Jesus Asks a Question: “Why are you so fearful?”

Jesus Asks a Question: “Why are you so fearful?”

“Have I been with all of you for so long a time and you still do not know who I am? Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father. So how can you say then, ‘Show us the Father?’ Do you not believe that I am in the Father and that the Father is in Me?” (Jesus asking three straight questions of His disciples in John 14:9-10).  

Messiah Jesus was a Master of asking questions: some were open-ended, others were very pointed; some were out of curiosity, others were challenging; some seemed rhetorical, others seemed painfully obvious; some were to reveal Himself, others were to guide the other into self-understanding; some were intentionally provocative, others were to kick-start a conversation; some questions were asked to explore a topic to deepen understanding and stretch toward the truth; some were leading questions that He designed to suggest a particular answer, and others were questions in response to questions asked of Him; some were hypotheticals to stimulate the imagination, other questions were used  by Him as stepping stones to think logically from one point to the next. Jesus used questions to dignify the listener, letting that person know that He is taking that person seriously and listening carefully. Many of His questions were acts of friendship and used to pursue a more profound intimacy with someone. Jesus asked very few yes-no questions, and since time was usually irrelevant for Him when He was with people, He rarely asked a “when” question. Several biblical scholars have studied the gospels with Christ’s questions in mind, and they have literally counted a total of 307 questions in His various conversations. It seems that a worthy spiritual exercise when considering the many questions of Jesus is that we should take them personally, as if He was asking us that question right now.

The Question. “On that day, when evening had come, Jesus said to His disciples, “Let us go across to the other side of the lake.’ And leaving the crowd, they took Jesus with them in their boat. And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking dangerously into the boat, so that the boat was already filling up with water. Jesus was in the stern of the boat, asleep with His head resting on a pillow. The disciples woke him in a panic and said to Him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are going to perish?’ Jesus woke up and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace! Silence! Be Still!’ And the wind ceased, and there was great calm on the surface of the lake. Jesus then asked them, ‘Why are you so afraid? Have you no trust in me yet?’ And the disciples were filled with great fear (“phobos-megas”) and said to one another, ‘Who then is this man, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” (Mark 4:35-41; also refer to Matthew 8:23-27 and Luke 8:22-25).  

The Sea of Galilee can easily be called a small sea or a large lake: 150 feet deep, 13 miles long, 7 miles wide, and surrounded by large hills. Because the shoreline is 680 feet below sea level, it is subject to violent downdrafts and sudden severe storms that sweep onto the lake and cause waves as high as 20 feet. Fishermen were somewhat accustomed to these gale-force winds that can come without warning. So for the experienced fishermen in Jesus’ group, this must have been an extraordinary windstorm. Fierce storms like this one were frightening even to veteran fishermen, since the boats could easily be overcome and swamped in the turbulence. These windstorms have been described as everything from gale-force winds, to ferocious tempests, to violent squals, and even winds of hurricane proportions.

“Phobos-megas” = an overwhelming magnitude of terror mixed with reverence and respect; a significant dread and feelings of vulnerability because are without sufficient resources. The disciples were apparently horrified with this storm and felt themselves to be in great jeopardy.

Rebuked. Yes, Jesus has the authority to speak to inanimate creatures. As Co-Creator, He can command mindless objects in nature to obey Him. As Son of God, Jesus actually has a relationship with creation. The word for rebuke here means to correct or restrain, and literally means to assign the value of something. So here on the stormy sea, Jesus judges the windstorm to be unnecessary and the turbulent waves to be worthless in the situation. The same word is used when Jesus rebukes the demons in His exorcisms. Then too, Jesus here reveals His divinity, since in the Hebrew Bible only God can rebuke the sea or command its obedience: “The channels of the sea were seen, and the foundations of the world were laid bare at your rebuke, O Lord.” (Ps. 18:15); “For He commanded and raised the stormy wind, which lifted up the waves of the sea. They mounted up to heaven; they went down to the depths… He made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed.” (Ps. 107:25, 29, also refer to Job 12:15 and 28:25).

