In order to fully appreciate a beautiful diamond, you have to look at it from different angles. You have to hold it up to the light this way, and now that. You have to rotate it in your hand so that you can see all its beauty and splendor as it sparkles in the light. Different vantage points, different angles, enable you to see different sides of the diamond, and the more vantage points you have, the more completely and wholly you can see the diamond.
This is a good analogy when it comes to looking at the four Gospels. Christ is the diamond, and each Gospel gives us a new slant, a new angle, on his beauty. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John each have their unique vantage point, their unique angle, on the mystery of Jesus. The Gospels are also similar, especially the first three: Matthew, Mark, and Luke, which are known as the Synoptic Gospels. By prayerfully reading and studying each Gospel, both the similarities and differences begin to emerge in their respective portrayals of Christ, so that the four together give us a well-rounded view of the beauty of the Son of God and call us to faith in him.
A good and easy way to appreciate the uniqueness but also the similarities between the Gospels is to look at the well-known account of the calming of the storm at sea in Matthew and Mark. The basic story is the same in each Gospel: Jesus is in a boat with his friends. A violent storm unexpectedly comes up, threatening both the boat and those in it. Jesus, however, is asleep, so those in the boat awaken him. Jesus rebukes the wind and the sea, and there is calm. He then questions their lack of faith, and they are left wondering who he is, whom even the elements of nature obey.
These are the basic similarities. However, both Mark and Matthew adapt this story in different ways, in order to fit their unique vantage points on Christ. The differences emerge in key details, giving us a slightly different perspective on the mystery of Christ.
The Calming of the Storm in Mark 4
35 On that day, as evening drew on, he said to them, “Let us cross to the other side.” 36 Leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat just as he was. And other boats were with him. 37 A violent squall came up and waves were breaking over the boat, so that it was already filling up. 38 Jesus was in the stern, asleep on a cushion. They woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” 39 He woke up, rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Quiet! Be still!” The wind ceased and there was great calm. 40 Then he asked them, “Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?” 41 They were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this whom even wind and sea obey?”
The Calming of the Storm in Matthew 8
23 He got into a boat and his disciples followed him. 24 Suddenly a violent storm came up on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by waves; but he was asleep. 25 They came and woke him, saying, “Lord, save us! We are perishing!” 26 He said to them, “Why are you terrified, O you of little faith?” Then he got up, rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was great calm. 27 The men were amazed and said, “What sort of man is this, whom even the winds and the sea obey?”
Evaluation
Let’s start with Mark’s account first. What is unique about it? Aside from some odd details (Jesus is asleep in the stern and on a cushion), the main difference lies in how Mark describes the men with Jesus.
- The men take Jesus into the boat with them. There is also a group of boats, so that the scene feels a bit like a ragtag band of guys (fishermen) going to work (Mark 4:36). Mark never describes the men here as “disciples.”
- When the storm strikes, the men seem to panic. Notice their cry to Jesus: “Do you not care that we are perishing?” (4:38). Mark tells us (v. 37) the boat is already filling up with water. Presumably, the men are angry with Jesus and wake him so he can help with getting water out of the boat and save it from sinking.
- After calming the sea and wind, Christ asks the men directly about their lack of faith: “Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?” In response, the men are dumbfounded, “Who then is this . . .” (4:40–41).
What about Matthew’s account? Some unique details include the following:
- Jesus leads his disciples into the boat. There is only one boat and the image, far from being a ragtag group, is similar to that of a rabbi leading his disciples (8:23).
- When the storm strikes, the disciples wake Jesus (as in Mark), but their words are very different. They recognize Jesus as Lord, and their plea takes the form of a prayer: “Lord, save us! We are perishing!” (Matt. 8:25).
- In the midst of the storm, Christ asks them about their fear and little faith, “Why are you terrified, O you of little faith?” (8:26). He then calms the wind and sea, and the disciples are amazed, “What sort of man is this . . .” (8:27).
Different Vantage Points: The Question of Discipleship
Mark’s Account
The key difference between the two accounts lies in the way the disciples are portrayed. In Mark’s account, the men seem confused, afraid, and even angry with Jesus when he is asleep. Mark tells us simply that a group of men get into the boats with Jesus. There does not seem to be an order or hierarchy among them, and, at least here, Mark does not use the word “disciple.”
