The disciples' question is ours: Do you not care that we perish?
Jesus doesn't care about the storm. But does he care about us who care about the storm?
About this time of the year, I invariably think of a divinity student whom I taught. He felt called by God to serve as pastor to rural churches. Amazingly, he found a woman who felt called by God to marry him and go with him into a lifetime of service in out-of-the-way places. They went, in June, on a honeymoon, traveling by bicycle in the mountains and camping, the only honeymoon they could afford. First day out, on the road, there was an accident. She was hit by a car, crushed, and died a painful, terrible death.
I could imagine that young man crying out, "You called me into the ministry. You put me in this boat, placed her here with me. Do you not care that we perish?"
On this beautiful June day, it is easy to sit here in this air-conditioned chapel and think good thoughts about the world. But you know life. There can be darker, more difficult days than this. In June, walking around a placid lake, hiking in the park, nature, the world seems benevolent and benign. We moderns, because we have devised so many means of protecting ourselves from nature, tend to be nature romantics.
But this story of Jesus and his disciples in a boat renders another world, a world where storms rise up out of nowhere and nature puts us in peril. If you have ever suffered from say, cancer, you know that world. In cancer, the normal reproductive processes, the "natural" workings of cells, somehow go out of control, reproduce with astonishing speed, oblivious to the checks and balances of the body. The once placid lake which has been our body on most days becomes an angry, raging sea.
And this story is about that.
Perhaps you thought that there would be smooth sailing with Jesus. You thought that, with Jesus in the boat, there would be no storm, no waves, no fear. No. Almost every page of Mark's gospel proclaims that Jesus is the center of a storm. When Jesus is near, the wind picks up, the waves bang against the side of the boat, and there is trouble.