Faith. The Matthew 8:26 account of this scene has Jesus questioning the disciples… “Why are you so afraid, O you of little faith?” The Greek word reveals that Jesus is not accusing His disciples of being faithless, but of having an incomplete faith, a deficient and ineffective faith. Other versions put it this way… Why are you so frightened, and how is it you have such little trust in me? What are you afraid of, and why do you not yet have confidence in me? Where is your trust in my faithfulness?  Perhaps Jesus is teaching His disciples, and this is quite the teachable moment, that faith is a gift from Him, and so they have not allowed Jesus to form His faith in them as yet. For if we are in Christ, inside Christ, hidden in Him, then He gives us His peace to live into, we have His mind to begin thinking with, His love within us to overflow to others. Maybe Jesus is saying that His disciples have yet to live inside His faith, or allow Jesus to believe for them, that they are still trying to generate their own human faith instead of allowing the faith of Jesus to become fully active within them. Because of our mutual indwelling, Christ in us and we in Christ, we are allowed to share in His faith, His faithfulness, His righteousness. We are enabled to participate in His ability to believe and trust and be reliant on God’s faithfulness and not our own. “The life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20).

“Thaumazo”; the Matthew 8:27 account of this same event uses another word for how the disciples reacted to all this; thaumazo is another strong Greek word that means… marveled at, astonished by; amazed at; filled with wonder to the point of being bewildered; being awestruck in admiration; amazingly wonderful. There were forty-four passages in the gospels in which people were greatly amazed by Jesus, astonished to the point of being awed by Him. Included in the group of people who were completely amazed, “thaumazo’d” by Christ: the shepherds, Mary and Joseph, the disciples, the Pharisees, various crowds during His ministry, and even Pilate himself was astonished by Jesus and marveled at Him. People were amazed by everything from the angelic baby announcement, to various prophecies in Jesus’ young life, to the calming of the storm and the withering of the fig tree;  from His miraculous exorcisms and healings to His teachings that always were on point and what were needed at the time.

Let Frederick Buechner Tell the Story.  One of America’s great Christian novelists and story-tellers, in his book Peculiar Treasures, recounted this miraculous scene… “Then Jesus lay down in the stern of the boat with a pillow under His head and went to sleep. He didn’t doze off in the bow where the spray would get Him and the whitecaps slapped harder. He climbed back into the stern instead. There was a pillow under His head. Maybe somebody put it there for Him. Maybe they didn’t think to put it there till after He’d gone to sleep, and then somebody lifted His head a little off the hard deck and slipped it under. He must have gone out like a light because Mark says the storm didn’t wake Him, not even when the waves go so high they started washing in over the sides. They let Him sleep on until finally they were so scared they couldn’t stand it any longer and woke Him up. They addressed Him respectfully enough as Teacher, but what they said was reproachful, petulant almost: “Don’t you see that we’re all drowning?!” It was the wind rather than the disciples that Jesus seems to have spoken to first, as soon as He’d gotten His eyes open. “CUT THAT OUT!” – You can almost picture Him staring it down with the hair lashing His face as He holds on to the gunnels to keep from being blown overboard. He was gentler with the sea. “Take it easy,” He said.  “Quiet down.” When it came the disciples’ turn, He said, “Why did you panic? What kind of faith do you call that?” But they were so impressed to find that the wind had stopped blowing and the sea had flattened out again that they didn’t get around to answering Him.

The Roman officers, the sick old lady, the overenthusiastic scribe, the terrified disciples, the demon-possessed lunatic – something of who He was and what He was like and what it was like to be with Him filters through each meeting as it comes along, but for some reason it’s the moment in the boat that says most. The way He lay down, bone tired, and fell asleep with the sound of the lapping waves in His ears. The way, when they woke Him, He opened His eyes to the howling storm and to all the other howling things that He must have known were in the cards for Him and that His nap had been a vacation from. The helplessness of the disciples and the way He spoke to them. The things He said to the wind and to the sea.

Lamb of God, Rose of Sharon, Prince of Peace – none of the things people have found to call Jesus has ever managed to say it quite right. You can see why when He told people to follow Him, they often did. If you’re religiously inclined, you can see why they went even so far as to call Him Messiah, the Lord’s Anointed, the Son of God, and call Him these things still. And even if you’re not religiously inclined, you can see why it is you might give your immortal soul, if you thought you had one to give, to have been the one to raise that head a little from the hard deck and slip a pillow under it.” (pages 62-64).