When faced with our own cowardice

This is the third of a four part series based on Mark 4:35-41. 

This week's piece is on Mark 4:39-40:

So he got up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Be quiet! Calm down!” Then the wind stopped, and it was dead calm. And he said to them, “Why are you cowardly? Do you still not have faith?

So, as we covered in the last two weeks, Jesus led the disciples on a journey that went horribly wrong. And when they turned to him for help, he was asleep! They confront him, and these verses are the response.

Jesus says a few words and the storm calms down. But he doesn't calm the disciples down. He calls them cowards and questions the quality of their faith. He might as well be calling them losers!

Have you ever been given a biting critique by someone you admire and look up to? Have you ever been told that you're a failure at the one thing you've been trying the hardest to achieve? That's the place the disciples find themselves in here, cold, tired, wet, and recently traumatized, when they reached out to God for help, and received a brutal assessment of their character. It probably wasn't what they were expecting.

Nowadays, we don't care so much about being seen as cowards. We are rewarded for avoiding trauma and hardship and for ensuring that others never get the chance to experience it. We coddle each other to death. But in the past, being a coward was a horrible thing. It was (and is) sinful. A man would do almost anything to avoid being branded as a coward. If you were a coward, you were no man at all. You were a failure. You would rather die.

An honest encounter with God often results in us being convicted of our sin. He is so holy and so powerful that even if he doesn't say a word, just seeing what he is capable of makes it undeniable how limited we are. Our faith seems like nothing. It is nothing compared to where it should be, where it would be if we could see with his eyes.

The disciples were accused of being cowardly. And these are guys who grew up in a religious culture that relied more directly on God than we do in our modern day. These are guys who were with Jesus in person day in and day out. Life in general for them would have been tougher than what we typically have to experience.

Compared to them, we're soft and weak. If we don't get the promotion we want, if a girlfriend breaks up with us, or we have to endure some cold weather or skip a meal, we're asking God "Don't you care? How could you let this happen?" If the disciples were cowardly, we're mega-cowardly!

So in that sense, this message works double for us. Where the disciples were called out for being cowardly in face of a giant catastrophe, we could accept the same criticism for being cowardly in the face of setbacks of all kinds. What do we do, when things are out of our control? Do we do our best to fix them? Do we pray and have faith that they will work out? Or do we turn our backs and run straight to God, yelling "Don't you care?"

It's easier just to panic. We catastrophize easily. Our language is full of extremes and hyperbole, and it reflects our undisciplined thoughts. We immediately think "We're doomed!" But do we worship a God who lets us be doomed? Is it really plausible that an infinite, all-knowing God would forget to check and let the proverbial toast get burned?

When Jesus confronts the disciples on their lacking faith, this is what he's talking about. If we're going to consider ourselves religious, and if we've spent enough time with God, we have to eventually arrive at a point where we trust that the important things will be taken care of. Otherwise, every potential setback will throw us into a panic.

This is the cowardice that Jesus calls out. The disciples have a basic faith. They obviously trust God if they're willing to do a late journey across a potentially treacherous lake. The problem comes when they run away from that faith the moment it is challenged.

Pre-storm: "Yeah! God can do anything! He's got our backs!" 

In-the-storm: "OMG we're doomed! God has forgotten us! He doesn't care!"

Same disciples, same Jesus, different results. The truth hasn't changed about Jesus, but disciples let the circumstances distort their view of it. We should be careful not to do the same.

Instead of flying off the handle, we should pray and take the authority he has delegated to us. And if that doesn't work, then we can approach him and see what our options are, and to try to understand the situation better. Our faith should start with our knowledge of who God is, not with our fears and emotions. A strong faith is not strong if we are cowards who abandon it at the first sign of war.

Let's examine our hearts this week when we get emotional over things. Are we running away from our faith to chase our fears? Are we assuming that we follow a lesser God than the one we do? Are we cowards in general, afraid to take risks, afraid to stand for principles, afraid to believe?

Next week we'll see how the disciples faith was reinforced by their experience with the storm.