This comes right after the passage where two people approach Jesus: a scribe says that he will follow the Lord wherever he goes and Jesus responds about having nowhere to lay his head, and then another man makes the same offer and Jesus responds about letting the dead bury the dead. Today, in the passage immediately following that one, we see the disciples in a critical situation, and Jesus is apparently neither aware of it nor concerned about it. When they rouse him, his response is one of rebuke, and the seeming point of the passage is simply that the disciples become aware of his power and nature. But what if they had simply trusted him and let him sleep? Would he have rebuked them for not asking for his help? There are clearly a number of ideas here that seem to go in very diverse directions, but we might sum them up by saying that we ourselves as disciples need to simply and trustingly follow Jesus wherever he goes as Jesus points out in yesterday's passage --- and yet also to communicate our needs to him, to listen to him, and to be ready to learn from all our experiences, even our experience of his apparent absence. Jesus is Lord, and we need to trust and believe that he will lead us where it is best for us to go and will teach us what he wishes, if we can only pay attention and be ready to humbly change. |