“In Great Tenderness”
June 23, 2024
Mark 4:35–41
On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, ‘Let us go across to the other side.’ And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. A great gale arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, ‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?’ He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’ Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, ‘Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?’ And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?’
Philosophy was a foreign concept to me when I first encountered the subject in a college classroom. The syllabus covered many of the big questions that have stimulated human thought for millennia: Do we have free will? How can we know things? What does it mean to be moral? If there is a God, why is there evil?
When it came to the question of the problem of evil, I recall paying closer attention. As a 20 year-old this question interested me more than the others. I recall the professor introducing the claim of theodicy, which is a theological construct that attempts to absolve God in response to the problem of evil. The question that was largest for me was how the mind puts together the existence of evil with belief that God is good.
Since the days of ancient Greek philosopher, people have attempted to make sense of the conflict between evil and a good and all-powerful God. We often see the problem as a contradiction, an either/or situation that leads us to conclude that only one of these can be true, not both.
You likely have observed how Christianity has danced around trying to explain this question. If we begin with the assumption that God exists, then what do we do when chaos engulfs our lives? How do we bridge the gap between our belief in the Divine and our suffering, much less explain it?
You have heard how some Christian churches teach that suffering is a result of faithlessness. The thinking goes that failure is yours if you encounter suffering — because you have not believed enough or prayed and worshiped enough. If you had, then God would have given you immunity that is your true Christian birthright. Some churches teach that chaos and suffering are direct punishments from God. People who face painful trials in some churches are advised to confess their secret sins and return to holy living, so that God will relent and forgive them. Still other versions of Christianity attempt to get around the problem by positing a God who is more transcendent, detached or beyond, rather than directly involved in our everyday lives.
In chapter 4 of Mark, Jesus’s disciples offer us yet another iteration of this all-too-human dance. The setting is late evening on the Sea of Galilee, which is prone to sudden, violent windstorms. After a long day of preaching, Jesus is sleeping in the stern of a boat while the disciples steer it. Suddenly, the winds pick up, huge waves lash the boat, and the seasoned anglers turned disciples fear for their lives.
In desperation, they rouse the still-sleeping Jesus: “Teacher, don’t you care that we are drowning?” Notice this an accusation, more than a question. “Jesus, this is not the way things were supposed to go! You told us to get into this boat, and now we are in deathly trouble. We followed and trusted you. Aren’t you supposed to do something? Why are you asleep? The only possible explanation is that you do not care.”
Have you ever flung, subtly or not, such an accusation at God? Has the thought of linking suffering to the apparent lack of God’s care ever crossed your mind? For some, suffering or chaos is the sign of God’s indifference, maybe even non-existence.
To be fair, the disciples’ response to the sleeping Jesus is not new in biblical history. The Old Testament is full of such questions and accusations. Where are you? Why won’t you save us? How much longer? Rouse yourself, Lord! Why have you forsaken us?
This history puts us all in good company. It is not a sin to ask God hard questions. It is not unfaithful to wonder “Why?” or “When?” or “How much longer?” It is not wrong to be afraid; God has wired us to experience fear when we are threatened.
The problem is not fear; the problem is where fear leads. In times of fear, our go-to position is not always or immediate trust. Sometimes it prompts full-on suspicion. In our fear, we can conjure up a God who is stony-faced, unyielding, and loveless. A God to whom we are not that important. A disengaged God. For some such a conclusion results in a withdrawal
from any faith in God. Capacity for reflection disappears.
But consider this: in Mark’s story of the storm, the overlooked fact is that Jesus is just as present in the raging water as he is in the soothing calm that follows. Despite the disciples’ inability to perceive it, there is no point in the night when God is absent or disengaged. In that vulnerable boat, surrounded by terrifying water, the disciples are in the intimate company of Jesus. He rests in their midst, tossed as they are tossed, soaked as they are soaked.
The disciples completely miss the grace to experience God’s presence in the storm. And don’t we do the same? Tucked in the storms of our lives, we are accompanied by the divine in the bleakest, most treacherous times and places. There is the reality that Jesus cares even when I am drowning. Present in whatever the circumstances of life is the grace to believe in both the existence and the power of Love even when Jesus “sleeps.” That includes even when the miraculous calm does not come.
Notice how Jesus waits until the calm has descended before he invites his disciples to take spiritual inventory. “Why are you afraid?” he asks them. Hear this question not as an accusation, but an invitation to take stock, to reflect, to learn, to grow.
Why are we afraid as Christians? What false assumptions do we harbor about the character of God? What damaging lessons have we learned about the relationship between chaos and care, between evil and good, that we need to jettison? Are we more interested in God doing things for us?
After Jesus calms the storm, the stunned disciples ask the most important question of all: “Who is this man?” Indeed. Who is this man, this Christ, this God, who sleeps through storms, accepts our accusations, and offers us his quiet, mysterious presence in wild and wind-swept places? Who is this God who loves us in the chaos?
Over the years, I witnessed people for whom suffering and evil did not lead to a loss of faith. Sometime, harsh realities of this broken, disordered world are what draw people to faith. We seek the good because we experience the bad. We yearn for justice because injustice surrounds us. We pray for calm because chaos brings us to our knees.
It is after the vicious storm that the disciples recognize the holy in their midst. It is after the boat fills with water that they are “filled with a great awe.” It is after Jesus accompanies them in the chaos that they realize who he is.
May the same be true of us.
Prayer: You are the God of all our possibilities. You preside over all our comings and goings, all our wealth and all our poverty, all our sickness and all our health, all our despair and all our hope, all our living and all our dying. And we are grateful.
You are God of all of our impossibilities. You have presided over the emancipations and healings of our mothers and fathers; you have presided over the wondrous transformations in our own lives. You have and will preside over those parts of our lives that we imagine to be closed. And we are grateful.
So be your true self, enacting the things impossible for us, that we might yet be whole among the blind who see and the dead who are raised; that we may yet witness your will for peace, your vision for justice, your vetoing of all our killing fields.
At the outset of this day, we place our lives in your strong hands. Before the end of this day, do newness among us in the very place where we are tired in fear, we are exhausted in our guilt, we are spent in anxiety. Make all things new, we pray in the new-making name of Jesus. Amen. (Walter Brueggemann, Prayers for a Privileged People, Abingdon Press, 2008)
