That little church in some city of the Roman Empire that we've been imagining heard the Gospel of Matthew read to them. Their congregation would have acquired a hand-written copy, probably on loan, and then one of the few literate members would have read it to the rest. Scholars theorize that they probably heard it read in one sitting so that the order of its contents was very important.Thus, in Matthew 8, the author told stories about Jesus' prowess as a healer and then in the midst of those stories observed that following Jesus was difficult. He was the suffering servant and they had to share in that condition. In other words: yes, Jesus, was a miracle worker and had a great compassion for the suffering of the people, but if you're going to follow him (and be a member of a church) you better temper your enthusiasm with the reality of what discipleship really means.
Then comes this story in Matthew 8:23-27 about Jesus' calming the storm. How does it fit in with the flow of what came before? What connections did the gospel's auditors make? We can imagine that they heard, for one thing, that Jesus' disciples didn't seem to have all that much trust. They also surely would have grasped the symbolism of the story: the storm stood for chaos, the chaos of their own realities. They themselves would have gone through chaotic times when the ship of their life felt like it was sinking. So, there were those disciples of Jesus, supposedly the heroes of the Jesus Movement, and when push came to shove they panicked and displayed a whole lot of a lack of trust in Jesus. Jesus was clearly disappointed in them.
This following Jesus thing really isn't easy. Even the best of us come up short.
The key to this story is verse 27: Everyone was amazed and asked, "Who is this guy? Even the forces of nature obey him." Who is this guy? In the context of the flow of the gospel, this was the question that the miracles posed and that, indeed, the whole gospel asked. This was the fundamental question facing the disciples themselves as they experienced Jesus. This, the author was telling her or his audience is the central, basic, and inescapable question posed by the story of Jesus, namely the question of his true identity. Discipleship is a journey of discovery of who Jesus is and, just as important, what it means to live in trust of him in the midst of life's chaos.
The miracles reported in the gospel did not prove that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity. They didn't "prove" anything. What they did was raise the question of the identity of Jesus. People witnessed what he did, and they could not help but ask, "Who is this guy?" The life of faith is a journey of discovery.
