BE STILL!

It is in Mark’s telling of this story that we hear Jesus’ voice.

For us, as readers, it must seem remarkable that the wind and waves also heard His voice. No matter how many times we might have heard this story, we should not skip over the key sequence: Jesus spoke, the wind died down, and the waves were calmed. We also remember that this was the same voice that spoke the wind and the waves—and indeed all the world—into existence (see John 1:1–3). That voice became flesh and was small enough to be sleeping in the back of a small fishing boat on the Sea of Galilee as the wind and waves threatened to swamp it. This is the miracle of the incarnation.

Then, when the voice spoke, it carried His creator power, and the sea was calmed. In some inexplicable way, the Creator had become a small, fragile, and tired creature within His creation, yet was still the Creator. But He was not only the creator of the natural world; He was also the creator of the human beings with whom He was in the same boat—literally and in terms of their immediate predicament. “This story is much more than simply an account of Jesus’ miraculous control over nature. The story demonstrates Jesus engaged in conflict with all the forces of chaos that would destroy our peace—both internal as well as external forces. . . . It is possible that Jesus’ command, ‘Peace! Be still,’ was directed as much at the disciples’ fear as it was at the storm itself.”* In this story, the voice that created our world and created us echoes in our present lives and circumstances—whatever they might be: “Peace! Be still!”

* Tracy S. Daub, Holy Disruption: Discovering Advent in the Gospel of Mark (Louisville, KY: John Knox Westminster Press, 2022), 59, 60.