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Mark 4:35-41 – Can We Trust God to Care?
“Don’t you care that we are going to die?” This could be a quote from any time and anyone since suffering and death are as common to this world as complaining. The doubters in the goodness of the Son of God are Jesus’ own disciples (Mark 4:38).
The cross accomplishes many goals, one of which is answering “Does God care?” As Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., said, “We do not refer each other to the cross of Christ to explain evil. It is not as if in pondering Calvary we will at last understand throat cancer. We rather lift our eyes to the cross, whence comes our help, in order to see that God shares our lot and can therefore be trusted.”
Notice a parallel between this sea scene and the atonement. Jesus is asleep on a pillow in the midst of a storm. Jesus’ miracles never impress me as much as this innocuous sign of Jesus’ humanity. Miracles are divine power; sleeping in a storm is human trust in the divine – Jesus’ time is not yet. Sleep is a metaphor for death. When His time comes, in the midst of Jesus’ greatest and most personal storm, He again trusts God.
After the apostles woke Jesus up, He rebuked both the storm and His apostles for their lack of faith. Seeing His calm and the calming of the sea they ask, “Who then is this? Even the wind and the sea obey Him” (Mark 4:41). The final answer is found in both the cross and resurrection. This is the Son of God who cares.
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