Mega-Storm to Mega-Calm

Mark 4:35-41

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I’ve twice had the pleasure of backcountry canoe-tripping on North Tea Lake in Algonquin Provincial Park.  The paddle getting into the lake is quite pleasant.  You put in on Kawawaymog Lake for a 1km paddle across to the Amable du Fond River.  The paddle on Amable du Font is the highlight for me.  It’s a narrow waterway and you get to see a lot of animal and plant life up close.  After that paddle, you come out onto North Tea which becomes a typical outback big lake paddling experience.  It’s nice and peaceful if there’s no wind.  

But any way, the wind.  Both times I have been to North Tea the end of trip paddle out on Kawawaymog has been insane due to the wind.  Apparently, it really picks up in the afternoon.  The first time, which was about sixteen years ago, I was on a trip that Dana was guiding for a group of people and their dogs.  The headwind was blowing so strong and the water was so choppy that we didn’t even try to paddle across.  Rather we walked the canoes around the edge of the lake.  A 1km paddle became about a 2.5km slog pulling loaded canoes.  

This past summer we returned to North Tea and took another family with us who had one 3^rd Grade age kid.  We were a flotilla of 3 canoes and a kayak.  There was a weather system blowing out with a lot of wind behind.  The Amable du Font is very sheltered and it didn’t seem like there was any wind; and so, I was hoping that Kawawaymog would be tame.  But no, Kawawaymog was churning up pretty good.  Gordon Lightfoot could have probably got a nice shipwreck song out it.  We decided to go ahead and try to paddle it.  William and I were sharing a canoe.  I was in the stern and he was in the bow.  Dana and Alice were in the same situation.  The other family, well, the mother was kayaking.  She made it across in record time.  The dad and daughter they made it across too because he was a mountain of muscle.  But, Dana and I and the kids weren’t fairing so well and the kids were getting scared.  It was a bunch of up and down and getting sideways and rocking.  Dana and I were more or less having to solo loaded canoes in a big headwind with big waves with scared kids riding a roller coaster up in the bow.  It was either head for shore or call in Gordon Lightfoot to write the memorial song.  300 meters in we headed for shore to slog it around edge. 

Being out on a lake when the wind and the waves are against you is no laughing matter.  It’s dangerous.  I think of Jesus and the disciples here.  In reality I’m not a very experienced canoer, so it doesn’t take much to get me convinced to opt for the safer route when the water gets choppy.  But the disciples, at least half of them were career fisherman and they were concerned, to say the least, at the situation they were in.  This was no ordinary windstorm.  It was a mega-windstorm.  The Greek word for great is mega.  

Since we’re into the Greek, if you pay close attention to the way Mark words things in this story especially where Jesus commands the storm to be quiet and still, it becomes apparent that something mega-not-right was up with it, something had cosmically gone awry.  Jesus didn’t just bark a command at the wind.  He rebuked it.  Rebuking was what Jesus did to the unclean spirits to cast them out and to anyone else who was working against him in his mission to bring in the Kingdom of God.  So, he rebuked the Wind and the Sea and silenced them like he silenced the demons and drove them out of their victims leaving the person in calm.  Silenced was also how he left the religious authorities who were out to kill him after a good dispute.

This mega-windstorm was a ”cosmic-matter” like Creation gone rogue against its Creator.  The picture Mark is painting is that this was not just Jesus calming the storms of life, but rather God the Son incarnate putting down a Cosmic rebellion led by the primordial forces of Chaos.  I know that probably just made you say “Hmm.  What’s he talking about?” so let me ramble this one a little bit.

Let’s take a moment to remember the Creation story in Genesis 1.  Genesis 1 tells of how God made this big Bubble called a firmament in the midst of Primordial Chaos.  Remember everything was this formlessness, voidness, and darkness over waters and a wind or the breath of God was hovering ready to act.  If you compare the Genesis 1 creation story to other stories like it from other ancient cultures in the Middle East from that time, it appears that God is making this bubble in the midst of Chaos to serve the purpose of what temples served in the ancient world.  Temples were places for gods to come down from the heavens and repose, to rest and enjoy the goodness of their works.  Creation is God’s place to come and repose and have joy.  

