Sermon-of-the-Month for July
WHY ARE YOU AFRAID?
Mark 4:35-41
35 On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, "Let us go across to the other side." 36 And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. 37 A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. 38 But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" 39 He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, "Peace! Be still!" Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. 40 He said to them, "Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?" 41 And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, "Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?"
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The disciples and Jesus were in the boat, the boat was in the midst of a storm-tossed sea, quickly being swamped, Jesus was asleep in the stern...and the boat was going down.
Since I was a boy, I have always loved some of old gospel hymns about perils at sea and rescues of the perishing sailors "When upon life's billows you are tempest-tossed, when you are discouraged thinking all is lost..." - even though I didn't know what billows were; I think I might have confused it with "pillows" and thought it had something to do with a bad night's sleep. But other hymns couldn't be clearer that being rescued and rescuing others was what the gospel was all about: "Throw out the Line-Line! Someone is drifting away; Throw out the Life-Line! Someone is sinking today." Or "Let the lower lights be burning! Send a gleam across the wave! Some poor fainting, struggling seaman You may rescue, you may save." Then there's "Do snarling waves thy craft assail? Art powerless, drifting with the gale? Take heart! God's word shall never fail! Sail on! Sail on!"
Not that I had ever been on a boat in a stormy sea...or hardly ever even a calm sea. I was mostly a land lubber until much later in life. One day I discovered in a small sailboat out on Cape Cod Bay, not far from shore but a little farther out than I intended to be, how terrifying storms at sea can be, and how quickly and unexpectedly they can come up and turn a day of smooth sailing into impending catastrophe. The waters around Cape Cod are strewn with hundreds of shipwrecks of merchant ships from the 19th and early 20th centuries. These storm-tossed sailors would have appreciated the metaphor of the lighthouse as God's saving light: "Brightly beams our Father's mercy from His lighthouse evermore..." But even today, with better navigation technology, there are still "Perfect Storms" that can lead to tragedy at sea. At any rate, and even though we don't sing those old hymns about sinking., struggling seamen and snarling, billowing waves and life-lines and lower lights (whatever they are), I have more appreciation of the power of the metaphor of "storm at sea" than when I was young and mostly land-locked.
Here we have a storm at sea...not a vast ocean, but a body of water - The Sea of Galilee - big enough to have the winds generate a deadly tempest. It must have been frighteningly powerful because the disciples, remember, were mostly fishermen, well acquainted with squalls at sea. This episode might be titled, "Sinking Ship-Sleeping Lord," for there was Jesus soundly asleep in the stern as the boat pitched and tossed on the waves. He must have been one sleepy Messiah to nap through that disturbance. The forlorn disciples were good and angry at Jesus, not because they thought he had the ability to rescue them from their crisis - they were the experienced boatmen...he was a carpenter! Their later words indicate they certainly expected no miracles here. It was rather that his sleeping communicated to them that he was really quite aloof from all this commotion, that he couldn't care less about their fate.
So, as Mark tells the story, they don't call for his help or ask him to save them from perishing. They just need to vent their anger as they awakened him: "Don't you care that we are perishing? At least lend a hand with ther bailing bucket." Fear...anger...sinking boat, sleeping Lord. Why wouldn't anger be appropriate? We can probably see ourselves as the terrified disciples in this story without much difficulty. Because there are storms in life...we are tossed about mercilessly by the winds of fortune. The waves of demand and disorder threaten to swamp the little boat of our life. We wonder sometimes if we're going to make it...or at least if we're going to make in through in one piece emotionally...tempest-tossed on life's billows...discouraged ...and fearing that the damage will be devastating. And where is God in all this? Not very present, it often appears, extending a life-line and making things right, but more like absent, uninvolved, it would seem, aloof, sleeping soundly in the stern while we're bailing like crazy to stay afloat. In such tempests, we are afraid...and angry at God for allowing this and seeming to be so uncaring about our plight...or the plight of the wretched of the earth. What about the mother with her starving child...or the African baby, marked by AIDS for death from birth?
Read the Psalms. Many of them are songs of the heart abounding in praise and thanksgiving for God's mercies...but many are fists shaken at the God who seems to have left his people to their own devices and gone off somewhere above and beyond the heartache. And some Psalms, strangely enough, are both: fists shaken and praises trumpeted, woven together like two contrasting materials, plaids and stripes, praise and pain, presence and absence. Yes, whether it is the proper thing to do or not, we do get angry with God. And I suspect we're healthier for it if we can acknowledge it and then move beyond it, because it clears the way for grace. When we try to be perfectly pious people, and say only nice things to and about God, then faith becomes more like a game to be played, a pleasant face to be worn, a denial to be lived, than an experience of grace that holds us through the turmoil of our sorrow or suffering. Remember, Paul didn't find the answer or the relief he sought for his "thorn in the flesh" - whatever it may have been - but was put in touch with the presence of God in the midst of his suffering and the promise, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness."
But if the first part of this story is about the disciples' panic and anger, the second movement is indeed about that very grace. You see, far from being aloof and uncaring, Jesus is in the boat with the disciples. He is awakened by them, and his first response is not to rebuke them for their lack of faith, but rather to calm the raging elements, the wind and sea....even though the disciples, in their panic and anger, never even asked him to tame the storm.
Does the presence in our life of Christ through the Holy Spirit make for a storm-free existence? We know, of course, that the answer is "no." There are storms, disorienting storms, waters of overwhelming peril in which we fear we shall drown: illness and separation and grief and disability and humiliation and emptiness. But Jesus is in the boat with us and because of his love nothing can happen that is able to undo us. There is a famous painting by Rembrandt of this scene...but what Rembrandt chose to paint was not the miracle of Jesus calming the raging wind and sea, but Jesus asleep in the boat...in the boat...presence, not absence. That's the first word of good news.
In Ancient Near Eastern mythology, the storm god was the monster of chaos, the power of utter devastation...of life reverting from its fullness and abundance back to the formless void that was there before God began the work of creation. In Christ God does the work of the new creation...and the assurance that the powers of chaos and death have been defeated, once and for all. No storm can separate from the love of God in which we are held, the grace that is sufficient, in life or in death.
"Peace, be still." There is a peace that is spoken to the chaotic forces that threaten life. Jesus Christ is ultimately the"Lord of storm." There is presence and there is peace; the storm is calmed by grace inwardly if not always externally. To all the powers of chaos and emptiness, Jesus calls out: "Peace, be still." And we too know the peace that comes of knowing who holds the future, who will write the last act of this journey of life and, in the resurrection, what that last word will be. "Peace I leave with you," says Jesus to his friends, "my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled; neither let them be afraid." (John 14)
Then Jesus asks about our faith: "Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?" Even when the Lord seems to be asleep to our distress, remember than he's in the boat too, and will not let us sink into the waters of chaos. Amen.
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