Mark 4:35-41, from Proper 7 (12)
“I find your lack of faith disturbing,” iconic villain Darth Vader growls in the famous “Star Wars” scene as he telekinetically crushes the windpipe of an imperial officer who has scoffed at the mystical “Force.”
Jesus may not magically choke anyone in Mark 4:40 when, having calmed a storm that had panicked the disciples who were sailing him across the Sea of Galilee, he asks, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?” But he comes off as only slightly less callous.
If you picture it the way Rembrandt did, the storm was a real doozy. The sky in Rembrandt’s “The Storm on the Sea of Galilee” is dark with clouds. The boat, tilted precariously upward, is cresting a tall, violent, wind-whipped wave. A sail has torn, and its ragged edge is flapping in the gale, as are a block and line ripped from their fastening. Five men toward the bow are struggling to contain the rigging crisis. A boat hook appears ready to fall overboard. In the stern, one man strains at the tiller. Another leans far over the gunwhale and peers grimly at the water; he has just vomited, or is about to. The remaining men are either huddling against the wind and spray, holding on for dear life, or beseeching the newly awakened Jesus to save them. One man, his hand on Jesus’ shoulder, looks mad – in both senses of the word.
In truth, the Sea of Galilee is a smallish, generally calm inland lake surrounded by tall, steep hills. After seeing the lake in person, one can’t help wondering whether Rembrandt overdramatized things a little. How bad could it really get out there, with land visible even from the center of the lake’s widest stretch? But Mark, Matthew and Luke all assert that Jesus’ sailing companions felt sure they were about to die. Seated with them in the rocking, creaking belly of the boat that night, amid the darkness and wind and waves, feeling bilge water slosh across my feet and noting the conspicuous lack of life jackets, I just might have come to agree with them. And scolded by Jesus afterward, as they were, I probably would have felt confused – and indignant. Easy enough to be brave, this Jesus, when he knows he can dissipate a storm with a few words. Wouldn’t he be sweating drops of blood before long on the Mount of Olives, once it was clear his enemies were coming, and his death was near? Wouldn’t he beg for deliverance, just like I had?
It might be important to understand, here, that Jesus’ evening command to “go over to the other side” of the lake hadn’t been about some frivolous desire to see what Capernaum looked like while breakfasting in the eastern shore. The text suggests it might have been about “leaving the crowd behind,” but the text also indicates that other boats came along, so the move couldn’t have been completely about finding solitude and rest. Given the urgency of the trip – why not wait until dawn? – and the accompanying flotilla, this looks to me more like a mission, and the disciples must have known it, especially when you consider the trip’s destination. Across the lake lay the cities of the Decapolis, built by Rome, inhabited by gentiles and imbued with a Hellenistic culture contrary to everything a Jew stood for. Good Jews, and especially their rabbis, didn’t just sail over there without a purpose. Read ahead, in Mark 5:1-20, and you’ll find out what the purpose was.
As the storm died and the lake’s restless surface calmed, perhaps what Jesus found so disturbing in his disciples – the crack troops he had just recruited and commissioned back in Chapter Three – was the speed with which they had concluded that the entire enterprise was fated to end as a pathetic patch of flotsam and dead bodies. Hadn’t he told them only hours ago that the Kingdom of Heaven would flourish no matter what, like the wild mustard that grew unchecked on the hills around the lake? They seem to have forgotten the lesson already. Or maybe they never got it in the first place. Their lack of faith wasn’t as much about a loss of courage as about a loss of trust, of hope. Perhaps Jesus was thinking that, in precious little time, these men would have to hold onto their faith despite far more convincing evidence of total disaster: an unjust arrest and trial, a battered corpse hanging from an imperial cross, a tomb, sealed and silent. They had been afraid of the storm, and that was fine. But they also had been afraid of more than the storm, and that wasn’t fine. It is telling that ending the storm not only failed to end the disciples’ fear but actually made it worse. “They were terrified,” Mark writes, “and asked each other, ‘Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!'” If, before, they feared Jesus had too little power, now they fear he has too much – and might use it, Vader-style, on them.
I suspect that if I were to audit every prayer I have ever prayed, I would find that an alarmingly high number parallel the disciples’ mindset either during or after the storm. My supplications would boil down to either, “Why aren’t you saving me?” or “Please, don’t destroy me!” Both varieties reveal more than ordinary, perfectly rational fear of enduring painful circumstances; they reveal a lack of faith in the power, goodness, and, most critically, powerful goodness of God. This God loves me, and the whole world with me, and he is doing his powerfully good best to save every one of us. If I can’t get that right about him, then I can’t get anything at all right about him.
Rembrandt’s painting is probably a sight to behold – or at least probably was, until it went missing in a 1990 art heist. But one of its most compelling details has to do with the blue-clad man standing amidship, his right hand gripping a line, his left hand keeping his purple cap from blowing off in the wind.
Of the 15 characters in the boat – savior, soon-to-be saints, others – only he looks outward, at us. At you. The man is Rembrandt, who painted himself into the boat. He has locked eyes with you, and the absence of a visible shoreline suggests you are riding out the same storm in a nearby boat, perhaps one of the others that went along on the trip.
His mouth is open, as if asking how you’re holding up over there. Will you keep your faith during the storm? Will you keep it after?