Let’s remember how God did it.  God created light, the light by which all can see and understand what God is up to.  God separated the light from the darkness.  Then God made the Bubble by separating the waters.  Then he created sky and land and the sun, moon, and stars. Then God filled it with life.  Then, God created humanity in their image to tend the Garden so to speak.  Every temple back then had an image, an idol, of God in it that was believed to somehow embody the presence of the god the temple was meant to house.  Finally, God called it all very good and then rested.  He reposed and that doesn’t mean that he slept or went on vacation.  It just means he sat down to enjoy the beauty of it all.  

Well back to Mark’s Gospel and Jesus and his disciples on the Sea.  There are some similarities with Genesis 1.  It was evening which meant darkness was beginning to set in over the Sea.  Remember in Genesis how darkness was over the waters.  They are on this boat along with some other boats and it’s kind of like they are in the Bubble.  Sitting in a boat looking up and around gives a sense of sitting in a bubble.  There are birds in the air, fish in the sea.  Jesus (God) has just had a very successful, very good, first round of Kingdom of God spreading ministry there in his stomping grounds in Galilee.  He’s been preaching, healing, and casting out demons, and confronting the religious authorities.  People were flocking to him and seem to be getting the idea that he just might be the Promised Messiah.  He is there with his disciples, his key followers who will shortly bear his image, so to speak, when he sends them out on Kingdom of God mission trips in his name to preach, heal, and cast out demons just as he did.  With everything having been so good, Jesus decides to repose on a cushion in the back of the boat.  Being fully human, his reposing involves a solid nap.

Well, the wind begins to blow.  If you remember from Genesis 1:2 that “a wind from God swept over the face of the waters” which was a reference to the Holy Spirit.  In Hebrew the word for wind can also mean breath or spirit; so also in Greek.  The image there is of the wind of the breath of God breathing across the waters in the midst of the darkness preparing to speak the Word of Creation.  Please call to mind how Scripture says that Jesus is the Word of God in, through, and by whom God created and creates and recreates everything.  There’s a wonderful Trinitarian image of God at work in the Genesis 1 account of Creation.  Back to Mark and this wind that comes blowing across the Sea stirring up those perilous waves; this wind is remeniscent of the time before Creation when the wind of the breath of God swept across the waters, but this wind is obviously not God breathing on the waters to bring forth the Creation.  This wind is doing the opposite.  It’s seeking to destroy Jesus and the disciples.  

Just a note about the waters here.  In Greek the word for lake and sea are the same and you need to know when to call something a lake and when to call it “The Sea”.  Jewish apocalyptic writers the image of “The Sea” to mean those pre-Creation waters of Chaos that contained hidden dangers like sea monsters and other nasties that sometimes flooded into God’s very good Bubble.  “The Sea” is the unknown.  It’s the “left field” from which stuff comes that turns our lives into complete upheaval.  It’s the political upheaval of invading imperial forces that completely upend your way of life such as what the Romans were doing in Israel at the time.

Well, I hope you are grasping that this moment that Jesus is sharing with his disciples out on a windy sea is more than just a windstorm at sea.  It’s more than just a story that we can look back on in devotional nostalgic hindsight piously say “Jesus calms the storms of life”.   Yes, Jesus calms the storms of life.  But, the way Mark is telling this story it is on the level of the forces that exist outside the Bubble of God’s very good Creation attempting to destroy what God is doing in the power of the Holy Spirit in, through, and as Jesus (God the Son become human) to save his Creation which has been invaded by the oppressive forces of Sin, Evil, and Death.  The Wind and the Sea are threatening to altogether collapse God’s very good Bubble of repose.  We could and should presume that if Jesus is unable to do anything about this mega-windstorm of Chaos, then all is lost.

So, the boat is swamping and in desperation the disciples went to the sleeping, apparently unconcerned Jesus to say, “The feathers have hit the fan, Jesus.  Don’t you care?”  We do that in the midst of the storms of life.  But for the disciples, this was a mega-moment for the Creation.  Perishing was probably an understatement for what was happening.  Maybe they grasped the magnitude.  Maybe they didn’t.  Nevertheless, they were staring at the senselessness of God’s very good Bubble being collapsed back in on itself as if to become a blackhole or something.  

As I said before this was more than just a story we can look back on and say “Jesus calms the storms of life.”  He does calm life’s storms, but this is the grandaddy of all storms. In Mark’s understanding of reality this mega-windstorm on the Sea (of Galilee) comes from and is orchestrated by the same force that brings tsunamis, hurricanes, pandemics, holocausts, diseases, oppressive empires, poverty, all those inexplicable not-good-at-all forms of Chaos that break into God’s very good Bubble just to wreak senseless havoc as the Roman Empire was doing in Jesus’ day.

