35On that day, when evening had come, he said to
them, Let us go across to the other
side.
36And leaving the crowd, they took him with them
in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with
him. 37And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were
breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already
filling. 38But he was in the stern, asleep on the
cushion. And they woke him and said to him, Teacher, do you not
care that we are perishing?
39And he awoke and rebuked
the wind and said to the sea, Peace! Be still!
And
the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. 40He said to
them, Why are you so afraid? Have you still no
faith?
41 And they were filled with great fear and said
to one another, Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea
obey him?
At an acceptable time I have listened to you and on a day of
salvation I have helped you. Now is the acceptable time and now is
the day of salvation.
That's how our second reading
begins…and it ends with Open wide your hearts.
All the
stuff in the middle is the description of the storms of one community,
what they are going through and how they are trying to deal with it.
I encourage you to listen for the word of God from the Second Letter
to the Corinthians Chapter 6, verses 1-13:
1As we work together with him, we urge you also not to
accept the grace of God in vain. 2For he says, At an
acceptable time I have listened to you, and on a day of salvation I
have helped you.
See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the
day of salvation! 3We are putting no obstacle in anyone's
way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, 4but
as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through
great endurance, in afflictions, hardships,
calamities, 5beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors,
sleepless nights, hunger; 6by purity, knowledge, patience,
kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, 7truthful
speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for
the right hand and for the left; 8in honor and dishonor, in
ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors, and yet are
true; 9as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and
see—we are alive; as punished, and yet not
killed; 10as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet
making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing
everything. 11We have spoken frankly to you Corinthians;
our heart is wide open to you. 12There is no restriction in
our affections, but only in yours. 13In return—I
speak as to children—open wide your hearts also.
A first look at our gospel text this week shows a dramatic way that
God acted on behalf of people who were in a threatening situation.
The disciples were certain that they were headed for their death and
they also knew that Jesus was in the back of the boat, asleep…
This is the end of the fourth chapter of the gospel of Mark. And lest
we forget what's already happened in the earlier chapters, here's just
a little reminder. In the first chapter, Jesus healed a man with an
unclean spirit, healed a woman with a fever and he cleansed someone
suffering from leprosy. In the second chapter, he healed a paralytic
and told people they were misunderstanding the Sabbath, which was
God's covenant with God's chosen people. In the third chapter, on the
Sabbath, he healed someone with a withered hand, and he also attracted
huge crowds to hear his teaching. In the fourth chapter, so far, he
had spoken in parables about the kingdom of God and how it grows. And
now we get Jesus and the disciples caught by a storm in the middle of
the Sea of Galilee. The disciples were afraid and Jesus was asleep so
they cried out to him, don't you care that we are perishing?
Now many people read this passage and say the disciples knew that if Jesus was awake, they would be OK. They knew that he would be able to calm the storm if he were awake… after all, they had already seen wonders and miracles Jesus did earlier in the gospel. But when I read this, I wondered… I wondered if they knew what he was going to do. At least some of these men were experienced fishermen… they knew what storms on the water looked like and they knew what storms on the water could do. I read somewhere that the difference between an someone who has experience on the water and someone who doesn't is that an experienced person knows when it's time to be scared. And, it looks to me like the disciples were scared out of their minds.
Rebecca and I waded in the sea of Galilee when we were there a few
years ago. Our guide looked out on the water and said, This is
pretty close to where it happened… where Jesus calmed the
storm.
He pointed out and said the wind whips around those hills
and comes out over the water with a vengeance. Storms can start up in
minutes under the right conditions. They don't give much
warning… It's like the water doesn't care… They've
measured waves over thirty feet right out there.
The Perfect Storm was a book written in the 90s which was based on the true story of a fishing boat caught in a hurricane, the author helped readers to get a picture of the hopelessness of a small boat in a big storm. He said that you have to understand, there comes a point when physics takes over. If a boat heads into a wave that's taller than the boat is long, the boat will almost certainly be flipped end over end. Likewise if a wave that's taller than the boat is wide hits the boat from its side, the boat's going to capsize. Either way, it's not a good situation.
The text says that it was a great windstorm and the picture I get is
that it was an all hands on deck kind of moment but Jesus was asleep
in the back of the boat. So the disciples yelled at him don't you
care that we're going to die?
Don't you care? But I think he was
included in the disciple's we.
Don't you care that we are
going to die, Jesus… all of us, that means you too… Get
up here and help. I don't know exactly what sailors do when they're
afraid for their life… tying riggings, bailing water, throwing
ballast overboard; but whatever it was they needed more hands, so they
woke up the guy who was asleep in the back of the boat. Now, if this
is how we read the story, the kind of help Jesus gave certainly wasn't
what they thought they were getting… It was a big shock. They
may have seen him do strange and wonderful works while they were back
on land. He may have been challenging the status quo by suggesting
that everyone misunderstood God's covenants… but out here on
the water was different. Out here he did something only God could
do… In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the
earth. The world was formless and void and a wind swept over the
waters… six days later what had been chaotic and formless
became ordered and understandable. On this day in the sea of Galilee,
the waters were again chaotic and destructive right up until the
moment Jesus woke and rebuked the wind and the sea. Peace! Be
still!
and there was a great calm.
