The Cushion and the Cross

Receiving God's care and comfort as acts of faith

In Mark’s short but dramatic gospel, we read a blow-by-blow account of one of the more fantastic miracles recorded in all the gospels. In Mark 4, Jesus calms a storm on the Sea of Galilee. Crossing over the lake with his disciples in a fishing boat, Mark records:

They took Jesus along...in the boat. There were also other boats with him. A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?” He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm. He said to his disciples, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?” They were terrified and asked each other, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!” (v. 36-41)

There is much taking place here. But perhaps little is as important as how this story portrays the nature of faith. I was recently privileged to receive an advanced reader copy of what will be Dallas Willard’s final, posthumous collection of essays. The anthology is broadly framed as a work about the parables of Jesus, aptly titled The Scandal of the Kingdom. Any and every reader who takes an interest in the lasting work of Willard—or the topic of Christian formation in general—will be eager to read these enduring reflections from one of the most generative Christian thinkers of the modern era. It’s a breathtaking read. And one that should have a wide readership.

Photo by Michael Dam on Unsplash

In the opening section of the volume, Willard pens a chapter entitled “The Faith of Christ.” Within, he makes the case that the account of the storm about the lake that unfolds in Mark’s gospel is set in such a way so as to invite his reader to see a contrast between the faith in the disciples and the faith of Jesus. The point, Willard says, is not to chastise or look down upon the disciples for their lack of faith; rather, it is to draw our focus upon the deep faith of Christ himself as a human and the Son of God. There is Jesus, asleep, calm, unmoved, and snoring in the back of a boat in the squall of a lifetime. How could Jesus be so at peace? For Willard, Jesus was a man of faith. He contrasts the disciples’ faith with the faith of his disciples:

Their faith in Christ was good, but it was not the faith of Christ, which is strong enough to fend off all fear. They were not integrated into the will and nature of God and God’s rule over his world in the way Jesus was. They did not yet understand they were to enter the kind of life Jesus had in order to attain that degree of faith.¹ 

There’s a monumentally critical point being made here. The disciples had rightly learned to place their faith in Jesus—they called out to him and leaned on him to help them amid the furious storm. But their faith had yet to be fully matured into the kind of faith that Jesus himself had. Which, Willard contends, is the goal of any faith in Jesus. In short, our faith in Christ is a seed that is to bloom in time into a kind of faith that Christ himself had. We begin with faith in Christ. Over time, we have the faith of Christ.

I admit: I’ve sat and reflected on the storm story in Mark perhaps a thousand different times before. And it was not until this last week—at the prompting of a fellow faculty member of the University—that a detail escaped me. Or, at least, a detail I’ve never paid sustained attention to. Did you see it? In the midst of the storm, Jesus is in the stern of the boat, “sleeping on a cushion.” (v. 38) 

A cushion!

A cushion?

Why would this detail matter?

Part of my working assumption as a Christian has always been that the life of faith is a life that is bound to entail great pain, struggle, and toil. Ever since reading a series of books about radical discipleship in the early 2000s, I’ve uncritically believed in my mind that for someone to have faith in Christ is almost assuredly going to entail a life of constant crucifixion and pain. This kind of fear-factor Christianity—which I’ve come to call it—almost seems to demand that a faithful life must leave everything, sell everything, and give everything away to be truly in love with God. In short, I assumed that the path of the cross required discomfort. 

One of the comical aspects of Mark’s telling of this story is the fact that there is only one cushion mentioned in the boat. Keep in mind that Mark was not one of the original twelve disciples. He is not recounting his own experience of seeing Jesus asleep in the boat. Rather, he was tasked with writing down the experiences of one of the other disciples, who was a fisherman and keenly aware of the realities of seafaring life. Mark was passing along Peter’s account. This detail made its way into Mark’s story, which is all the more important. In the middle of a storm, Peter doesn’t just see Jesus in the back of the boat. He is on a cushion. The only cushion. And he’s taken it for himself. 

Why would the Son of God need a cushion? 

Because boats are uncomfortable. And they aren’t very kind on the back or the butt. What a human portrayal of Jesus needing to steal away a little comfort on his way to his death. Jesus Christ, the son of God, the perfect human, the one who will go on to die on a wooden cross, needs a cushion so that his back won’t get destroyed on the wooden boat. Perhaps as I get further along into my story as a mid-40-year-old, this detail provides a surprising amount of comfort to me. Even on his way to the cross, Jesus needed a pillow for his back. For this Jesus, who had a total and complete submission to God as a result of his faith in the Father, the journey to the cross had some much-needed cushions along the way. He would die on a cross. But he needed a life with some cushions. 

Theologically, I find myself deeply moved by this detail. We want to follow Jesus where he will go. We want to carry our crosses. And we will—at some point. The life of the disciple is a cruciform (cross-centered) existence. But this does not mean that God expects our life to be jam-packed with discomfort and lacking the joys of life. Just as Jesus needed some cushions, so do we. A life oriented toward the cross will have its end in full and total submission to the Father, but we mustn’t neglect to receive the kindness and care of God along the way. 

My spiritual director tells me I struggle with what he calls ‘scrupulosity.’ In the language of the desert fathers and mothers, this is an internal struggle of always feeling like I need to be more and experience more perfection before I can truly experience God. This comes alongside, for me, a conscience as sensitive as a sea anemone. I constantly feel like I can do more to ‘be better.’ The result is that I constantly live like the older brother who is out in the fields and can hear the music and dancing between the Father and the prodigal. But I refuse to go in. I am always around God’s kindness and care. But I never allow myself to come in from the fields to let these joys be experienced.

The cushion says that I can. True faith—the kind of faith embodied by Jesus—is not a faith that ensures self-diminishment or self-hatred or self-forgetfulness. At some point after getting on that boat, Jesus asked for someone to pass him the cushion so that his back didn’t kill as much. And that—the receiving of the little gifts of comfort—is part of the faith of Christ. And if that is the kind of faith he has, it is the kind of faith I want. 

The journey to the cross has cushions along it. One could say it takes great faith to receive them both.

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Thanks for reading. You can always find me wasting time on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Or check out my podcast with Dr. Nijay Gupta at Slow Theology. If you found this content helpful to your journey, yay! Consider enjoying my most recent book The Gift of Thorns: Jesus, the Flesh, and the War for our Wants, which was released with Zondervan in February of 2024. Within, I explore the topic of human desire from the perspective of Scripture, theology, and experience—with particular interest to how we can be formed into the image of Christ through our desires. In short, it’s about why our cultural mandate to “you do you” is so profoundly unhelpful to the follower of Jesus. You can support my work by reading it! And sharing about your experience. Click on the image below to get yourself a copy.

1. Willard, Dallas, The Scandal of the Kingdom: How the Parables of Jesus Revolutionize Life with God (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2024), 7.