Before the boat leaves shore, Jesus turns down two people eager to join him. A scribe promises to follow anywhere, and Jesus tells him what that means: 20"Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." Another man asks for something that sounds entirely reasonable, time to bury his father first. Jesus tells him to follow now anyway. He is asking for a loyalty that outranks even the weightiest family duty they knew.
Then the boat and the storm, sudden and violent enough that Matthew uses the word he later uses for the earthquake at the resurrection. The disciples are certain they will drown. Jesus is asleep. They wake him with a short, honest prayer: 25"Save us, Lord; we are perishing." He answers it, and he still asks, 26"Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?" He rebukes the fear and stays with the men who felt it. These are men who have watched him heal and teach, and they are still in a boat wondering whether he is awake. Then he 26"rebuked the winds and the sea," the verb Matthew uses elsewhere for silencing demons, as though the storm were hostile and more than loud. In the world these disciples grew up in, only God held authority over the sea, the ancient symbol of chaos. So when they ask 27"What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?" they are asking exactly the right question, out loud, for the first time.
The far shore is Gentile territory, confirmed by a herd of pigs feeding nearby. Two men live there among the tombs, so violent that the road past them is unusable. The demons know Jesus at once, more clearly than the townspeople ever will: 29"What have you to do with us, O Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?" They know how this ends. Jesus grants their request and sends them into the pigs, and the herd rushes down the bank and drowns in the sea he had calmed hours before. When the town hears, they come out and 34"begged him to leave their region." Given a choice between their livestock and their neighbors' healing, they choose the livestock.
Three scenes, one question underneath them all. Authority over where a person's loyalty finally belongs. Authority over the physical world people feared most. Authority over the spirits that made a graveyard too dangerous to walk past. The disciples asked it first, still soaked from the spray, and Matthew lets the question stand without an answer, because the rest of the Gospel is the answer.
Ask what he has authority over in your life that you have been asking him to leave alone. The disciples' question was right, and the town's response, a request that he go, was a way of not waiting for the answer.
Prayer
Father, thank you for a Son whose authority reaches every place we are afraid to go: our divided loyalties, the chaos we cannot control, the darkness we cannot explain. Teach us to ask the disciples' question honestly and to wait for the answer, and to stop asking him to leave when it costs us something. Give us a loyalty to you that outranks every other claim, even the good and weighty ones. In Jesus' name, amen.