Jesus Calms the Storm
22 One day Jesus said to his disciples, "Let us 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."
Dig Deeper
One of the most well loved fairy tales of all time is that of Cinderella. I have heard and seen so many different versions of that classic tale that I don’t even know if I’ve read or heard the actual original story itself. I’ve see that tale told in movies, reworked for television shows, parodied in a rap song called “Cinderfella,” and even mimicked in a book by Disney characters, which was one of my favorites growing up. In all of the different versions, though, there are a couple of central tenets that all of them have in common. Cinderella has evil step sisters and a wicked step mother who are all very mean to her. The step mother decides that her two unattractive daughters will go to the ball where the Prince is looking for a bride. Cinderella is told that she will not be going to the ball but will help her sisters get ready. Just then a fairy godmother pops up and makes it possible, through some magic, for Cinderella to go to the ball.
When she goes she makes an instant connection with the Prince and dances with him but she has to dash out in the middle of their romantic and magical dance together because the fairy godmother told Cinderella that her beautiful dress and everything else that the fairy had transformed would turn back to their original states at midnight. As she leaves, she drops one of her beautiful glass slippers on the steps. The Prince was so enamored with her that he called every woman in his kingdom back to the palace the next day to try on the glass slipper. Every single girl wanted to marry the Prince and tried to pretend that they were the mysterious women from the night before but when it came to putting on the slipper, they were all proven frauds. The Prince finally sees Cinderella and has her put on the slipper and she, of course, fits right into the slipper and shows that she, not all the pretenders, was the real woman of his dreams.
The previous verses in chapter 8 had much to do with recognizing Jesus’ authority and responding properly to his word. But the question that continues to hang over all of Luke’s narratives is who exactly is Jesus. That’s certainly something that not even his own disciples quite grasped at this point. But the ability to demonstrate authority even over the natural elements of the wind and waves is a vital clue that Luke has given us as to Jesus’ identity. As we will discuss in a moment, there were many pretenders who claimed to have the power and authority to control the sea and the natural elements but only one that could truly do it. In controlling the most uncontrollable events of nature itself, Jesus, like Cinderella was showing that he was the real deal. He was the only person who could fit into the slipper.
Luke doesn’t tell us what size the boat was that Jesus was on in this incident and so we simply don’t know if just the Twelve were with him or if there were more people than than that. What is clear, though, is that Jesus and at least some of his disciples were traveling across Lake Genesarret (also known as the Sea of Galilee). The Lake is unique in that it sits 600-700 feet below sea level and is surrounded by hills and canyons which makes it susceptible to volatile weather patterns that can open up quickly and seemingly out of nowhere. These storms can be common and get quite severe but this must have been a particularly bad one because even the seasoned fishermen that many of Jesus’ disciples were, became extremely worried by this storm.
Jesus was quite exhausted and must have relished small opportunities like this to catch up on a little sleep, which believe it or not, has become the source of controversy and opened the door to many false teachers who wish to deny the deity of Christ. In Psalm 121:4-5, the Psalmist declares that “he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The LORD watches over you—the LORD is your shade at your right hand.” Many of those who deny that Jesus is God, teachers like popular prosperity gospel mogul Creflo Dollar, use this passage to argue that it says that God cannot sleep and if Jesus is sleeping on the boat then he cannot be God. This is a spurious argument when it comes down to it. The New Testament teaching is clear that Jesus is fully divine in his nature (Phil. 2:6; Col. 2:9) but that he also is fully human (Phil. 2:7). The point that the Psalmist was making was that God never let up in caring for Israel. To tie that poetic point to the human Jesus is ridiculous. Jesus never ceased to be fully divine in his nature but he was fully human so he needed sleep, he needed to eat, and yet he never ceased to be God in his nature. The irony of using this passage to attempt to deny the deity of Jesus Christ is that, in Luke’s mind, this one of the events that clearly demonstrated that he was something far beyond what any of the disciples had grasped during Jesus’ lifetime. He was, in fact, Israel’s God in the flesh.
