Read, Mark and Learn – Day 11

Now we shift from parables to some amazing miracle stories. Mark builds his narrative step by step so that we are introduced to Jesus’ ministry through his teaching, some healing stories and confrontation with the Scribes and Pharisees. Cynics and scholars sometimes suggest that nowhere in the gospel is it said that Jesus is God incarnate. This is nonsense. Mark’s whole gospel is constructed to reveal who Jesus really is. From the moment of his baptism, to his temptation in the wilderness, to his teaching with authority and authority to forgive sin, then his self ascribed titles of “Son of Man” and “Lord of the Sabbath” we see every action and word of Jesus revealing who he is. Put simply all that he says and does is what God says and does.

In this chapter Mark shows how Jesus not only teaches in parables, but IS the parable of God. As the truth is enfleshed in the stories he tells and the teaching images he uses, so the Truth of God is enfleshed in Jesus.

In this final story of this chapter Mark hammers home his point. The details in this story remind us that this is based in a personal memory of Peter. He remembers that it was evening when they set out. Jesus says “Let us cross to the other side.” The language here indicates “to pass through” rather than “to pass over”. Therefore, from the first verse we are given a hint that this story, like all the stories about Jesus, has more to it than meets the eye. The idea that they are to “pass through” the sea hearkens back to the Israelites crossing through the Red Sea to salvation. As God opened up the way through the sea for the Israelites to pass into freedom, so Jesus will take the disciples–the forefathers of the new Israel–through the waters to salvation.

Jesus is asleep in the boat. Here we see the very human Jesus–exhausted from his ministry he can sleep through a storm. The detail of the cushion in the boat is only in Mark’s gospel and indicates that this is a story from Peter himself. Why else would the detail be in the story? Jesus asleep in the boat during a storm reminds us of the story of Jonah in the Old Testament who slept in the hold of the ship during the storm. Elsewhere Jesus will refer to “the sign of Jonah” meaning his resurrection. Jonah’s descent to the belly of the whale and his being spat out after three days was a prophetic pointer to the resurrection. The prophet Jonah was thrown as a kind of sacrifice into the stormy waters. Jesus is greater than Jonah, so he stands up and commands the storm to be still.

The text says Jesus rebuked the storm. The word ‘rebuke’ indicates a strong negative action and it is the same word used when he rebukes a demon. He uses the same language, “Be quiet! Be still!” that he uses to expel demons. We don’t have to imagine that Mark or the disciples had the pagan idea that wind was some kind of evil nature spirit, however, as he used the same words we can see that the power and authority of Jesus to rebuke and take command is the same authority over nature that he has over the demons.

This puts the story into a larger context. The Hebrews considered the sea to be the place of chaos and darkness. It was the place of the deep and the dwelling place of Leviathan–the great sea monster. Nature may not have been demonically possessed, but the sea was the dwelling place of dark forces. In the creation story in Genesis the “earth was without form and void and darkness covered the face of the deep”. It was out of this chaos of sea, wind and darkness that creation was brought forth. So, when Jesus gets up and takes control of the primeval forces of the great dark, chaos of the sea he shows himself to be the master of creation with the same authority and power of the Creator himself.

Jesus then rebukes the disciples for their lack of faith. By now they should know who he is and what his power is in the world. He says, “Why were you terrified don’t you have faith?” His rebuke is to us too. There are two basic states of mind and heart: to be terrified–in other words–to live always in the complicated matrix of fear or to have faith in God. The first condition is the default setting of man. We are born into fear and we live in fear. All our sins are the result of fear. All our insecurities are a form of fear. All our hatred, animosity and negativities are a form of fear. Faith is the opposite. We go forward with faith and fear is banished. We go forward in faith and the storms of this life which threatened to overwhelm us are calmed.

The early church saw the ship as a symbol of the church–the ark of salvation. Because of the they would also have seen echoed in this story not only the crossing of the Red Sea and the story of Jonah, but the more ancient story of Noah and the ark–the ark of salvation through which the people of God were saved through the tempest of the universal flood. Finally, Peter himself, in his epistle sees the story of Noah and the ark as a pre cursor of the sacrament of baptism. As Noah and his family were saved “through the waters” in the ark, so those who are in the “ark of salvation” which is the church are delivered from death and destruction through the waters of baptism.