People always look for power and control, while God always look for relationships and love.
Jesus' teaching is not about giving us more control, but about inviting people deeper in relationships of grace and peace.
To teach without parables, to make things simple is a naive idea. How do we define simplicity? Do we use terms of control or terms of relationships? Jesus' teachings were very simple in terms of relationships, but extremely challenging in terms of control.
Jesus was challenging people to have a tamed inner world (see for instance Matthew 5:21-30), and that is extremely difficult for people who try to master what is going inside them. For a childlike person, this is very simple. What is at stake is to challenge people to come closer to Jesus through the Holy Spirit, to take the risk of learning to listen to his guidance and to follow him. This does not lead to easy or simple situations according to the world. Yet, if we follow him, he will guide us through the storms of life. It is what our Father taught to David, when David sung: even if I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.
When the disciples where on the boat, quite a few of them were accomplished seamen, used to handle well a challenging weather. Yet, they also knew that sometimes the sea is beyond their human control. This stormy trip helped them realize that even when the situation is beyond their capacity of control, Jesus is here and can help. Even in the domains where they felt they were masters, they needed to learn that they have to depend on him, to ask for his help, to listen and to follow him. Most people in this world are ready to call for help only when they perceive that they are in trouble, when they are in unknown situations. Yet following Jesus has to develop in all the areas of life, to become like a child that recognizes the need of relying on a parent to move forward in all domains. This is at the exact opposite of the luring voice of the world, which calls us to self-sufficiency, and to get rid of all external authority. Yet this call to depend on the Holy Spirit, on Jesus' guidance, is the joyful path of the disciple.
We have to learn to listen and to obey the loving voice of Jesus in all we do, and to discover that he has mastery even over the wind of our personal storms. Even when we think he is not there - that he is asleep, we can come to him and ask for his help. Let us learn that Jesus, the Word of God, is not far away in the sky, but is at our right hand when we call him with humility, ready to listen to his voice and follow him. That is what we learn in the Bible (see Romans 10:6-8), that is what we learn in Jesus' school of prayer. That has been and always will be the path of his disciples.
(for more graphics like this: studymaps.org/Gospels)
