6. Jesus Calms the Storm
Luke 8.22-25: 22 One day Jesus said to his disciples, “Let’s go over to the other side of the lake.” So they got into a boat and set out. 23 As they sailed, he fell asleep. A squall came down on the lake, so that the boat was being swamped, and they were in great danger. 24 The disciples went and woke him, saying, “Master, Master, we’re going to drown!” He got up and rebuked the wind and the raging waters; the storm subsided, and all was calm. 25 “Where is your faith?” he asked his disciples. In fear and amazement they asked one another, “Who is this? He commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him.”
This miracle, along with all of Jesus’ other nature miracles, contributes in its own way to proclaim the imminent coming of the Messiah’s reign. Jesus comes to save man in his natural setting, with all of creation. In this episode, he acts as God. He rebukes the lake, just as God rebuked the Red Sea (Psalm 106.9); he calms the raging waters, just as God stilled the roaring of the seas (Psalm 65.7; 89.9; 107.29).
Here is revealed the Son of God, savior of the whole creation. By this admittedly limited but already powerful act, Jesus heralds, prepares and inaugurates the decisive struggle that he will lead against all the forces of evil hostile to man. In this perspective, we can understand why Christ speaks to the sea with the same words is ordinarily uses to combat demons and sickness: he “rebukes” the wind and the waves.
Jesus blames his disciples for their lack of faith. In Matthew, he calls them oligopistoi, “men of little faith”, an expression that the French translator André Chouraqi renders “pygmies of the faith”. In fact, in the life of the apostles, there is a time when they fully deserved this rebuke. Did they not lose their faith in Jesus as the Messiah when he was arrested, condemned and put to death? Their unfaith was so deep that they refused to believe the first witnesses who reported seeing the risen Messiah. In describing the disillusionment and skepticism of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, Luke (24.21-24) perfectly depicts the state of mind among the apostles.
In this story, Luke foresees the great tempest which, on Good Friday, will threaten to engulf Jesus asleep in death and the apostles whose faith has vanished. How can we not discern in this text a veiled reference to the true storm of the passion? Luke sees in the (almost unnatural) sleep of Jesus an image of his death, a symbol of his physical absence. And yet, here, faced with the powers of chaos, faced with evil and death represented by the sea, Jesus comes back to life by divine power to save his own from mortal peril.
The Master’s sleep and the assault of the raging waters against the small boat become therefore a symbolic rehearsal of Jesus’ death. In the face of death’s power, Jesus stands upright. Under the fearful eye of the faithless disciples, his awakening prefigures the power of the Resurrected Lord, the power of salvation for the disciples and (as we shall see) even for pagans under the grip of the devil’s power.
This symbolism also prefigures the conditions necessary for the salvation of non-Jews: in order to liberate the pagans held prisoner in Satan’s grip, the Messiah has to pass through the waters of death. This whole expedition is Jesus’ own initiative: for the first time, he deliberately enters, with his disciples, into pagan territory, where he will cast a demon out of a non-Jew. This first pagan venture has a definite meaning for the apostles: it gives them the opportunity to inaugurate in a symbolic way the mission that they will assume at a later time. Even though his ministry is for the moment strictly limited to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, Jesus gives a preview of his plan to extend salvation to all men.
This nature miracle seems to impress the disciples more than all the others they had witnessed up until now. Their fear and amazement express themselves in a question about the real identity of their Teacher. They begin to suspect that he is more than just a prophet but do not yet recognize him as the Messiah. Even the disciples, to whom at this point Jesus has already begun to entrust the “mysteries of the kingdom” cannot attain to the whole truth about Jesus’ identity. For that, they will have to wait until the events of the passion.
Prayer
O divine Savior, guide the boat of our lives to the port of eternity, in spite of the storms that toss it to and fro. Multiplied temptations assail us from without and from within. Speak the word, and the tempest will be stilled; give the order “Peace, be still!”, especially to the passions that tear apart our hearts, so that we might follow only the calm guidance of your love. Amen.