The Heart of God

STUDY

IN the Gospel of Mark, we read the dramatic story of Jesus commanding the wfind and the sea to be calm: ‘Peace, be still!’ he says.

When it is evening, Jesus and His disciples set out in a boat; a wfindstorm blows up and the waves low into the boat. Jesus is asleep on a pillow in the stern. Woken by the disciples who fear for their lives, He calms the storm and rebukes the disciples for their lack of faith. The disciples say to one another: ‘Who can this be, that even the wfind and the sea obey Him?’

The story of Jesus calming the storm stands squarely within the genre of mythology and midrash of the ancient world. In this story, there is an echo of the story of Jonah. Like Jesus, Jonah is asleep in the boat when a great wfind is hurled upon the sea and, like the disciples, the mariners are afraid and rouse Jonah saying that they are about to perish and he should call on his God to calm the storm. The story ends when the storm is calmed and the mariners fear the LORD for His power over the waves. A first century listener to the

Jesus story could not fail to recall Jonah. For some scholars, the story of Jesus calming the storm is midrash (ancient Jewish commentary on the scriptures), a re-working of verses from Psalm 107: God commands the stormy wfind and lifts the waves of the sea; those in fear on the sea cry to the LORD in their trouble and He brings them out of their distress. ‘He calms the storm, so that the waves are still’. Some scholars hear an echo from

Homer’s Odyssey. Written 900 years earlier, the Greek myth portrayed Odysseus asleep in the hold of a ship. Odysseus had left Aeolus, whom Zeus had made the master of the wfinds. Aeolus had given Odysseus a sack containing ‘the wfinds that howl from every quarter.’ The sack was tied fast with a silver cord. While Odysseus was asleep in the hold, his men ‘loosed the sack’ and ‘all the wfinds burst out.’

While many details are diferent, it is worth noting that the wfind is created by Zeus, the Father of the gods, and Aeolus, in the name of Zeus, has power over the wfinds and the sea.

One ffinal comparison: Jesus is often portrayed as the new Moses. At the Red Sea, Moses with staf in hand raises his arms over the sea and with a strong wfind the LORD causes the sea to go back. The people walk through on dry ground. Through His servant Moses, the LORD commands the wfinds and the seas.

In a meditative reading of the story of Jesus calming the storm, we see the power of the wfind and the sea, the magnitude and destructive power of nature, and the smallness of the disciples, their helplessness and vulnerability.

At the centre, we see Jesus: we sense His peace, His calm, His strength and we learn in our hearts that as great as the powers of nature may be, they are as nothing compared to the sacred peace of God. There is a deep peace, an eternal silence, at the heart of God, which the trials and troubles of this world cannot disturb. ¤

The Rev Scott McKenna is minister at Edinburgh: Mayield Salisbury.

This article appears in the August 2018 Issue of Life and Work

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