Ordinary #12B (Mark 4:35-41)

It has often been noted that there is a close connection between Jesus’ parables and his miracles: the miracles illustrate the parables, and the parables help us understand what the miracles mean. In Mark 4, there is a close link between the parables earlier in the chapter and the events of this week’s reading. The latter take place “on that day,” with Jesus and his disciples in “the boat”—meaning the same day and the same boat from which he delivered the parable of the sower.

Last week’s parable of the growing seed is one of many parables of absence. The sower leaves the seed and goes away “to sleep and rise day and night.” He does not intervene again until the proper time, “when the grain is ripe.” In this week’s story, Jesus acts out what he said in the parable. He has sown in the disciples the seed of faith. Now he takes a boat with them and, as in the parable, goes to sleep. His sleep, like the sower’s, is a sign of trust.

While Jesus sleeps and trusts, a storm breaks out, and the disciples fret and panic. This is quite a normal reaction, as any of us who have found ourselves in peril know. This is what we do even in less dramatic cases, as when something that is to occur the next day keeps us awake all night. We know there is not much we can do about it in the middle of the night, and yet we fret. We find it difficult to be like that sower who simply goes to sleep while he waits for the seed to grow, or the master who sleeps in the middle of the storm. We want to solve it—and we want God to solve it—right now.