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.
