Mark 4:35-41: The Maker of the Glassy Sea

(1) Bible Study Questions

Discuss: Have you ever been in the middle of a terrible storm or other weather event? How did you feel? What do you think would have happened if you yelled 'shut up' as loud as you could at the storm? Why? Have you ever seen a powerful person flexing his or her (metaphoric) muscles? What does real power look like?

1. What is Jesus reaction to the storm? (v. 38)

2. What is the disciples’ first reaction to the storm and to Jesus? (v. 38)

3. Describe the objects of Jesus’ rebuke? Why does Jesus rebuke them? (vv. 39-40)

4. Were the disciples’ fears relieved by the calm boating conditions? (v. 41)

5. What is the disciple's question in light of these events and how would Mark our author answer this question (v. 41)?

(2) Sermon Script

Introduction: In the Presence of Greatness

Have you ever met someone amazing or famous? Who was it? What was the affect that the meeting had on you? I’ll tell you about two encounters that I have had.

My first encounter with fame was when I was a boy in scouts. I was 12 years old, and I had went to the Jamboree in Ipswich, Queensland. It was a big camp over two weeks, with about 20,000 boy scouts in attendance. I was offered breakfast with the Governor General, Sir Ninian Stephens. Later at law school I would read his judgements. Excellent, yes please, I’ll be in it. But there was a condition—I had to have a shower. I saw the inside of the showers only once on that camp; they were all open, and I didn’t want to go in them. But to go and see the great man, and to have breakfast with him, I had a shower. And that was the night before I shook his hand. That was my first and last shower there. Unfortunately, he was running late, and all meeting Sir Ninian amounted to was shaking the hand of a small, gray haired, be-suited and be-spectacled man. I remember coming back on the plane, and the first thing my mother did when I got back home was she made me have a bath. I remember I was so dirty that I made shapes with the dirt on my legs as I scrubbed it off. I had no idea I was so dirty.

The second was when I met Peter Garrett. I was a big Oils fan at school. I still am, though I like their early stuff better. Anyway, he came to speak at university on something or other, and I was left of center politically back then. I had his book, and my plan was to ask him to sign it. There he was, and I went up, and really I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to say anything stupid, so I just asked him to sign my book. He didn’t even ask me my name. And I didn’t even say it. The words I spoke to him were “Can you sign this?” That’s it.

So that was the effect of greatness on me: I had a shower and was dumbstruck.

In our passage today we see Jesus’ greatness. And we see the effect that his greatness had on those who knew him and saw it.

Jesus has finished teaching. The topic was the kingdom and the method was using parables, that is, riddles that were meant to be understood by his disciples but that would keep out the idle enquirer.

Well, by evening Jesus is tired, so he suggests to the disciples that they go to the other side of the lake. So the boat that served as his pulpit carried him with his disciples to the western shore of lake Galilee. But there was also a flotilla of boats that went with him.

Archeologists have found one of these boats. They dated it as a boat made between 120BC and AD 40, around the time of Jesus. The boat was 26 and a half feet long, it had four rowers and a covered deck, and could fit 15 people in it.

The Great Storm

Now, the Sea of Galilee is actually what we’d call a large lake. But even nowadays there are furious squalls and winds that whip up waves on the lake.

And verse 37 tells us that one such wind arose as the flotilla crossed the lake. A “hurricane of great wind came”. Matthew interestingly calls it a “mega seismic event”. The waves that these freak winds created beat upon the hull of the boat and started filling the boat with water. Verse 37 tells us that the boat had already become filled.

Hardened Sailors

Now, whatever we want to say about the disciples, we cannot say that they were ‘landlubbers’: they were more like ‘old salty’. Peter and James and John and Andrew were fishermen. They would have had the smell of salt and see and fish about them. They would have seen a bit of water in a fishing boat before. But now these experienced and hardened sailors are filled with fear. What of Jesus?

Asleep at the Wheel

He’s asleep! Here is the only place in the Mark’s Gospel were Jesus is said to be asleep. Curious, isn’t it, that Jesus has just spoken the parable of the growing seed, which the farmer sows, then sleeps, while the word grows. Well, here is Jesus the sower who sows the word and then sleeps. tired out by scattering the word all day. He preached and taught and served to the point of exhaustion and now he sleeps and lets the word do its work. And Jesus is no light sleeper! He is asleep during the furious storm. The disciples unfortunately can’t seem to appreciate Jesus’ need for sleep. They are panicking.

The Accusation: “You Don't Care!”

