One day Jesus and his disciples boarded a boat. He said to them, “Let’s cross over to the other side of the lake.” So they set sail. While they were sailing, he fell asleep. Gale-force winds swept down on the lake. The boat was filling up with water and they were in danger. So they went and woke Jesus, shouting, “Master, Master, we’re going to drown!” But he got up and gave orders to the wind and the violent waves. The storm died down and it was calm. He said to his disciples, “Where is your faith?” Filled with awe and wonder, they said to each other, “Who is this? He commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him!” Luke 8:22-25 (CEB)
The word “faith” mentioned in Luke 8:22-25 can also be translated as “trust.” As I read the passage this time around, I could not help but hear this question from Jesus shift from a question about faith to a question about trust. Several chapters have passed where Jesus has revealed himself as the Holy One to the disciples (healing people of all kinds along the way), and yet, in this moment of chaos the disciples allow fear to be the driving force to their future.
As they wake Jesus, who was sleeping in the stern of the boat (per Mark’s account), they wake him up in what seems like defeat and resignation that the storm was too great for their boat and for the men on the boat to overcome. Their conclusion after surveying the scenario was decidedly that they would drown!
However, this had not been the model that Jesus lived out for the disciples. Jesus questions their arrival at this conclusion with a question about their faith, their trust. Jesus, even in the midst of the storm, continues to model a different way to respond to chaos in the world. Jesus faces the storm in confidence as he rebukes the storm, and all comes to a peace. The disciples, though, maybe did not think they were doubters, were face to face with their fear, which betrayed their ungrounded and shaky faith.
As people who claim faith in Jesus, we have to wrestle with the same question the disciples did. When we say we have faith in Jesus, we declare it not only through our words but also by trusting that when chaos strikes Jesus is already in the midst of that chaos ready to bring a stillness and peace to it all. Sometimes our tendencies to declare hopelessness in a situation we can’t see past, or see a solution through, limits Jesus’ vision for more. But just because we can’t see it, doesn’t mean Jesus cannot.
In the Matthew, Mark and Luke where this story is also found, after the calming of the storm, Jesus and the disciples will go on to face a most peculiar kind of chaos, a demon possessed man. When Jesus asks about where their trust is, perhaps it comes as a foreshadow as they will need this trust even more so as they encounter chaos of a different kind. Their strength in the face of this other kind of chaos will not be unlike the chaos of the winds and the waves they has just encountered on the lake. The disciples will witness that, in the same way that Jesus rebukes the wind and the waves with a holy confidence, he will also rebuke spirits of evil from a man and free him.
Jesus is in the business of confronting chaos head on, with a confidence and a trust that brings stillness and peace. Jesus is in the business of setting free what which is held captive in chaos to remind all creation that God is still God.
A trust in Jesus declares we will find ourselves in places and in times where this trust needs to be flexed and tried. It will often come to us in the ordinary life and what seems like an ordinary task, like crossing the lake on a day that seems like any other day. While we have become better at foretelling the weather forecast for wind and rain, we do not always have a sense for when the unexpected chaos in our lives strikes, so we practice our faith, our trust, in the trusting of Jesus in the daily living, in the ordinary, in the expected so that when the unexpected strikes we have a faith, a trust, that is alive and actively catching us and moving us through the most unexpected chaos life brings where we need not lead with fear, but with a confidence that the ruler of our life, is Jesus.
Beverly Maravilla is Pastor for Children & Families at La Sierra University Church.