Asleep on a Cushion

Of all the Gospel writers, only Mark tells us that Jesus was asleep in the stern on a cushion. It is the kind of detail that comes from an eyewitness, and it is worth a moment. The boat is being swamped. Experienced fishermen are panicking. And Jesus is asleep, not slumped from exhaustion in a corner, but settled, with his head on a cushion.

The first lesson is about his humanity. Jesus was tired. He had taught all day from the boat, and the body he took on was one that needed rest. The Gospels never present him as a spirit pretending to be a man. He slept, and he slept hard.

The second is about his trust. The Father who had called him beloved at the Jordan was not going to lose him in a squall on Galilee. Jesus slept in the storm the way a child sleeps in a car, because someone else was driving. Psalm 4:8 speaks of lying down and sleeping in peace because the Lord alone makes one dwell in safety.

The third is for us. The disciples read his sleep as indifference. It was the opposite. He could rest because he knew how the crossing would end. The invitation of the episode is to learn the same rest, and the lesson from his life is that trust in the Father can look, from the outside, like a man asleep on a cushion while the waves come in.