Mark’s account here fits well within his Gospel as a whole, in which the question (and challenge) of discipleship is absolutely central. Again and again in Mark, the disciples and apostles are portrayed in somewhat of a negative light. Confronted with the mystery of Christ’s identity, they are shocked, bewildered, amazed, but often fall short of faith (see, for example, Mark 4:13; 4:41; 6:52; 8:32–33; 14:50; 16:8). In fact, in the entirety of the Gospel of Mark, very few individuals really “get” who Jesus is. One of those is the unnamed woman of Mark 14 who anoints Christ and who stands as a solitary paradigm of true discipleship in Mark’s Gospel.
By making the question of discipleship central to his Gospel, Mark places the identity of Christ squarely before his readers. “Who do you say that I am?” is the central question of Mark’s Gospel (Mark 8:29), and one that the disciples, like us today, have to answer. Is Jesus our God and Lord, or merely a figure like one of the prophets? (see Mark 8:28).
Matthew’s Account
How does this compare to Matthew? For Matthew, a key element is the boat itself, which in his Gospel functions as an image of the Church. In fact, Matthew’s Gospel is the only Gospel to use the word ekklesia, “church” (see Matt. 16:18 and 18:17). Notice how the men with Jesus are unambiguously described as “disciples,” who, in their prayer to Jesus, call him “Lord” (Matt. 8:25). Matthew’s emphasis lies on the relationship between Christ and the disciples and apostles who form his Church. Christ establishes his Church, and the members of the Church are related to him in the way that disciples are related to their Master and servants to their Lord.
Important in this regard, then, are the very last words of Matthew’s Gospel. In what is known as the Great Commission, Jesus sends his Church to preach and baptize, and reminds them: “And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age” (Matt. 28:20). Matthew’s Gospel ends with the promise of the perpetual presence of Jesus in his Church.
Read this way, the calming of the storm becomes a sort of parable in Matthew for the life and history of the Church. There will be (and have been!) times in which the waves of the world rise up and threaten the Church. In those times, it can seem like the Lord is absent, or asleep. Nonetheless, he promises his Church his continual presence, so that when the Church makes the disciple’s prayer her own, “Lord, save us! We are perishing!” (Matt. 8:25), he can speak even from the midst of the storm to see the Barque of Peter, the Church, to safe waters.
Different Vantage Points, Same Diamond
In both Gospel accounts, the disciples have a similar reaction when they see the miracle that Jesus works. They ask about his identity, “Who then is this, whom even the wind and sea obey?” Who is this man who has authority even over the forces of nature?
In the Old Testament, it is clear that only God has authority and power over the sea and the wind. Some examples:
- Genesis 1:9–10 God gathers the waters into a “single basin” by the power of his word, and God names the water “sea.”
- Psalm 65:7 “You still the roaring of the seas, the roaring of their waves, the tumult of the peoples.”
- Psalm 93:4 “More powerful than the roar of many waters, more powerful than the breakers of the sea, powerful in the heavens is the LORD.”
- Psalm 107:29–30 “He hushed the storm to silence, the waves of the sea were stilled. They rejoiced that the sea grew calm, that God brought them to the harbor they longed for.”
What is the upshot of these (and other texts) that speak of God’s rule even over the unruly sea? Put simply, when Jesus calms the storm, the Gospels present this miracle as a claim to divine status. Jesus does something the Scriptures say only God can do; he calms the wind and the waves. In this way, Matthew and Mark identify Jesus with the Lord God of Israel.
It is true that Matthew and Mark adapt the miracle in a way that supports the particular theological focus and vantage point of each Gospel. This is because each Gospel is calling us to faith in the divinity of Christ. In the words of Dei Verbum from Vatican II:
The sacred authors wrote the four Gospels, selecting some things from the many which had been handed on by word of mouth or in writing, reducing some of them to a synthesis, explaining some things in view of the situation of their churches and preserving the form of proclamation but always in such fashion that they told us the honest truth about Jesus.
In the calming of the storm at sea, the Gospels display for us the divinity of Christ, and in so doing invite us to confess our faith in him. If Christ can calm the wind and sea, do we believe he can also calm the storms in our lives as well? Through the Gospel accounts, the one who calmed the storm at sea asks us again: “Who do you say that I am?”