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?”

He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! 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 awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

–Mark 4:35-41

Who then is this indeed? That is the question before us today as we turn the last corner of 2019. Who is this Jesus character who has pricked the minds and hearts of so many? Where did he come from? Where is he going? And what is his end game? Many of us may have already heard of this Jesus, and many of us may already have strong opinions about who he is and what he is up to. Some of us may only see him as a great ethical teacher, worthy of admiration. Some of us may see him as more. The text above, written by his followers to answer these questions, makes some claims about how we see this Jesus, thus inviting us to ask whether or not that actually makes any difference. To this end, through my next few posts we will explore three different “storms” that help us with the question, “Who then is this?” The storm without, the storm within, and the storm of faith.

First, the storm without. When reading the Bible it’s always helpful to ask how the original audience would have heard what is being presented. To the first-century reader, this story is actually even scarier than it seems, even though it might be scary enough for you in its present form depending on your history with water. The setting is the Sea of Galilee, 700 feet below sea level. Mount Herman is 30 miles away and stretches 10,000 feet into the sky. Accordingly, you don’t have to be a meteorologist to figure out that this area has a lot of warm and cold air mixing together—the result of which is often terrible storms. On top of that, if you are a first-century fisherman, the sea is the last place you want to be in a storm because you view that place as a source of chaos, uncertainty, and even monsters. The Bible even plays with this imagery in both the book of Daniel and in the book of Revelation when it suggests that monsters do, if fact, come from the sea.

To the 21st-century hearer, I’ll admit, this sounds a little ridiculous. Let me counter with a story. When I was 10 years old, I made the mistake of watching the movie Gremlins. To those unfamiliar with the film, Gremlins tells the story of an adorable little creature named Gizmo that is purchased and adopted by a suburban family from a mysterious store in Chinatown. Along with the creature, they receive three rules: don’t let it out into the sunlight or it will die, don’t get it wet, and don’t feed it after midnight. Of course, two of these things happen and Gizmo sprouts other little creatures that eventually turn evil, changing in both their appearance and behavior, killing multiple people, and generally causing chaos everywhere they go by hiding themselves in dark corners and attacking from there. Thankfully, the movie ultimately has a resolution and everyone is okay. But the movie ends with this exhortation of sorts:

Well, that’s the story. So the next time your air-conditioner goes on the fritz, or your washing machine blows up, or your video recorder conks out, before you call the repairman, turn on all the lights. Check all the closets and cupboards. Look under all the beds. ’Cause you never can tell. There just might be a gremlin in your house.

We’ll leave the ethics of ending such a movie in such a way, knowing that impressionable children might be watching, for another day. For now, it will suffice to tell you that one of my household chores growing up was to turn off all the lights in the basement before I went to bed. The last light, however, was not at the top of the stairs, but at the bottom. Which meant I had to walk all the way back up the stairs in complete darkness. Needless to say, after watching this particular film, sprinting up the stairs seemed a wiser option to me. I confess that I continued to do so well into my late teens, knowing full well that not only were there no gremlins in my basement, but that they, in fact, didn’t even exist. But I sprinted anyway just to play it safe.

Fear, it turns out, is not the most reliable of counselors. Yet in the face of darkness we all have to come to this terrible truth in our own time. Monsters, it turns out, are real. And while they may not be hiding in our basements, they may be hiding in our bodies, our neighborhoods, or in our very homes. Isn’t it strange how we use this language to describe the worst of humanity when we have no words left to use, and isn’t it peculiar that these monsters still look so very much like us? Moreover, in the face of cancer or racism or divorce or addiction or death or war, do we have the courage to ask from whence these things come? Many of us are more afraid than we let on, subtlety driven by this urge to sneak across the sea of life, lest the monsters beneath the surface awake and have their way with us. And many of us are also caught up in these monsters without even knowing it, often unaware of the contracts we signed with the forces of evil and death because we didn’t read the fine print. For it is not against “flesh and blood” that we wrestle, the apostle Paul reminds us, but against the “powers” of this dark world. Maybe this is why Jesus has his disciples cast out into the darkness, for monsters must be confronted on their home turf, lest they spread across the earth. Make no mistake, that is what Jesus is up to here.

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Read Part 2 in this series.