Luke 8:22-25 Jesus calms the Storm

I have a little list of questions that I would like to ask God. And I often talk about these things in jest, but I’m fairly serious about it. When I meet the Lord - in paradise/heaven/after the second coming/whenever that may be - I am hopeful that I will get the chance to ask some serious questions that I have, and that I will finally get a satisfactory answer.

One of my questions pertains to our gospel passage today. And I feel I need to be completely open about that as I start preaching today. I cannot stand here and pretend that I have all the answers, or that I fully understand everything in the Bible or everything about God. I can only be myself.

I really want to know how Jesus wanted the disciples to react. 

They were scared, they were in danger and they woke him up. That seems reasonable to me! He is their master, they depend on him, and they turned to him when they were in trouble. And it seems like they did something wrong, in the way that Jesus reacts. Suggesting, I think fairly plainly, that they needed more faith, and they wouldn’t have been as afraid if they did. And if I’m honest. To have Jesus rebuke the wind and storms in my life, would be well worth being told I didn’t have enough faith. 

Have you ever felt like God was asleep? Have you ever prayed and prayed and seemed to get no response? And felt so overwhelmed by the things in your life that you wondered if God was even paying attention?

But you see, the more I have reflected on this passage this past week, I wondered if I had been looking at it all wrong. (As usual!) I think - like so often - there are many layers to this passage. And perhaps my first mistake was to limit this passage to think about the storms of our lives. Because with Jesus - it is always so much more. SO much bigger.

When Jesus commands the winds and the waves, the disciples will have recognised this instantly as alluding to Moses. This isn’t a random miracle. But a huge pointer to Jesus being greater than Moses. Which to a first-century Jew is pretty huge. 

When Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt and the red seas parted, the Lord was the one who caused the seas to separate. God was acting through Moses. So Jesus is showing them and us here, that 

He. Is. God.

A storm is so powerful as we have seen this week - it is a force of nature - nothing on this earth can stop it. It is a wonder to behold that no matter your money, status or power, you cannot stop a storm. The best you can ever hope for is to try and withstand it, but you cannot stop it. To be able to do that you would need to be beyond, bigger than this world. That is Jesus. He is holy. He is worthy of our worship. He is one on whom we can depend. 

That is what I think he means when he asks, ‘where is your faith?’ I think he means their faith in him. Don’t they know yet who he is? And what he can do? [Clearly not by their response] And before we are quick to judge the disciples without the wonderful gift of hindsight that we have.

Do we know who he is yet? Or did we know, and maybe we have forgotten?

When we describe our lives as stormy, we might mean that we are overwhelmed by work stress, financial worries, poor health, family struggles, broken relationships, grief, loneliness, exams, pandemics, political crisis… the list goes on.

And when we feel that our prayers are being ignored, do we remember who Jesus is? Have our eyes become so fixed on today, that we lose sight of eternity? What do we have to be afraid of? When Jesus promises us that whoever drinks him will never thirst again. That whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

When Jesus calms the storm I believe he is giving us a glimpse of what he is going to do. He will ultimately calm all storms.

I believe that Jesus is showing us, by his actions that:

1. Jesus shows us that the winds and the waves obey him. That is beyond this world. He shows he is holy. He is worthy of our worship. He is God. He is one on whom we can depend. He is all-powerful. 

1. He gives us a glimpse of what he is going to do. Ultimately, Jesus will ‘calm’ all the storms. He will bring peace, restoration, resurrection. All things will be… When he comes again to judge the living and the dead, we will rise with Him and live in His eternal kingdom.

1. We can have faith in him. And this shifts our perspective on today’s storms.

1. He is with us in the storm.

He chose to be human. He chose to be in the boat with the disciples. Again and again. He does not leave us on our own to cope with these things. He has great compassion for us and understands the reality of our pain and brokenness.

For this very reason, he has given us his Holy Spirit to be our comforter. When Jesus leaves, he specifically promises that we will have the Holy Spirit to be our guide, to remind us of all he has taught us, to remind us of the truth and He leave his peace with us. 

He tells us not to be troubled.

I personally know that when I have gone through the hardest trials in my life, trials I could not avoid or escape, what greatly helped me, was to not be alone. 

These words below from a worship song express this much better than I can. There is a powerful sense that Jesus is with us in these trials and we are never alone. 

Another in the Fire (Hillsong)

There's a grace when the heart is under fire

Another way, when the walls are closing in

And when I look at the space between

Where I used to be and this reckoning

I know I will never be alone

There was another in the fire

Standing next to me

There was another in the waters

Holding back the seas

And should I ever need reminding

Of how I've been set free

There is a cross that bears the burden

Where another died for me

There is another in the fire

All my debt left for dead beneath the waters

I'm no longer a slave to my sin anymore

And should I fall in the space between

What remains of me and this reckoning

Either way, I won't bow

To the things of this world

And I know I will never be alone

There is another in the fire

Standing next to me

There is another in the waters

Holding back the seas

And should I ever need reminding

What power set me free

There is a grave that holds no body

And now that power lives in me

I can see the light in the darkness

As the darkness bows to Him

I can hear the roar in the heavens

As the space between wears thin

I can feel the ground shake beneath us

As the prison walls cave in

Nothing stands between us

Nothing stands between us