“The other boats”

By Rev. Michael Stonhouse

Meditation – Friday, March 18, 2022

Mark 4:35-4 (Forward, p. 48) CEV p. 1031

There is a detail in this account, seemingly insignificant, that I have never found mentioned in any commentary. It is the fact that the boat that Jesus and His disciples were in was not the only boat out there on the lake, not the only boat that was caught in the storm.

No doubt they were just as frightened, just as panicky, just as concerned for their lives, as were the disciples. But to add to their fear and despair was the fact that Jesus was not physically present there with them in their boats. Perhaps all that they could do was just ‘weather the storm’, weather the pandemic—or whatever the present crisis is—and make the best of it. (At least with the disciples they could call upon Him—even if He was asleep, and seemingly uncaring and unresponsive.) I have often wondered just how those with no faith manage to cope with life’s insistent woes and problems and calamities. Maybe in their times of trouble, they do call upon a God whom they do not see or know. Maybe it is, as old wag put it, ‘there are no atheists in the foxholes.’

I find it rather instructive just how the disciples responded. Even in their fear and despair, they did not give up on Jesus. In fact, as they turned to Him for help, there was a note of reproach, a note of criticism, a note of blame: “Don’t you care that we are about to drown?” (verse 38). They took His earlier inaction as a sign that He didn’t care, not thinking, even for a moment, that His life was just as much at risk as was theirs! They never fathomed that He was simply trusting in God to take care of all of them, and never, ever guessed that there was maybe a matter of timing—that God/ Jesus would respond ‘when the time was right.’

Anyway, we are told that Jesus did respond. “Jesus got up and ordered the wind and the waves to be quiet. The wind stopped, and everything was calm” (verse 39). To me, the interesting thing here, is that their prayer and Jesus’ subsequent action impacted not just them, but the other boats as well. To me, that is a powerful lesson, one that we today should heed and apply. And what that lesson is amounts to this: that our prayers, and God’s intervention, God’s action, impacts not just us, but our entire community and our entire world. It gives us all the more reason to pray, and to pray specifically and earnestly, for the needs of our families and friends, our churches, our communities, and our world. Maybe this Lent is a great time to start on this. Amen.

Forward notes: “He said to them, ‘Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?’” (verse 40).

“A friend of mine is reluctant to ask for help. ‘I’ve got this,’ he’ll say, rebuffing offers of assistance. When he finds himself over his head and finally reaches out, friends readily oblige. By then, of course, the problem is far worse than it might have been had he asked for help earlier.

“I used to think that Jesus was frustrated in this story because the disciples lacked faith that the storm would abate and woke him up. I see it differently now.

“The disciples were professional fishermen who knew how to weather a storm. ‘We’ve got this,’ they might have said. But Mark tells us it was a ‘great windstorm,’ and the boat had already been battered. Steering through the storm was more than they could handle. They worked as long as they could and finally decided they needed help. So, they woke Jesus.

“Perhaps Jesus’s frustration isn’t because they woke him but that they didn’t wake him sooner. How often do we depend on ourselves to weather life’s storms, turning to God only when we are in over our heads?”

Moving Forward: “Today might be a good time to ask God for some help.”