To Rebuke the Wind and the Waves (Fifth Sunday after Pentecost)

Erika Helgen and Chloë Starr discuss fear, sleep, prayer, and even sine waves in Mark 4:35-41. The text is appointed for the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, in Year B of the Revised Common Lectionary.

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Erika Helgen is Associate Professor of Latin American and Latinx Christianity at Yale Divinity School. Chloë Starr is Professor of Asian Christianity and Theology at Yale Divinity School.

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Transcript

Voiceover Voice:

You know, this astonishing response is not to pray to God but to rebuke the wind and the waves.

Helena Martin:

This is Chapter, Verse, and Season: a lectionary podcast from Yale Bible Study. Join us each week as two Yale Divinity School professors look at an upcoming text from the Revised Common Lectionary.

This episode, we have Erika Helgen, Associate Professor of Latin American and Latinx Christianity, and Chloë Starr, Professor of Asian Christianity and Theology. They’re discussing Mark 4:35-41, which is appointed for the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 7, in Year B. Here’s the text.

[Mark 4:35-41]

On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion, and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” And waking up, he rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Be silent! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

Erika Helgen:

 So, I have to admit, when I read this passage or hear this passage, my immediate reaction is oftentimes to relate to the disciples a little bit more. You know, thinking that I too would be a bit irritated, perhaps a bit disillusioned, you know, if someone says, “hey, follow me, get into this boat. I'm going to lead you across the sea,” and then that person promptly goes to sleep, and a huge storm comes, and they're still asleep. You know, I too might wake them up and say, “hey, you know, what's the deal here?” 

Chloë Starr:

I know, you sort of think, did he not know the danger he was in until he woke up or did he not care? And it always convicts me, this passage, because, you know, I hate flying across the Atlantic to get home. I'm always praying like a mad person during turbulence with my hands on the side of the thing, whereas, you know, the ability to go to sleep in the stern of a boat is quite significant.

Erika Helgen:

Exactly! And when he does wake up and say, “have you still no faith?” I think, well, you know, they had faith that he would save them, but, you know, they just thought that he needed to be awake to do so. And so, waking him up to me does not necessarily mean that they had no faith that he would save them. But that's always just my initial reaction of thinking if I were in that situation, I too might wake up the sleeping leader. 

Chloë Starr:

Yeah, this question of Whether the disciples say, “don't you care”, there's a difference between this version and the Matthew version. Here, it's sort of not really a confident prayer for help, but it's sort of more on the terror. What we all resort to when we're in that situation. And it seems to me 99 percent of humans in a life-threatening crisis would turn to prayer, whereas Jesus doesn't.  

This astonishing response is not to pray to God, but to rebuke the wind and the waves. And this is what obviously leads to the disciples amazement that, you know, God is actually there with them. I think there are sort of two things there. One is commanding the spirit. You know, Jesus rebukes the wind, and he commands the sea to be muzzled. It's just like he's exercising the demons and the evil spirit that people thought were guiding the wind and the waves at this point.  So, just this really strong, non-human, divine response. I mean, we do see this elsewhere in the Bible. You've got, you know, in the Jonah tradition, sort of, Jonah being the anti-type of Jesus, but he's also asleep in the hull or wherever in the boat at this point and has this supreme ability to sleep, which is quite ironic because God had sent the storm precisely because of him. So, Jesus's response not to pray, but just to understand that, you know, he is in control and supreme, and not to worry in the way that we worry. And then to, you know, shout at the disciples or to really scold them for not having the faith. And so, the really interesting passage between faith and fear and this sort of denigration of the cowardliness of the disciples, which is, as we say, like kind of a normal human reaction, versus the awe, the true fear for God that they should have had and now have when they see Jesus's response.

Erika Helgen:

One thing that this passage does make me think of is, sometimes when we think of the opposite of fear, or hey, to be calm during the storm, again, you think of kind of tranquility. But actually, what you're seeing here is the opposite of fear being courage. The courage to act, the courage, to stand up to the things that are making you fearful, which, you know, again, oftentimes in the first reading of this, I think, oh, calm during a storm. This is about tranquility, feelings of peace, trust in the Lord, having complete trust is a peaceful feeling. But having complete trust is also giving you courage to do hard things, which is what stands out.

Chloë Starr:

Yeah, and it's linked of course. I mean, I guess the Gospel writers knew, you know, the most famous Greek epic tradition. And here you have sort of like in Homer's Odyssey there's also this model for stilling of the storm. Jesus is asleep in the stern like Odysseus and Aeneas or sort of ancient Near Eastern sleeping deities. People who can sleep undisturbed. Whereas most of us in fearful times, the first thing that goes is our sleep. So, you know, these days we're all sleep deprived. The ability to have that calm, that trust in God that enables sleep is also something important. 

I think for me, true, can tell he's a Galilean lad because he doesn't get seasick. He's exhausted after a long day and the fact he's woken up twice, that sort of repetition suggests it takes a moment or two between them sort of shaking him and him coming through. But it also reminds me of the hard life. He's been going, if you go back to the verse one of the chapter, he got in the boat first thing in the morning because the crowd couldn't hear him. And, you know, so we see Jesus using these scientific techniques, he knows that sound waves carry better over water. Like, you know, if you go out today in Long Island Sound, you can hear a kayak person speaking 200 meters away. So, you know, he's using this knowledge about sound waves to preach. And then the spontaneity in this passage at the end of the day, he's in the boat, they don't let him go offshore. You know, this hardship. He doesn't have a pee break. He doesn't get off the boat. He carries on. He's going across now, they're crossing from the Jewish side to the Gentile side You've got these sort of social barriers, this physical barrier of the lake and there's all stormy. It's sort of symbolic storm going on here as well. And then, this is not just a nature miracle, this is equally about the identity of Jesus. And a lot of my authors that I read, the Chinese theologians I work on in the early 20th century, they really didn't like these miracles. They wanted a human Jesus. They denied these miracles. The sort of higher criticism, social Gospel, scientific thinking, they thought of Jesus more as a perfected human whose knowledge of God gave him the kind of moral capacity to do these types of things. But they saw miracles more as tricks of light or folk belief. And yet there's a paradox for us now that we either have the sort of restraint of a divine Jesus who doesn't normally use his powers in these ways, you know, in the temptations, he said, no, I'm not going to throw myself off the parapet. But now for his friends, he's willing to do what he wouldn't do for himself, use his miraculous powers. And you can sort of see that as an act of service, I think, laying down his non-use of his divinity for the sake of them and to demonstrate who God is.

Erika Helgen:

Yeah, that, to me, brings up, you know, I'm currently doing research on the idea of miracles and healing in Latin America. And again, this idea that, you know, Jesus performs miracles to protect people, right? To ensure that they are not harmed, that their bodies aren't harmed. And that their trust in him is a trust that harm will not befall them if they believe. And that to, you know, to this present day, when people are seeking miracles, that is oftentimes what they are seeking. They're not necessarily seeking a random miracle. They're just seeking a very specific miracle of protection, of healing, of support from the divine itself.

Helena Martin:

Thanks for listening. You can visit our website for more Bible study resources: YaleBibleStudy.org.

Chapter, Verse, and Season is a production of the Center for Continuing Education at Yale Divinity School. It’s produced by: Creator and Managing Editor, Joel Baden; Production Manager, Kelly Morrissey; Associate Producer, Aidan Stoddart; and I’m your Host and Executive Producer, Helena Martin. And our theme music is by Calvin Linderman.

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