As a child I had an overactive imagination. I could turn a cardboard box into the cockpit of a modern fighter, then spend hours imagining thrilling takeoffs and risky landings. Of course, no matter how real the flimsy casement felt, I would have given anything to sit in an actual fighter with working gauges and a running engine. After a few seconds, excitement would give way to terror - I never could have lost control of the make-shift make-believe plane. The Jews had, for a long time, built up the expectation for a cardboard Messiah. From their national infancy they recalled mighty men who fought against chariots and soldiers, waging war and dividing seas. The coming king would surely be cut out of the same material but would stand much taller and slay greater enemies - maybe like Rome, a power that made Ancient Egypt look inept.
In the story of the raging sea Jesus reveals that he is far more real, more powerful, and more dangerous than any Moses, David, or Noah. In his messianic office, he reaches back before Israel and even Abraham to reveal the power of creation. In Genesis 1 Moses writes that when the earth was pure chaos (fomless and void in the ESV) the Spirit of God hovered hover the waters then commenced the creative act. For ancient Jews, water represented evil, that is the un-orderable. But God brings order to the waters - only God the all powerful can organize the tumultuous, amorphous ocean. When Jesus calms the waves he does more than time his words with a waning storm, he brings creational order to the chaos of the sea. The disciples were right to be afraid for they realized with whom they had been spending time - none other than the God of creation. The real Messiah is dangerous. C.S. Lewis, in The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, places the same words in the mouth of Mr. Beaver when Lucy asks about Aslan. "Is he safe?" Mr. Beaver answers, "'Course he isn't safe, but he's good."
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