Luke 8:16-25
If you haven’t yet, read the story here: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%208%3A16-25&version=NLT
Today Luke is rapid-firing anecdotes at us. He has gathered a bunch of Jesus’ teachings and stuff that happened, and he wants to fit in a handful of them pretty quickly it seems. They each bore repeating, but he had so much to say he had to keep it moving. The first teaching seems to reflect back on the parable of the sower and the importance of nurturing a heart that is ready to truly listen to what is being taught.
It clearly made an impact on his disciples. Three of the four gospel writers mention it. Again, I imagine this was something Jesus brought up frequently as he went from town to town. Luke seems to indicate by his placement of the teaching that it adds to his reader’s understanding of the previous passage.
I think Jesus’ point here was that the message (the seed the sower is tossing around which is here being described as a light) isn’t being hidden. The reason it sometimes grows well and sometimes dies is not because he is hiding it from people. Jesus is saying, I’m giving you the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom (from the last passage) but I’m offering it to other people as well. It’s a light. It’s shining. It’s visible to anyone who comes into the house where it’s shining.
The implication then, is hustle your butt into the house and look at what is being illuminated. If you are open to learning, God has so much to teach you. But if you walk away from the light and close the door it’s only going to get darker.
Then we have this somewhat uncomfortable mention of Jesus’ mom and brothers trying to come see him while he was teaching. The crowds were thick, and they couldn’t get near him so someone told him they were wanting to see him. Mark also mentions this event and he says they thought he was out of his mind and were coming to take him away, probably just to get some rest, but they clearly didn’t believe his message at that point.
From the perspective of a mom, Jesus’ response seems pretty harsh. I think I’d feel pretty rejected if I went to see one of my famous kids and they basically said, “my fans are my family.” But this was Jesus. I think his intention was to elevate his audience, not reduce his family. If I think of it in context of a celebrity of some sort who is out lecturing or performing, I can see it differently. He’s with people who have come to see him. His family comes and says, “it’s time for Jesus to go home and take a break.” Jesus replies, “These people deserve my time and attention. They are as important to me as my family.”
He has just been telling people that they need to carefully consider what he’s teaching. To just get up and leave in the middle of a lecture would be sending mixed signals. It would be like saying he wants his listeners to be devoted to the message, but he’s kinda down for a nap right now. Jesus is investing in the children of God, not just his biological family. God’s family is precious and important to him.
And then we have the story of Jesus calming a storm while he and his disciples were out at sea travelling between towns. If you read through the gospels, you will notice more than one stormy night on the water. Some of Jesus’ closest followers were fishermen and the Sea of Galilee on which they lived was a moody little lake that spit up some nasty storms. I imagine everyone in the area had lost someone to that lake. But Jesus has been teaching and needs to get to the other side, so they climb into a boat, probably a small fishing boat like half the disciples had grown up in. Jesus is exhausted and takes a nap. His team knows boats. He doesn’t need to be awake for the trip. But a squall blows in, and it’s a bad one. The storm kicks up and the boat is filling with water faster than they can get it out. The boat is on the verge of sinking and they know for a fact that swimming in a storm is never a good idea. Jesus is out cold. You can kind of picture it. At first they don’t want to wake Jesus, but there’s a point at which they’re thinking he’s gonna drown in his sleep and they are all going with him. So they wake him up in a bit of a panic.
What happens next is one of those brilliant moments where we can see that Jesus truly is fully God and fully human. He’s tired. He’s so tired that he is sleeping through a nasty storm at sea. His disciples wake him up. I sense that he is unimpressed. He might even be a little cranky. He gets up, “rebukes the storm” and it just stops. The wind, the waves, gone. Suddenly it’s a glassy sea. Like when dad walks into a room full of sleep-deprived bickering siblings and yells, “Enough!”
Can’t you hear it? Jesus is tired. His disciples woke him up when all he wanted was a decent nap. He looks at his disciples, looks at the sky and the waves, rolls over and stands up. Another writer recalls him saying, “Peace! Be still.” I personally suspect that, “Peace!” sounded an awful lot like, “Enough!” He’s just a little cranky and the storm can hear it in his voice. And that storm knows exactly who he is, so it scatters.
But just because the storm knows who he is doesn’t mean his disciples have quite fully figured it out, and they are left in shock asking one another, “Who is this guy??”