As he was sleeping, a violent storm came up. This one came on so suddenly and was so severe that it caused even seasoned fishermen to worry that they were going to drown. The disciples were wavering in their faith in Jesus and their full grasp of who he was. They did, however, have enough sense to run to Jesus and wake him up. We should not miss the echoes of the account of Jonah that run through this short little account. Jonah also fell asleep on a boat and was awakened in the midst of a terrible storm by a crew that thought they were going to die. But Jonah had to be thrown into the sea so that YHWH (the personal name of God in the Old Testament Hebrew) himself might quiet the storm. Jesus would do something quite different.
That different action of Jesus is an interesting thread running through this passage that would have been much more apparent to first century readers than it is to us. In the Jewish mind it was YHWH, the God of Israel who had the power to control the sea (Ps. 65:7; 69:2-3, 15-16; 74:13-14; 89:9; 104:4-9; 106:9; 107:23-30). Only of YHWH could it be said that “You rule over the surging sea; when its waves mount up, you still them” (Ps. 89:9). But there were many pretenders to the throne that either claimed themselves to have the power to control the sea or others claimed that power for those they wished to worship. The Roman mythological god, Neptune, was said to be the ruler of the sea, and at least one Roman general, Sextus Pompey, claimed in the first century BC, to be the son of Neptune with the power to control everything in the sea. It became increasingly popular throughout the first century, as Roman emperors were more and more deified, to claim that one of the powers they had was to overcome the sea. The book of 2 Maccabees claims that Seleucid ruler Antiochus Epiphanes IV “had thought in his superhuman boastfulness he could command the waves of the sea” (2 Macc. 9:8). They all claimed the power that only YHWH held, but now Jesus had actually shown that he had that power. Here was yet another incident where Jesus had done what only YHWH could do. He had stilled the waves and ruled over the surging sea. The others had tried to fit the slipper and failed but Jesus has slipped it on effortlessly.
The immediate question on the minds of the disciples, then, was “who is he?” Who is it that could do what only YHWH could do? Luke is likely not contending that the disciples were slowly beginning to have suspicions that Jesus was Israel’s God in the flesh. It would take them much more revelation, thought, and reflection come to that conclusion but surely Luke expects their question to echo in the ears of his readers, and he no doubt expected us to begin to realize the full implications of that question.
Luke has been stressing the need to recognize Jesus’ authority and to fully grasp the need to hear and obey Jesus’ message. Now he has made clear that Jesus had the very authority of YHWH himself to still the storm. The underlying thought seems to be that if nature itself, including, the winds and waves, obey Jesus’ authority, who are we to not obey him? How silly would it be to deny the authority of the one who can rebuke nature?
For us, this scene can go beyond just a great reminder of the power that Jesus had during his earthly ministry. We can often identify with the disciples. We can often feel that we are going through a storm in life and that God is asleep and completely unaware of our problems. Jesus asked his disciples where their faith was and the same question should ring in our ears. Is the God who spoke the universe into existence not aware of or not capable of dealing with our trials? Being Jesus’ disciple and confessing Jesus as the Lord of our lives means that he is not just in control of nature but is also in control of our lives. He knows what is going on. He is there just waiting for us to turn to him. He is waiting for us to develop a faith that goes beyond the circumstances that are out of our control. He is waiting for us to see that all of the other pretenders, whether they claim have power over the sea or the power to bring us peace and satisfaction in our lives, are just that, pretenders.
Devotional Thought
What are the winds and waves that are kicking up in your life right now? Are you tempted to feel that God is somewhere sleeping or uninterested in your problems. Where is your faith? Do you believe that Jesus really does have authority to let you go through the trials that you need to go through but also has the power to stand up and calm those waves when you turn to him in faith? When we turn to him in faith he will usually amaze us just as much as the disciples were amazed when he calmed the storm.
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