Mark 4:35-41: Does Jesus not calm storms anymore?

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In Mark 4:35-41, the disciples and Jesus (who is asleep in the bow of the boat) are crossing the Sea of Galilee when a sudden storm hits. The disciples are afraid and wake Jesus because, it would seem, they are questioning whether he cares if they live or die. In response, Jesus does two things:

1. He calms the storm.
2. Linking the disciples fear to insufficient faith, he suggests they should have had more faith by that time.

When Jesus did two things, why does it seem to be the case that all evangelical sermons on this pericope ignore the first thing Jesus does? Evidently, in the contemporary, evangelical mind, Jesus is there only to comfort us in the storm, not to calm it.

Jesus has not become less powerful, and no Christian I know would suggest he has. So why do we not ask him, as the disciples did, to calm the storm? The sermons I hear encourage us to exercise our faith in a way Jesus never suggested, by lying down with him. Somehow, we completely overlook Jesus' actual response. While he did point to the disciple's lack of faith, which was made evident by their fear, that was the second thing he did, and at no point did he rebuke the disciples for asking him to calm the storm. His very first response was to calm the storm (Mark 4:39). Only after that does he address the deficit in their faith.

There are two ways we can understand Jesus' response, and I suspect both may be true:

1. We should not be afraid, because we can be secure in God's love for us.
2. We should be able to imitate our Rabbi and rebuke the storm. At the very least, we should go to him and ask him to do so. Jesus clearly did not think the greater demonstration of faith was to let the storm continue.

I want to offer one caveat here. The storm in Mark 4:35-41 was not metaphorical. It was a literal storm, with wind and waves. To take a literal calming a storm, apply it to "life's storms," and suggest we can command those metaphorical storms to stop or that we can always expect God to stop them is not biblical. Persecution should be avoided if possible, but it is to be expected. Neither, in my opinion, are riches and comfort afforded us by the atonement. However, that being the case, I wonder if the application of this pericope (attested, as the application is, throughout Church history) to finding peace in life's storms is an inappropriate application of the Scripture that St. Augustine would have deemed "not pernicious."¹ That is to say, the exposition is faulty, but the thing we are taught to do is sound. Teaching that tells us to trust Jesus is definitely teaching a good thing, but we need to also remember that some storms should not be endured. They should be rebuked and dealt with.

This is certainly the case if our "storm" is a sickness. My reading of this calming of the storm leads me to conclude it would also apply to nature. That said, we should bear in mind that the disciples were in the boat crossing the sea specifically because Jesus had told them to be there and do that. If we're not where Jesus has told us to be or doing what he has told us to do, it may be we who are at fault and not the storm.

FOOTNOTES
1. In On Christian Doctrine, 1:XXXVI:40 Augustine wrote that if "a man draws a meaning from [the Holy Scriptures] that may be used for the building up of love, even though he does not happen upon the precise meaning which the author whom he reads intended to express in that place, his error is not pernicious, and he is wholly clear from the charge of deception."

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