Mark 4:35-41

In the text, Jesus and his followers are in fishing boats in the middle of a violent storm on the Lake of Galilee.  Jesus is asleep on one of the boats.  Jesus is awakened, not by the storm, but by his fellow companions.  They do not ask for a miracle.  They just want to have some help with the boat.  To them the situation is dire and they need another hand at bailing water. 

 Jesus responds by calming the weather over the lake.  This action seems to require a minimum of effort on his part.  His companions on the boats are understandably amazed by what they have witnessed.  It causes them to reflect upon who Jesus really is.

 All of this is very interesting, and we can be gratified that Jesus and his followers were miraculously saved from the storm, but what does all this mean to us today?  I don’t mean that I am not impressed with the account, but we are not reading this just to be entertained by an interesting story.  We are reading this account to get some kind of meaning from it.

What does Jesus’ action imply?  I will outline some implications.

1)       God maintains dominion over nature even through Jesus.

2)      Jesus will intercede with nature to save his followers from distress when there are catastrophes.  As history unfolds, this seems inconsistent.  There have many times that the faithful have suffered from storms of all kinds.  Is Jesus’ action selective?

3)      Jesus does not always react to our requests directly, but will often respond to the bigger picture.  Jesus did not just give a hand at bailing water from the boat he was in, but, rather grasped the problem as being much larger in scale.  According to the passage, there were other boats.  Even if Jesus could have successfully assisted those on his own boat in bailing out the water it had taken in, that would not have saved those in the other boats.  Jesus went to the heart of the problem, and stopped the cause of their plight.

These implications actually result in many questions.  Most of which have not been addressed in scripture.

1)      Why doesn’t Jesus appear to respond to all humanity’s requests for help? 

2)      Is Jesus’ compassionate intercession selective, and if so how and why?

3)      Is Jesus trying to show future people that it is possible to locally control weather?

4)      Does anything in this text really mean anything to us today?

What do you think?  Click on ‘Comments’ below and share your ideas.