Don't You Care?
Photo by Torsten Dederichs on Unsplash
As we're going in to work with refugees, I'm thinking again about the story of Jesus calming the wind and the waves. These are people who've lost nearly everything in a storm that simply isn't ending. It may look like God is asleep, or even provoke the question, "Don't You care?" like the disciples ask in this story. Last time, I wrote about the decision to become disciples of Jesus, rather than merely fisherman with Jesus sleeping in the back of the boat. It’s easy to write about choosing to lay down in the middle of a storm and go to sleep. It’s hard to actually do it. It's easy to give someone advice, and become one of Job's friends, who think they have the answers and understand the ways of the God based on their own experiences.
One of the big differences between Western readings of Jesus' stories from scripture, and Hebrew readings of Jesus' stories, is that we in the West analyze the stories as texts to be interpreted, looking always for the black and white answers to difficult questions in life. We expect the details of a story to be made plain to us, so that we can find "the way" or "the answer." For a Hebrew listener, Jesus' stories often led to asking the right questions, rather than discovering the correct answers. The details were imagined as pictures as the story was being told, not only those written, but those which would have been implied by the setting or situation. A Hebrew listener imagined everything around the story, and asked the pertinent questions needed to gain wisdom and understanding of God's character, rather than merely the knowledge which is often sought by Western readers.
A Hebrew listener sees Jesus, sleeping on a pillow in the stern as the waterlogged boat rocks back and forth. Jesus is probably drenched, and water most likely has pooled beneath him. Somehow, he’s sleeping through the shouts of the disciples rushing to and fro, trying to bail water out of the boat, and the sharp spray from the waves as they crash against the ship. As the disciples frantically toss buckets of water overboard, and make sure everything on their boat stays secure in the wind, Jesus is silent and unmoving. He’s probably only not under suspicion of death because he would have had to move in his sleep to remain on the pillow rather than be face down in a puddle of water.
As Westerners, we take it for granted that Jesus was asleep because that’s what we're told, but for a Hebrew reader the fact that Jesus is, or even could be, sleeping would stretch the limits of their imagination, and bring all kinds of questions to mind. How could he be sleeping? Was he ill? Exhausted? Or was it something else, like a "peace which surpasses all understanding?" (Philippians 4:7) Whether or not he was sleeping doesn’t seem to have been on the disciples' minds either. When they speak to him, it isn’t as they would speak to one who they believed was or could be still asleep and had actually managed to doze through the storm. “Teacher!” they exclaim, “don’t you care if we drown!” In modern speech, “Respectfully, get off your butt and help us. We’re dying here!”
When Jesus gets up he first says only three words. “Quiet! (or “peace!”) Be still!”. These words are directed at the storm, but I wonder if the disciples heard this as a rebuke to their own frantic shouting and running about as well. Then Jesus asks them a question, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?” In other words, “don’t you trust me?” It isn’t a question targeted at whether he had the power to calm the storm – we don’t see that they are “terrified” that Jesus can actually tell a storm to be quiet, and have it obey until after this exchange. He’s talking about the fear of the storm, the fear of their lives being at risk, and possibly, the fear of His silence. He’s talking about their faith in the nature of Jesus to know if He would help them, when it was necessary, to bail water out of the boat, or to deliver them safely to dry land. It wasn’t a question of what He could do, it was a question of whether He loved them enough to help them, or if He would only remain silent. “Don’t you care if we drown?”
One of the most beautiful pictures of Jesus is the picture of Jesus as “Immanuel” – God with us. He’s the God who speaks to us, teaches us, listens to us, and travels with us, even in storms. What about when the Good Shepherd is silent, and even seems to be sleeping? Why, when it seems we need Him most, do we find God silent? For those who look to God for knowledge and answers, it's hard to be taught by silence. Silence provokes for us something different: It provokes questions. I don’t think there’s only one answer. In a Discovery Bible Study group, I would ask the question, "What does this story tell us about God?" The answer isn't cut and dry. There is so much this small story can teach us, in so few words.
Why was Jesus silent? Here are three possibilities from this story:
1. Jesus was silent because He wanted the disciples to do what He did.
Whether rest is the point of the story, or looking for what Jesus is doing in the same way that Jesus “only did what he saw the Father doing”, it seems Jesus wants us to look at Him, and copy Him. This is a theme echoed throughout the gospels. True holiness (being “set apart” or “different”) begins when we become “holy, as I am holy” (1 Peter 1:16), or as I like to think of it, “be weird like I’m weird”.
2. Jesus was silent because He was testing or building the disciples’ faith in Him, His words, or His intentions.
One other thing to remember in this story is that Jesus already had told the disciples that they were going to the other side. Paul, when bit by a snake on Malta, recalls similarly what he knows Jesus has already said to Him (that he will testify in Rome) and it’s his reason to throw the snake away dismissively. Jesus wants the disciples to have faith in who He is. That He does care. That He is bringing them to the other side. He wants them to have enough confidence that they too can sleep in the midst of a storm, in a waterlogged boat, because He’s their protector and their provider.
3. Jesus was silent, because He wanted the disciples to come to Him.
It isn’t wrong for us to come to Him questioning why He is silent. When the disciples acknowledged their doubts to Jesus, they came to a better understanding of His power, and who He is. Their question was raw, “Teacher, don’t you care!” And Jesus responded by showing them, once again, that He did.
When we share stories, as we're doing with these refugees from Ukraine, we avoid giving pat answers. We share with them through the narrative that Jesus does care, He is present, He won't stay silent forever, and that He wants a relationship. All of this and more, in a story less than two minutes long. As the character of God is understood, we are able to follow Him, even when the road seems murky and uncertain, regardless of whether we know "why." Jesus is our Hope, and our Way. Not a method, not a structure, and not a set of answers. The Truth is a person, and people are complicated. People are understood in stories, rather than facts, and Jesus presents himself to us the same way, so that we can know Him, not just about Him. He is the God who calms are storms, the God who speaks, and the God who is silent, but no matter what He remains "God with us."
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