Mark 4:35-41
Asleep During the Storm
by Rev. Stephen G. Oetjen
Reprinted by permission of "The Arlington Catholic Herald"

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Mark wrote to explain Christ
to the new Gentile converts.

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?"

Even as a violent squall came up and waves were breaking over the boat, Jesus slept peacefully in the stern of the boat.

We can read this passage in connection with one of the parables Our Lord told just before getting into the boat.  Last week, we heard Jesus tell the parable of a sower who sows, then sleeps and rises night and day while the seed grows, "he knows not how." (Mk 4:26-29)  That sower could sleep and rise each day because of the trust and confidence he had that the seed would grow.  He has done his part; God would do the rest.

Now Christ shows us exactly that kind of trust and confidence in his Father as he sleeps in the middle of the storm.  Some say that this was the first of two different miracles in this passage.  The second was that he calmed the storm with his word, "Quiet!  Be still!"  But the first miracle here was that he was able to sleep through the storm.  He could maintain his peace, undisturbed by the violent wind and waves around him.

The two are related.  He has power to command the sea to be at peace because he is the Son of God.  And his identity as God the Son has everything to do with his perfect trust and confidence in the Father, that same perfect trust that allows him to sleep in the midst of the storm.  He is able to bring peace to the sea precisely because he possesses the perfect, all-powerful peace of the God head within himself first. He is at peace, and he brings that peace to the sea.

The storm on the sea is not merely representative of the everyday troubles and anxieties of life.  It symbolizes something much more extreme.  It makes the disciples fear for their lives: "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?"  The storm on the sea represents the power of evil itself - the havoc wrought by the devil on the world, and ultimately, death.  Jesus shows himself to be peaceful in the face of the storm, and he shows himself to be the one who is able to conquer it definitively.  This is what filled the disciples with awe: "Who then is this whom even wind and sea obey?"

This storm was just a preview of the greatest storm of all, the cross.  When we read the passion narrative, we see a whirlwind of forces converge on Jesus: the malice of the religious leaders, the cruel torment imposed by the roman soldiers, the mocking voices of the crowd, the cowardice of his own disciples who flee, even the treachery of one of them.  And yet through it all, Jesus is the one "in the stern."  He is the one at the helm, steering the course of all these events.  He said, "I lay down my life, that I may take it again.  No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.  I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again; this charge I have received from my Father."  (Jn 10:17-18)  This may sound strange to our modern ears, but Jesus was perfectly at peace throughout his passion.  He experienced the greatest possible suffering on the cross, but this suffering did not rob him of his interior peace.  this peace has everything to do with his perfect trust and confidence in the Father.  It has everything to do with his identity as the Son of the Father.  It has everything to do with his love.  He bore the suffering of all human sin out of perfect love of the Father and with a loving yearning for our salvation.  He was at peace in the midst of the storm. and by his peace he quieted the storm of sin and death.  He slept the sleep of death, and he rose.

It's no accident that in church architecture, the main part of the church is called the "nave."  It is named after a boat.  When you are in your parish church, you can look at the tabernacle and see where Jesus is reposing in the boat.  He is "asleep" here, seemingly inactive.  And yet we know that he is at the helm.  Though the storm is raging around us, he is steering us.  His peace can become our own.  All that matters in the end is that we are in the boat with him.