“But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, ‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?'” – Mark 4:38

For once, it wasn’t me.
I’m known, of course, for saying all
the dumb things I could say to Jesus.
This time, it wasn’t me.

(And wouldn’t you know, the time
it wasn’t me, they left the culprit
unidentified. I ask you,
was that fair to me or not?)

No, I was busy with the flying rig,
and leaning hard to counter all
my lubberly companions who
knew nothing of the balance of a boat.

I thought it best to wake him, too.
I couldn’t calm the lubbers down.
Perhaps he could, and then old James
and John and Andrew might have saved the day.

Not even I, with all my lack of sense,
would dare to utter what he did
(I, too, will shelter here the guilty one).
“We’re perishing! Or don’t you care?”

Though rope ran slick along my bloody palm,
I winced to hear those words. I’d said them
to my mother once, and only once.
“I don’t believe you care at all!”

I knew that Jesus would respond
no better than my mother had.
Like her, he fixed the problem first,
the wind and sea subsided,

But then he turned that steely glare
upon us, one and all, even those
who never would have mouthed
those ill-considered words, and said:

“Why are you mewling cowards? Do
you ask me if I care? Have you no sense?
No confidence? No faith?”
And we said nothing back at all.

In truth, my confidence was lacking then.
I trusted in my seaman’s skills
in preference to God. But none of us
appreciated then what he had asked of us.

He asked us not to trust in him awake,
but trust in him asleep. He asked not to trust
in God when fiery pillars stride, but when
the way is still unknown.

He asked us not to trust in signs,
but in their absence. He asked us not
to trust in prophecy, but in
the new things prophets had not said.

We asked the question, “Who is this?”
as if the answer mattered more
than how we meet the challenges of life
encouraged by our trust in God.

A poem/prayer based on Mark 4:35-41, the Revised Common Lectionary Gospel Reading for Year B, Proper 7 (12).

The image is Stillung des Sturmes durch Jesus (Jesus Calms the Storm), a relief on the exterior of the Stuttgart Stiftsckirche (Collegiate Church of Stuttgart), 1957, by Jürgen Weber. Photo by Andreas Praefcke – Self-photographed, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15039823.