Wouldn't it be nice if the storms in our lives went away so quickly? Storms are an interesting phenomenon… we can look back at life and see that storms come and go. Before a storm people go about their day to day lives, doing what they do. But during a storm, energy is focused and when the storm gets bad enough, survival reflexes start taking over.
There are pastors all over the country this weekend who are going to talk about Jesus calming the storm. And when we look out at the congregations we serve, we know that they're filled with people who are being tossed about and maybe even feel like they're being sunk by the storms of life. For some it's the economy: added responsibility at work without added compensation, pay cuts, benefit cuts or losing a jobs altogether. For others the storm is in relationships: fighting or misunderstanding your spouse, worrying about kids making poor decisions, trying to figure out how to take care of aging parents. Still for others the storms take the form of poor health, losing a loved one, or feeling alone in the world. When it comes to our lives, it's easy to see where the storms are because they're the places we feel anxious, swamped, overwhelmed, battered, sinking.
I was thinking and praying about the storms of life and what gets us through them when I was reminded of the story of a couple who were trying to conceive a child. If you've been through that, you know the cycle of excitement and hope that comes every month just to be dashed as quickly. After a year of trying they weren't able to afford the medical intervention that the doctors said was their best hope. At the beginning of the process they prayed regularly, but by the time they reached a few years of trying, they, like so many of us when things don't go the way we hope, felt like God didn't care. But then sure enough, they found themselves pregnant one month and a few months later they discovered that she was carrying twins. As things turned their way, their faith underwent a radical change… all of a sudden it felt like God was good to them, God had given them more than they had asked for and they felt like they could see the lessons God had been teaching them in their waiting time… But then the real storm came. During a regular check-up, the doctor discovered serious problems. They ran tests and found that one baby wasn't going to make it. The other, if it survived, which was a big if, would have severe disabilities. The doctor recommended terminating the pregnancy and after thinking about long and hard, they decided to follow the doctors advice. The whole process was devastating to them and they were lost in their grief.
A couple of months later, their church community encouraged them to go on a week-long retreat to hopefully pick up the pieces of their lives. I heard the story of this couple from one of the people who was also at that retreat, and later he put into a book he was writing called Messy Spirituality: God's Annoying Love for Imperfect People.
At one point everyone at the retreat was instructed to take a walk and look for places they might see God in nature. The husband of the couple was upset. He wasn't sure he wanted to be at this retreat at all. He had been looking for God for too long in his life and he had given up. He decided that he would walk, but he wasn't going to cooperate with the exercise. If any finding was to be done, it would be God finding him. He planned to glue his eyes to the concrete sidewalk for the whole time he walked.
When he met with the group to process the experience, he said: I
walked very slowly, I resented God and I was angry. I kept my eyes
only on the concrete. I was determined to not see God, but before I
knew it, tears were streaming from my eyes. There were cracks all
over the sidewalk. But it wasn't the cracks that made me cry…
it was the little flowers that were growing in the cracks. Life made
its way through the hard and lifeless cement… and that was
enough to let me know that God's still here.
The storms of life do subside. I admit, it would be nice if they
subsided as quickly as Jesus uttered the words, Peace, be
still.
But whether it happens miraculously like in our gospel
text today or whether it takes years of processing the hurt, or
somewhere in-between, storms do subside. There seems to be an
expectation out there that when we get out of this storm things will
go back to the way they were and everything will be OK again. The
bigger the storm the longer it may take to subside, but no matter
what, journeying through the storm changes people. Things don't go
back to the way they were.
At the beginning of the story the disciples didn't fear anything,
they headed out over the lake without a second thought. In the middle
of the story, they feared for their lives because of the storm and by
the end of the story they were again afraid, but this time it was
because they had seen a glimpse of the one who calmed the
storm…They had seen the beginning of the power of God to save
them. And they wondered what it meant for the rest of their
lives. They were filled with great fear and said to one another,
Who is this that even the wind and the sea obey him?
Who is this that even the wind and the sea obey him? He's the one who was there at the beginning of time, and he's the one who will be there at the end of time. We may turn away when things aren't going well. In fact our impulse may be to come and go as often as the storms of our lives. But he's the one who was with them in the middle of the storm and he's the one who is with us in the middle of our storms too. When the disciples cried out for help, they got much more than they bargained for, because God remains constant in love, constant in caring, and definitely constant in presence.
In the midst of the storm, the disciples yelled at Jesus, Don't
you care that we're dying?
In that moment his actions said yes I
do care. You'll live through this storm. And then… after the
storm where the disciples were afraid for their lives, Jesus answered
them again. With the rest of his life he said to them, Yes I do
care… I care so much that I will lay down my life so that you
can live abundantly and also so that you can live eternally and so
that everyone who comes after me will have some point of reference to
know that God cares. I will give you everything that I can so that
you can be everything that you can be.
And I think that's why
the disciples were afraid. They caught a glimpse of God's power and
If God is for them, who could possibly be against them. And the good
news of it all is that they, like us, have only begun to see God's
saving power. Amen
The foregoing sermon was given by Rev. Dan Holland at the United Parish of Bowie on June 21, 2009.
© 2009 Daniel Holland