So the disciples rouse him with the rude, desperate accusation, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?” It is a prick, a spur, to get him to act. It is interesting that Mark records this harsh saying, while Matthew and Luke record a softened saying: Matthew says, “Lord, save us, we are perishing”, and Luke says, “Master, Master, we are perishing”. But Mark has the bitter and anxious, “Teacher, don’t you care if we perish!” It is rude and offensive and unfair to Jesus. It’s sometimes the way we speak when we are desperate or hurt, when we feel in danger or threatened. What the disciples really want is salvation, but Mark doesn’t record them asking for that. Instead, they lash out at Jesus. It is a by-the-way point, but we must remember that when we want something from someone, we should actually ask for it, and not to go the round-about way that the disciples did, of attacking Jesus, accusing him of a lack of care for them.

The other thing we might notice is Mark’s faithful record of a vivid, rude saying. It is appropriate for what we know of the Apostle Peter. We think Mark’s Gospel is basically Peter’s teaching written down by Mark. Perhaps these were the very words Peter recalled fell from his own lips. They show us that the disciples resent Jesus’ sleeping while this crisis looms.

Clearly, they haven’t recognised who Jesus is. Jesus may be asleep, but he is in control. He has fallen asleep at the wheel, but he is still at the helm of this ship and this situation. For Jesus as God the eternal Word took on flesh. Jesus slept, as was fitting his true humanity. But even in his sleep, he upheld everything by his powerful word, as befitted his deity. Hebrews 1:3 says of Jesus:

The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. (NIV)

Even as a baby in a cradle, the eternal Logos who was incarnated as the man Jesus Christ upheld the universe. And while he slept as a man tired out from a day of yelling from a boat to the crowded beach on lake Galilee, he upheld, and still upholds, the entire universe as its maker and sustainer, as God himself. He is fully in control.

As Athanasius said, “The Word was not circumscribed by the body while present in it, for while in the body the universe still benefited from his working and providence,” and “while he was present in a human body, [The Word] quickened [that is, made alive] both it and the universe as well, being in every process of nature” (Athanasius, On the Incarnation).

However, the disciples do not understand these things at this stage. And so they wake Jesus up, resentful that he doesn’t see to care, and hopeful that he can save them.

The Great Calm

Well, there may have been a “hurricane of great wind”, but soon there will be “a great calm”. For Jesus has been roused to action.

Jesus got up. When he was completely awake, he rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Silence, be stilled.” Jesus muzzled the sea, as if it were a snarling greyhound, and Jesus put the muzzle on it so that it could no longer threaten nor frighten the disciples.

Notice Jesus doesn’t pray; he commands. He is doing what God did in Genesis 1 when he said, “Let the water be separated from water.” That’s not surprising, because Jesus was there at creation as the Word of God, being those very words of power that created the universe and divided the waters. There is no need for prayer when the creator of the glassy seas is present.

Here is Jesus doing what God does. God saves people from storms. In Jonah 1, it is Yahweh who created land and sea, and he, not the pagan sea gods, is the one who can hear their prayers.

Psalm 107 speaks of Yahweh as the stiller of the storms (Psalm 107:23-32). The psalm speaks of merchants who go out on the sea. Then a storm comes, sent by the Lord, and in their peril, verse 26 says that their courage melted away. Then in verses 28-29, “they cried out to the LORD in their trouble and he brought them out of their distress. He stilled the storm to a whisper, the waves of the sea were hushed. They were glad when it grew calm.” And then the Psalmist in verse 31 “gives thanks to the LORD for his unfailing love.” Yahweh is the stiller of the wind and the waves, and Yahweh has stepped into the Galilean fishing boat, sleeping on the cushion in the stern, and then wakes up, and “stills the storm to a whisper, the waves of the sea were hushed”. God once again has muzzled the stormy seas, this time sitting in the boat with the disciples of Jesus.

The Accusation: “How cowardly you are! Do you still have no faith?”

Jesus also has an accusation of his own for his disciples. We see that in verse 40. “Why are you so afraid?” We might take it as even stronger, “How cowardly you are! What cowards you are!” You big Galilean fishermen are cowards, but even worse than cowardly, it is faithless. Verse 40 again, “Do you still have no faith?” It is a question with a negative implication: “You do not yet have faith, do you?”

Sometimes anxiety is not just neutral. Sometimes it actually springs from a failure to trust Jesus. So it was with the disciples, and so it might be with us.

Something More Scary than a Hurricane

But the end result for the disciples was not less fear but more. If they were cowards before Jesus stilled the storm, afterwards they “feared a great fear.” There is something more terrifying than a great wind: the great calm and the one who can bring that calm with just a word. Jesus is scarier than a great hurricane. And that’s when he is saving the people he loves! Imagine what it is like when he is punishing the wicked in his wrath.

Who is This Man?

So we end with the pregnant question of verse 41, “Who is this man?” Well, you’ve read Mark’s Gospel so far: who do you think he is?

(3) English Translation