Conversation Points for Mark 4:35-41

Study Format:
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?

Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• Jesus calming the storm at sea kicks of a series of miracle stories meant to emphasize Jesus’ powers, demonstrating his control over nature, demons, and death. Yet after this series of miracles, the people of Jesus’ hometown still didn’t believe him.
• In Ancient Near East mythology, the forces of chaos are often portrayed as a raging storm, with a storm god demonstrating power by conquering the storm. This is also an occasional image in Hebrew poetry like the Psalms, like for example Psalm 107 this week, where God rescued people from trouble at sea. All of these familiar images should have helped the disciples know the answer to the question in v. 41, “who is this then, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”
• The storm that emerged in v. 37 was a “great” (megas) storm, and when Jesus spoke in v. 39, there was at once a “great calm.” The NRSV translated it as “dead calm” but the adjective describing the calm was megas, echoing the storm itself.
• Jesus’ method of calming the storm, rebuking the wind, have echoes of an exorcism, reinforcing the cosmological context. Just as sea monsters in ancient mythology represented the powers of evil, here the storm represents evil which Jesus controlled because Jesus is stronger than evil. While others could perform some of the miracles Jesus did, none but Jesus could calm a storm.
• There are various echoes of the Jonah story in this story. Jesus, like Jonah, was asleep in the boat when the storm struck and had to be awakened. Also the disciples accused Jesus of being indifferent, just like the captain had to Jonah. But the captain asked Jonah to pray to his God, whereas the disciples made no such request.
• The disciples’ failure to ask Jesus to do something hints at their lack of faith in Jesus’ abilities to protect them. This helps create distance between the readers of Mark’s Gospel and the disciples. Despite the disciples privileged position of being with Jesus, they do not have the faith that the readers of Mark’s Gospel have, helping to increase the readers’ confidence in their faith.

Works Sourced:
Perkins, Pheme. “The Gospel of Mark.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VIII. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.