Courageous

Courageous

Don’t be afraid. You are worth much more than many sparrows. (Matt. 10:31) I tell you not to worry about everyday life — whether you have enough. (Matt. 6:25) Take courage. I am here! (Matt. 14:27) Do not fear, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. (Luke 12:32) Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me. . . . I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am. ( John 14:1, 3) Don’t be troubled or afraid. (John 14:27) “Why are you frightened?” he asked. “Why are your hearts filled with doubt?” (Luke 24:38) You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. (Matt. 24:6)

Let’s face it. We fear being sued, finishing last or going broke. We fear the mole on the back, the new kid on the block and the sound of the clock as it ticks us closer to eternity. We create investment plans and install elaborate security systems, yet we depend on mood-altering drugs more than any other generation in history. But fear never wrote a symphony or poem, negotiated a peace treaty, or cured a disease. Fear never pulled a family out of poverty, or a country out of bigotry. Fear never saved a marriage or a business. Courage did that. Faith did that. But fear itself? Fear herds us into a prison and slams the door.

Wouldn’t it be great to walk out of that prison? Imagine your life completely untouched by angst. What if faith, not fear, was your default reaction to threats? Envision a day, just one day, without the dread of failure, rejection and calamity. Can you imagine a life with no fear? That’s the possibility behind Jesus’ question: “Why are you afraid?” (Matt. 8:26)

At first, we wonder if Jesus is really serious. Maybe he’s kidding. You know, teasing, pulling a fast one. But Jesus doesn’t smile. He’s dead earnest. So are the men to whom he asks that question. A storm has turned their dinner cruise into a scene from Gilligan’s Island. And here’s how one of them remembered the trip: “Jesus got into a boat, and his followers went with him. A great storm arose on the lake so that waves covered the boat.” (Matt. 8:23–24)

These are Matthew’s words, and for Matthew, not just any description of a storm would do. He pulled his Greek thesaurus off the shelf and hunted for a descriptor that exploded like the waves across the bow that night. He bypassed common terms for spring shower, squall, cloudburst or a downpour. Those wouldn’t capture what he felt and saw that night. He recalled more than just the winds and the whitecaps. His finger followed the column of synonyms down the page until he landed on a word that worked. “Ah, there it is.” Seismos — a quake, a trembling eruption of sea and sky. “A great seismos arose on the lake.”

The term has a spot in our current vernacular. A seismologist studies earthquakes, a seismograph measures them, and Matthew, along with a crew of recent recruits, felt a seismos that shook them to their core. He used that word on only two other occasions: once at Jesus’ death when Calvary shook (Matt. 27:51–54), and again at Jesus’ resurrection when the graveyard tremored. (28:2) Apparently, the stilled storm shares equal billing in the trilogy of Jesus’ great shake-ups: sin’s defeat on the cross, death at the tomb, and fear on the high seas.

Sudden fear. We know the fear was sudden because the storm was. An older translation reads, “Suddenly a great tempest arose on the sea.” Bu not all storms come suddenly. Farmers can see the formation of thunderclouds hours before the rain falls. This storm, however, sprang like a lion out of the grass. One minute the disciples are shuffling cards for a game of Uno; the next they’re gulping sea spray. Peter and John, seasoned sailors, struggle to keep down the sail. Matthew, a confirmed landlubber, struggles to keep down his breakfast. The storm is not what the tax collector bargained for. Sense his surprise in the way he links his two sentences. “Jesus got into a boat, and his followers went with him. A great storm arose on the lake.” (8:23–24)

You’d hope for a chippier second sentence, a happier consequence of obedience, right? “Jesus got into a boat. His followers went with him, and suddenly a great rainbow arched in the sky, a flock of doves hovered in happy formation, and a sea of glass mirrored their mast.” Don’t Christ-followers enjoy a calendar full of Caribbean cruises? No. In fact, this story sends the not-so-subtle, and not-too-popular reminder that getting on board with Christ can mean getting soaked. Disciples can expect rough seas and stout winds. “In the world you will [not ‘might,’ ‘may,’ or ‘could’] have tribulation.” (John 16:33) The truth is that Christ-followers contract malaria, bury their loved ones, and battle addictions, and, as a result, face fears. But it’s not the absence of storms that sets us apart; it’s whom we discover in the storm – an unstirred Christ. “Jesus was sleeping.” (v. 24)

Now there’s a scene, isn’t it? The disciples scream; Jesus dreams. Thunder roars; Jesus snores. He doesn’t doze, catnap, or rest. He slumbers. Could you sleep at a time like this? Could you snooze during a roller coaster ride? How about falling asleep in a wind tunnel? And Mark’s gospel adds two curious details: “[ Jesus] was in the stern, asleep on a pillow.” (Mark 4:38) In the stern, on a pillow. Why the first? And from where came the second?

First-century fishermen used large, heavy seine nets for their work. They stored the nets in a nook that was built into the stern for this purpose. Sleeping on the stern of the deck was impractical. It provided no space or protection. But the small compartment beneath the stern, however, provided both. It was the most enclosed and only protected part of the boat. So Christ, perhaps tired from the day’s activities, crawled beneath the deck to get some sleep.

