37 And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. 38 But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” Mark 4:37-38
“Grab a bucket, Jesus!”
When the disciples woke Jesus from his slumber, I don’t think they were expecting him to get up and calm the storm. They wanted him to grab a bucket and start helping them bail water out of the boat.
There is time for praying or resting and there is a time for grabbing buckets and chucking water. Violent storms on the sea fall under the bucket-grabbing category. Their request of our Lord is a practical one. They could use a couple more hands to keep water out of the boat.
Manage the storm.
That’s their strategy. Keep the thing afloat until they can get safe on dry ground.
It’s a decent plan. It’s the most realistic plan. We’d call it a wisdom plan. A practical and doable plan. If they had time for a seminar they could have a session on how their goals need to be manageable, something you can realistically accomplish. Or at least you have to work with what you’ve got. And the best option—from their perspective—is to get as many people throwing water out of the boat as possible. Solid plan.
But it’s not the best plan.
Jesus has a different plan. He goes to the source. If you want to keep water out of your boat in the midst of a violent storm the best strategy is to get the winds to calm down. But because we lack the power to do this we don’t consider this much of an option. We settle for wave management. But our Lord goes straight to the root and accomplishes wave stoppage.
We’re still like those disciples. We settle for sin management while our Lord pursues sin eradication. Our prayers are so often bucket grabbing prayers. “Help me get through this one, Jesus”. We’re not bold enough to ask him to raise the dead—we’re only brave enough to ask for a little bit of strength to get through the funeral. Help us on the bucket brigade!
I’m incredibly thankful that Jesus works with our weaknesses. Yes, he rebukes their lack of faith. Did they really think God would let his Messiah drown in the ocean? Did they not think that Jesus could with a word rescue them? There is a rebuke to our weak faith in all this. But that’s not the ultimate point of the story. Our Lord tells the sea to shut up and it does.
Yes, we’re idiots bailing water out of the boat. But Jesus isn’t. He doesn’t play our silly little games. He really is stopping the storm. And this is our rescue. It’s gonna happen. Yes, at times it feels like all we can do is grab a bucket and get to work. Manage the thing. But that’s the stuff of a weak faith. The boat isn’t gonna capsize. And that’s not because of our bucket brigade. It’s because of the God “that even the wind and the sea obey him?”
Jesus always goes to the source. We’d be wise to join him there.
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