Reading Luke Together #25 – Non-Anxious Presence
I think it’s fun to search for artist’s images of biblical scenes. Here are two of our dramatic story in Luke 8:22-25, when Jesus calms the storm. We have Rembrandt, emphasizing the terror, the tumult of the storm; and then the Chinese artist He Qi, who captures the serene calm of Jesus and the boat just after the storm has been quelled.
If you’re a longtime reader of my emails, you’ve heard me mention what always strikes me as one of the most astounding archaeological finds ever – and not just what was found, but the near miraculous way after it was found that it was rescued and preserved: the “Jesus boat.” Read about it here. A fishing boat from the time of Jesus, discovered during an exceedingly low tide in the Sea of Galilee, viewable now in a little museum by the water’s edge.
I love the boat because it’s a real thing, reminding us Jesus was a real person who walked on real ground and climbed into real boats with real fishermen. He is bound to have seen this boat and known its owners. He may well have stepped into and ridden in it.
Hang around Galilee any time at all and you’ll experience the way it’s calm and sunny one moment, and then a storm hurls itself rapidly upon you. Luke 8:22-25 records one such moment – in a storm so severe water was spilling into the boat, threatening capsize. Jesus – how? – had fallen asleep and was still asleep when they wakened him with pleas to help. Jesus: the ultimate non-anxious presence. And I sense a hint in his waking from sleep the way one day he’ll waken from the dead and rise up, so we’ll rise up with him!
A mere word from Jesus and the storm abated. That’s how God created the beauty of our world, how God brought order out of chaos in Genesis 1. All was “without form and void” when God spoke and wonders commenced. Jesus is tipping us off that he came not merely to save individual human beings, but to redeem all of Creation!
His question to his panicked ones, “Where is your faith?” puzzles me. They just appealed to him for help – which is faith, isn’t it? Maybe he’d hoped they’d be calmer and more trusting that all would be well. Notice in verse 26, they grow even more afraid! Not afraid as in scared, but afraid as in reverential, a trembling awe in the face of a marvel. Parents are fearful with a newborn, not scared but exceedingly careful to get it right, knowing how much is now at stake in every little move.
Just prior to this storm, we read about Jesus’ family. Luke 8:19 is way less detailed than Mark 6, which counts brothers and sisters and even supplies us with their names! Was Luke in a hurry? Or just not intrigued by the details? I know I am – and I am always ultra-impressed with the fact that James, Jesus’ oldest brother, became a leader in the church, and lost his own life because of it.
Who would be in a better position to debunk all the hifalutin theologizing about Jesus as divine or holy or the Messiah or defying death? They’d played, slept, done chores, survived scrapes together. James could easily have said “Son of God? Are you kidding? He was a prickly sibling and not the goody two-shoes you think.” Ask me to prove Jesus was who we say he was. I can’t prove anything – but I’ll point to his brother every time. Was it easier to still a raging storm? Or to keep the guy who knew you best in the fold of believers?