There, he rested his head, not on a fluffy feather pillow, but on a leather sandbag. A ballast bag. Mediterranean fishermen still use them. They weigh about a hundred pounds and are used to ballast, or stabilize, the boat. So, did Jesus take the pillow to the stern so he could sleep, or sleep so soundly that someone rustled him up the pillow? We don’t know. But this much we do know. This was a premeditated slumber. He didn’t accidentally nod off. In full knowledge of the coming storm, Jesus decided it was siesta time, so he crawled into the corner, put his head on the pillow, and drifted into dreamland.

His snoozing troubled the disciples, however. Matthew and Mark record their responses as three staccato Greek pronouncements and one question. The pronouncements: “Lord! Save! Dying!” (Matt. 8:25) And the question: “Teacher, don’t you care that we’re perishing?” (Mark 4:38) They don’t ask about Jesus’ strength: “Can you still the storm?” His knowledge: “Are you aware of the storm?” Or his know-how: “Do you have any experience with storms?” Rather, they raise doubts about Jesus’ character: “Don’t you care . . . .”

Fear does that. Fear corrodes our confidence in God’s goodness. We begin to wonder if love lives in heaven. If God can sleep in our storms, if his eyes stay shut when ours grow wide, if he permits storms after we get on his boat, does he really care? Fear unleashes a swarm of anger-stirring doubts. And it turns us into control freaks. “Do something about this!” is the implication of the question from the sailors. “Fix it or . . . or . . . or else!” Fear, at its center, is a perceived loss of control. When life spins wildly, we grab for a component of life that we can manage: our diet, the tidiness of a house, the armrest of a plane, or, in many cases, people. And the more insecure we feel, the meaner we become. We growl and we bark. Why? Because we’re bad? In part. But it’s also because we feel cornered.

Fear deadens our recall. The disciples had reason to trust Jesus. By now they’d seen him “healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease among the people.” (Matt. 4:23) They had witnessed him heal a leper with a touch, and a servant with a command. (Matt. 8:3, 13) Peter saw his sick mother-in-law recover (Matt. 8:14–15), and they all saw demons scatter like bats out of a cave. (Matt. 8:16)

So, shouldn’t someone have mentioned Jesus’ track record, or review his résumé? Didn’t they remember the accomplishments of Christ? No, because fear creates a form of spiritual amnesia. It dulls our miracle memory. It makes us forget what Jesus has done and how good God is. It sucks the life out of our souls, and when fear shapes our lives safety becomes our god. And when safety becomes our god, we worship the risk-free life. But can the safety lover do anything great? Can the risk-averse accomplish noble deeds? For God? For others?

No. The fear-filled cannot love deeply because love is risky. They cannot give to the poor because benevolence has no guaranteed return. The fear-filled cannot dream wildly because what if their dreams sputter and fall from the sky? The worship of safety emasculates greatness. No wonder Jesus wages such a war against fear. His most common command emerges from the “fear not” genre. The Gospels list some 125 Christ-issued imperatives. Of these, 21 urge us to “not be afraid,” or “not fear,” or “have courage,” or “take heart,” or “be of good cheer.” The second most common command, to love God and our neighbor, appears on only eight occasions. So, if quantity is any indicator, Jesus takes our fears seriously. The fact is that the one statement he made more than any other was this: don’t be afraid.

Siblings sometimes chuckle at or complain about the most common command of their parents. They remember how Mom was always saying, “Be home on time,” or, “Did you clean your room?” Dad had his favorite directives, too. “Keep your chin up.” “Work hard.” So, I wonder if the disciples ever reflected on the most-often-repeated phrases of Christ. If so, they would have noted, “He was always calling us to courage.”

Jesus doesn’t want us to live in a state of fear. Nor do we because we’ve learned the high cost of fear. So, Jesus’ question is a good one. He lifts his head from the pillow, steps out from the stern into the storm, and asks, “Why are you fearful, O you of little faith?” (Matt. 8:26). To be clear, fear serves a healthy function. It is the canary in the coal mine warning of potential danger. Fear is the appropriate reaction to a burning building or growling dog. Fear itself is not a sin. But it can lead to sin.

If we medicate fear with angry outbursts, sullen withdrawals, self-starvation, or viselike control, we exclude God from the solution and simply exacerbate the problem. We subject ourselves to a position of fear, allowing anxiety to dominate and define our lives. Joy-sapping worries. Day-numbing dread. Repeated bouts of insecurity that petrify and paralyze us. Hysteria is not from God. “For God has not given us a spirit of fear” (2 Tim. 1:7). Fear may fill our world, but it doesn’t have to fill our hearts. The promise of Christ is simple: we can fear less tomorrow than we do today.

“Jesus got up and gave a command to the wind and the waves, and it became completely calm.” (Matt. 8:26) The sea becomes as still as a frozen lake, and the disciples are left wondering, “What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!” (v. 27) What kind of man, indeed. Turning typhoon time into nap time. Silencing waves with one word. The disciples didn’t go under.

Neither will you.

Grace,

Randy