When Jesus Rebukes a Perfectly Reasonable Question

In Mark's Gospel (4:35-41), Jesus is travelling by boat with his companions when they hit a storm. His shipmates wake up a sleeping Jesus and rebuke him, terrified at the scene (and, presumably, their impending deaths). Jesus wakes up, yells at the storm and, after the storm immediately stops, then yells at them. They are left shocked by the whole thing.

The words of his shipmates seem perfectly reasonable to me given the circumstances: "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" The waves are slamming the boat around and it's taking on water. According to the narrative thus far, the most they know about Jesus is that he works strange, powerful miracles, that he teaches and that he tells stories. Moreover, they are on that boat at Jesus' own request ("Let us go across to the other side"). 

I understand this passage as a church worker who, like many church workers, felt a strong sense of "call" towards my life's current direction. Hardship and crosses are presumed to be part of the package but Jesus' companions will hear no mention of any crosses for another 4 chapters. They are only going on what they've experienced so far: this man who has healed those who can't be healed and who has explained faith in understandable stories rather than apodictic dogmas is now leading his friends into danger. We are so used to the happy ending of this particular story that we forget the terror of the storm. At the end, Jesus is compassionate, furious mystery. They wake Jesus up assuming that he will react one way. He complicates their presumptions by taking a different approach. The new formula works as they are drawn into contemplation.

There's a danger into tying up the bits of the Gospel into neat little boxes. I have to admit that I feel myself disquieted about as often as I am comforted. Bibles are dangerous things when they are wielded like weapons by the self-assured. But they have they have the ability to absolutely devastate a complacent, presumptuous soul. So to say the story is simply about a lack of faith seems, to me, to be only part of the story. Surely it is about faith and the arc of chapter 4 of Mark's Gospel has Jesus teaching on not just faith but complicated faith, mysterious faith, or even adulterated faith. 

4.2ff is the parable of the sower where seed is scattered on different kinds of ground. How it takes root depends on the precondition of the ground just like the raw material of our lives and experiences all receive the grace of faith differently. For some, that faith is most fruitful but for others the seed is the handmaiden of hostile ground. It will only do so much. I assume that Jesus told the story so that his listeners who aspire to best prepare their hearts so faith is fruitful and is thus able to make a difference in the lives of others. He presents these differing states of the heart as matters of fact and the listener is left to gauge the relationship between the state of their hearts and the faith aching to take root within them. By 4:31-32 we see that kind of faith he is talking about is most little, leaving the matter of our own hearts paramount. It's frightening to think how much of the battle is waged within our own hearts.

And so when the companions address Jesus as "teacher" before rebuking him, I think of the teaching that immediately preceded this scene. They had just heard Jesus' teaching and I had just read it. Suddenly, this storm will reveal as much about the companions as it will about Jesus' command over nature. They don't know what to do with a sleeping Jesus in the midst of a storm. Neither do I. Fear and faith are at opposing sides of the battlefield in our heart. The fear is reasonable. It is instinctual. It is survival. And yet the Lord teaches me that it's also adulterating my heart. He expects me to respond to a sleeping Jesus in a deadly storm robed in the trust that He is watchful even as He slumbers.

Moreover, he will simply not answer my perfectly reasonable questions, just as he bypassed theirs. Just like them, he will respond to my questions (which have their own implied accusations) with his own questions (which have their own implied accusations as well). Perhaps he will reveal my not mustering that modicum of faith by accusing me of no faith at all. 

And perhaps the experience will not leave me rejected or dejected but in awe of holy mystery, that it was not about me in the sense of my survival but still about me in that it was about me at the depths of my being. I have seen miracles, after all, and his trust has been mightily earned.

 

Failing Spectacularly - Becoming Charles Kingsley

In the history of great debates, the one between Charles Kingsley and John Henry Newman looms large over most. What began as a fairly flippant dismissal of Newman by Kingsley for his conversion to Catholicism quickly led to one of the great defenses of one's character ever witnessed in Western literature, culminating in Newman's book the Apologia Pro Vita Sua.

With what appeared to be little forethought, Kingsley accused Newman's capability of telling the truth or at least of truly understanding his own actions. Newman (who would eventually be made a Cardinal of the Church) had spent years agonizing over this conversion and well understood that leaving the established Church of England would be viewed by many not only as apostasy but treason. Such is the case when membership in an established national religion is a compulsory part of civic life.

Deep down, Newman was relieved for the opportunity to tell his side of the story, even though the attack on his character pained him so. His defense was so thorough, so masterful and so surgical that Kingsley went down in history as having been thoroughly humiliated by his errors.

And yet, what of Mr. Kingsley?

Kingsley's errors occasioned one of the great texts in the English language. In a way he was a fox walking into a bear trap, who would be pitied in his total dismantling if his intentions were not so malicious. The trap was designed for the moment of ensnarement and yet may have never been sprung at all had it been simply left alone. 

And yet, what of Mr. Kingsley? A man who is remembered for useful carelessness and error even though he was himself a brilliant man. He became an perpetual avatar for the modern spirit being ever at odds with Christian orthodoxy. There are still those who are cheering at this match that is relived anew anytime a copy of the Apologia is opened.

Then what of you and I?

How would we feel knowing that our work and ideas were only useful errors? Would it matter to us? Should it matter to us? Charles Kingsley was certainly sincere. He was passionate and he was a patriot. He cared for modern man and the spirit of the age.

But would we want to be Charles Kingsley? At some point he had to have known that he was in way over his head, deep in that haze of desperation that comes when one's first argument failed to persuade by bravado or wit. Newman reached beyond style into the substance of what Kingsley wrote of him, wrenched it, and laid its shallow essence bare.

Some months ago I jumped into an online argument with someone who saw that behind the stylistic gymnastics of what I wrote was a simple factual error, an error of history, that was more than a simple mistake. It revealed how little I knew of what I was talking about. I was Charles Kingsley.

Before that, endless conversations and arguments about music, about obscure metal bands or pastoral English folk music that were truly little more to me than trivia alive within snobby music magazines. I was Charles Kingsley.

Earliest on of all, sitting at a table in an Olive Garden with my father and his elderly physicist friend, arguing on the existence of God, surrounded by family and physicians. I'm 12, maybe 13. My father's friend is a scientist and he doesn't believe in God. I get heated. I get passionate. I don't know why. My sensibilities are offended and I can't explain what I'm feeling inside. I start arguing and I try to shush my father. The physicist is calm and composed and that, along with age and wisdom, serve only as markers of our total opposition. Eventually I am quieted. Internally I am disquieted, and ashamed, and humiliated. I am Charles Kingsley.

To be Charles Kingsley is an opportunity to be wrong and fail spectacularly. At that moment, you may stay or you may grow. To follow in his path is to forever be the contrasted and bested, proud of pride and little else. Of course, you can learn and move on.

Either way you will be useful, to others or to yourself.