Gotta Love Those Disciples

Today's Gospel Reading came from Mt 8:23-27

 

As Jesus got into a boat, his disciples followed him.
Suddenly a violent storm came up on the sea,
so that the boat was being swamped by waves;
but he was asleep.
They came and woke him, saying,
“Lord, save us! We are perishing!”
He said to them, “Why are you terrified, O you of little faith?”
Then he got up, rebuked the winds and the sea,
and there was great calm.
The men were amazed and said, “What sort of man is this,
whom even the winds and the sea obey?”

Here we have the disciples terrified out of their minds by this storm.  It was a very big storm and it was a very little boat.  They had good reason to be afraid.  What is Jesus doing?  He's sleeping the sleep of the innocent without a care in the world.  So the disciples wake Jesus up.  I'm just guessing here, but I'm going to bet it wasn't a gentle waking.  I imagine that one or more of them grabbed him by the shoulders and gave him a really good shake while the rest of them were screaming like little girls, "Lord, save us!" 

Jesus wakes up and says, "Why are you terrified, O you of little faith." 

Now, the "why are you terrified" bit is perfectly justified.  Jesus is probably more than a little disappointed, how could they possibly think that anything bad could befall them while he was with them?  But the "O you of little faith" bit doesn't really seem fair to me, after all they did come wake him up.  They didn't wake him up and say, "Jesus, we're going down, grab something bouyant!"  No, they woke him up and begged him to save them.   To my mind that is the very essence of faith.  It may not be perfect faith, which in this case would be manifested as - Jesus is with us, of what should we be afraid?  But it is faith in that there was no doubt in their minds that Jesus would save them.  Yes, they were afraid.  Yes, they pretty much figured their boat was sunk.  And YES, they knew that their salvation lay entirely in Jesus' hands.  In fact, their faith was stronger than ours often is because they did not tell Jesus HOW to save them as we so often do. 

Jesus got up, rebuked the winds and the sea and there was a great calm.  The Bible doesn't mention one way or the other, but I have always thought that he then laid down and went back to sleep.

So, the storm is over.  The disciples should be happy, right?  But with these fellows nothing's ever easy.  "The men were amazed and said, “What sort of man is this, whom even the winds and the sea obey?” They believed Jesus would save them.  Jesus did save them,  How they expected him to save them, I don't know, but it clearly wasn't by commanding the winds and the waves.  Their faith was strong enough to never doubt the saving power of Christ, but it wasn't strong enough to believe that he could control the forces of nature.

Perhaps that is the message of this Gospel passage, faith is not static, it ebbs and it flows.  Faith is based on relationship and as that relationship grows, so will the resulting faith.  Yesterday the disciples knew that they could trust their friend and companion Jesus to save them.  Today the disciples know that their friend and companion Jesus is so much more than they exer imagined and they can still trust him to save them.