moses even have bothered
to wake up Jesus? The answer based on this line of thinking is “yes”.
I put forward five possible
responses, including the response shown by the disciples:
1. Prayer with panic
and lack of faith.
This is the response
of the disciple and Jesus rebukes them for this. However, it is considerably better
than nothing, has the benefit of being generally effective and has plenty of
examples in the Old Testament, when the People of Israel “Cried to the Lord”, usually when they were being disciplined or
punished for turning away from God.
2. Prayer with a request.
This might be described as “I trust you, Lord, but I don’t like it and want to
get out of here”
This has the benefit
of honesty, even if the starting point is ourselves and what we want. This has
a good biblical precedent in Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane “Lord,
deliver me. But not my will, but Yours.”
3. Prayer with
acceptance. This is trusting and also active. The question “Lord, do you want
us to drown?” could be asked as a genuine and neutral question. i.e. “If the
answer is yes, then that is fine.”
This is not a common experience
among Christians that I know, although not unknown. Also I could not find any
good examples of this in the Bible. However, I could imagine that sometimes it
is the only way that we can deal with extremely difficult circumstances.
4. “God, I do not know
what is happening. What are you saying to me here? What should my response be?
That God uses
difficult circumstances to challenge us and speak to us is probably a generally
accepted truth. However again, the Bible does not give us many examples, so we
should be cautious about this. The one example that does come to mind is from
the “Book of Job”, and explained in the last 4 Chapters.
5. No response, not
even a prayer, with complete acceptance. “Lord, I can accept whatever you want
and whatever you do to me”. In this scenario, we do not even wake Jesus up, in
which case, I guess, we drown. We don’t like this, as it is completely passive.
This is an interesting
one and has the appearance of spirituality. It may have its place on some
occasions, but examples of this in the Bible are in short supply. The only one that
I could think of that supports this is one of the most famous verses from Psalm
23. “Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for
you are with me.” God’s presence is sufficient.
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Note: Other points which
are worth some thought are:
- The disciples were
experienced sailors. Why were they afraid? Whatever the answer is to this, what
is the lesson?
- Did Jesus calm the
storm to show his power? What is the purpose of this “Showing off”?
- Is the panic amongst
the disciples significant?
- What happened to the
boats that accompanied them? (Mark 4.36) (My son-in-law’s point)
