St Luke 8: 22 – 25
One day he got into a boat with his disciples, and he said to them, ‘Let us go across to the other side of the lake.’ So they put out, and while they were sailing he fell asleep. A gale swept down on the lake, and the boat was filling with water, and they were in danger. They went to him and woke him up, shouting, ‘Master, Master, we are perishing!’ And he woke up and rebuked the wind and the raging waves; they ceased, and there was a calm. He said to them, ‘Where is your faith?’ They were afraid and amazed, and said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that he commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him?’
Reflection
They were all in danger, and it was all Jesus’s fault. At least, that must have been how it appeared to the disciples. After all it had been Jesus’s idea to take a boat trip to the other side of the lake, and look where that had got them.
It had got them into danger. When you’ve read or heard this familiar story so many times it’s a challenge to take seriously the idea that they were in real danger. Our eyes skip down to Jesus calming the storm, which is usually the title given to this episode anyway. So our eyes tend to skip over the Gospel writer’s clear statement that the boat was filling with water ‘and they were in danger.’
The disciples needed no convincing of the reality of the threat. They were shouting at Jesus that they were all going to die, to perish. Jesus, on the other hand, and perhaps to their considerable frustration and annoyance, seemed more concerned that their faith might die than that they might drown.
As many other disciples have discovered in the years since that Galilean boating incident, following Jesus does not guarantee that your life proceeds smoothly. In fact, doing what Jesus says to do as you journey through this world, one which often lives by other opposing and competing values, potentially exposes you to inconvenience, opposition, and loss. In today’s world, for some Christians doing what Jesus says to do actually puts you in danger of death.
We should take that seriously, just as we should take seriously that God, who has been made known to us in Jesus, has both the power and intention to bring us through such experiences to a place of calm and safety.
Prayer
O God, strengthen my faith,
so that I both seek to do what Jesus says to do,
and am able to cope with the consequences when they come.
Strengthen and save those today
whose faithful following exposes them
to inconvenience, opposition, and loss –
and even to the danger of death. Amen.