Saturday in the Third Week of Ordinary Time, January 30, 2021

Mark 4:35-41

On that day, as evening drew on, Jesus said to his disciples: “Let us cross to the other side.” Leaving the crowd, they took Jesus with them in the boat just as he was. And other boats were with him. A violent squall came up and waves were breaking over the boat, so that it was already filling up. Jesus was in the stern, asleep on a cushion. They woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” He woke up, rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Quiet! Be still!” The wind ceased and there was great calm. Then he asked them, “Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?” They were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this whom even wind and sea obey?”

The Lord Jesus has spent the day teaching large crowds who press upon him so that he is standing on the wet sand lapped by the Sea of Galilee.  At times he has sat apart from the multitudes with his Apostles in order to explain to them in greater detail what he has already told the people.  Possibly he would have done this around the noon hour when the sun stood high in the sky and hungry laborers returned home for a meal and a little rest.  But people were departing and arriving all the time, not allowing him much of a respite.  

As the sun began to set and the deep darkness only possible away from the towns and cities began to spread over the land, he dismissed the people who had remained, who had drunk up his every word even when they did not understand what he was telling him, and told his followers, “Let us cross to the other side.”  Now, while this time of the early night might have seen fishermen start towards their boats for their long vigils with their nets, it was not a good time to lose sight of the coast, much less to “cross over to the other side”.  Unless the moon was full, it would have been difficult to see where they were going.  Also, the threat of sudden squalls during the night was a real one, and in this case anyone at sea would be fighting to stay alive in nearly complete darkness.  The Apostles looked out at the sky, adorned with the stars in their familiar constellations.  They could make it.  The evening was still early and the sky was clear, and the moon shone forth in its glory.

“They took Jesus in the boat with them just as he was.”  That is, Jesus was wearing his ordinary clothes, a simple tunic and a mantle, along with his sandals.  He did not tuck in his tunic as the experienced fishermen did, which would have made it easier to swim if necessary, and certainly would have made it easier for him to move about if water splashed on him.  He acted as though he expected a swift, uneventful trip.  The Apostles would have noted this.  “And other boats were with him.”  These were not fishing boats, but were conveying people to the other side to be with Jesus.  “A violent squall came up and waves were breaking over the boat, so that it was already filling up.”  The Greek actually says, “a great violent squall came into being”.  The sense is that the sea and sky erupted and convulsed without warning.  Almost immediately, the shaken fishing boat began to fill up with water and the Apostles bailed desperately, but in vain.  

“Jesus was in the stern, asleep on a cushion.”  The detail of the Lord asleep “on a cushion” remained with St. Peter even decades later when he told it to Mark.  Perhaps it stuck out to him because the Lord afforded himself so few necessities that the idea of him lying on a cushion seemed out of place.  The detail, though, provides us with the contrast between the raging, deadly storm and the peacefully reposing Jesus Christ.  He had not been knocked unconscious, in other words, but was sound asleep.  It is the only time in the Gospels that we hear of him sleeping.  “They woke him.”  As if he were so deep in sleep that not even the heaving of the sea, the battering of the rain, and the filling of the ship could rouse him, and the Apostles had to jostle him themselves.  It was almost as though he were dead, and they were trying to wake him.  But he rose up without their help in his good time, fully alert, and not at all alarmed.  

“Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”  Here they only call him “teacher”.  They do not seem to know him as “Lord” yet, but they will soon.  The question they shout at him above the crashing of the waves and the howling of the wind, is an odd one.  They may have been pleading with him to help them bail the water pouring in.  Still, their respect for him prevents them from ordering him to do this.  On the other hand, their situation was deteriorating rapidly and they realized it.  Their cries to him did not quite ring with despair, but they did carry the tone of incredulity.  Why was he untouched by fear?  Why was he not fighting down mounting panic as they were?  “He . . . rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ‘Quiet! Be still!’ ”  He “rebuked” the wind, as though it were a child acting up.  Then he spoke to the sea — St. Mark does not say that he cried out or shouted.  He speaks simply to the battering sea as though to soothe it, again, as though speaking to a child who has begun to cry: “Quiet! Be still!”  And the wind and the sea heard him, and with the same frightening suddenness with which the storm burst upon them, it was over.  It did not subside, it disappeared.  The moon and the stars shone again, and all was as it had been before.  

The Apostles looked about them as though they had woken from a nightmare: “The wind ceased and there was great calm.”  After a little while, as the Apostles collected their wits, he demanded of them, “Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?”  The two questions go together.  It may also be that the end of the storm was as terrifying to them as when it exploded upon them.  The questions seem a little harsh, but many of the Fathers understood that Jesus had deliberately made this all to happen in order to teach his Apostles that despite all they had seen him do, their faith in him was still in its beginning stages, not much beyond that of the crowds.    They now have a hard question they must answer: “Who then is this whom even wind and sea obey?”  Only later will one of them commit to the answer: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16, 16).  

“Who then is this whom even wind and sea obey?”  It is a good question to ponder.  Who do we believe that he is?