As noted, Jesus raised up (a resurrection hint) and rebuked the Wind and the Sea as if they were demons or religious authority types who just need to shut up.  The mega-windstorm turns to mega-calm.  The Wind ceases.  The Sea goes placid.  It’s a great calm, not even a ripple.  Where the disciples, these seasoned fishermen, were just a little bit more than concerned, now after the calming they have become afeared with a mega-fear.  I’m not sure it is an accurate translation to say as the NRSV says here that “they were filled with a great awe.”  Jesus had just done something that only the Creator Lord God Almighty could do.  Jesus turned the mega-windstorm into mega-calm and they are mega-fraid.  Seriously, who are they in the boat with and what is really going on with him?  

Well, who are we in the boat with?  Paul in Colossians 1:15-20 puts it like this: “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him.  He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.  He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.  For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.”

We are in the boat with the one through and by whom all things were created and hold together.  Jesus is the one who holds our lives in his hands; the one who died to bring reconciliation into God’s very good Bubble that is constantly being assaulted by Chaos.  Paul says at Romans 8:28 that all things work together for the good of those who love him.  There are times in our lives when it seems that all Hell is breaking lose on us and it seems like it’s a personal attack by the universe or something.  Well, it just might be, but Jesus is in our boats and he will calm the storms.  

Jesus then asked the disciples why they were being cowardly.  Our translation says “afraid” but the word is really the word for cowardly rather than afraid.  This word was the word they used in the early church to describe those who left the fold when persecution arose, when the fear and death-wielding powers of Roman empire, Roman emperor worship, and the worship of false gods and even false understandings of the one true God being enforced with violence by the religious authorities caused the followers of Jesus to abandon hope and faith in him.  

Faith is the boat we are in.  If you remember, last week I defined faith as something more than just belief or trust.  It is active participation in the sphere of realtiy in which the Triune God of grace is making manifest according to his promises what God is doing in, through, and as Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit to save his very good Creation from Sin, Evil, and Death.  In the boat of faith is where we find God personally present and evidently at work.  The boat will get attacked because of that.  But Jesus brings mega-calm to the mega-storm.  The continued existence of the Creation depends on that.  It is only natural that we be afraid, that there be times when we don’t believe or lack trust.  But it is important we stay in the boat and not get cowardly.

For the past 60 years people have been jumping ship left and right for something called “spiritual but not religious”.  We just had a census here in Canada.  If one of the categories of religious affiliation on it was “done”, done with the church, the number of those who checked it would be as high as those who checked “none”.  The magazine Christianity Today did a recent poll with ministers in the midst of this pandemic and discovered that there is a concerningly high number of ministers who say they will leave the ministry as soon as they can once they sense the pandemic is abated.  That’s like the disciples jumping out of the boat once Jesus calmed the storm.  That’s bizarre, but I don’t judge.  Congregations need to really appreciate that their ministers may not be able to go forward with vim and vigour once this is all over.  It was hard enough being a minister in a world where the church has dwindled off to nothing and everything you’ve striven to do to turn it around did not have the desired effect.  In the world, people hate the church (sometimes for good reason) and for all they know Jesus looks like a Pope who won’t make apologies or a slick-haired, Bible-thumping Evangelical who is anti-everything that might actually be scientifically valid and compassionate.  Now, in the midst of all that disillusionment, imagine being forced to take your societally irrelevant talents and gifts that weren’t working to turn the church around in the first place into isolation into a dark cave where you find yourself having to do something you never imagined you’d have to do nor got trained in how to do it (lead congregations through a pandemic) all the while knowing that all that stuff that you used to do that was supposed to reinvigorate the church and save the world still needs to be done, but you can’t do it and add to that you have absolutely no idea whether what you’re doing in the cave is really making a difference in the grand scheme of things because all you’ve got to go by is a dwindling number of weekly views of your worship video on YouTube.  That’s a small taste of what it’s like to be minister right now, I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a nurse.  They’re also vowing to leave their callings behind in droves as well.  

There is a mega-storm afoot and it’s bigger than just the storms of life and its more than just a matter of “Will your anchor hold in the storms of life”.  Yes, WE each are going through our life-storms and I hope you know that Jesus is there with you in the boat.  But there is yet a bigger, major global upheaval of “the way things are” that is happening at present.  Decisions made or not made now with regards to the climate and to issues of economic justice will have consequences like no other time in history.  There is a mega-windstorm happening, and we are the ones who are in the boat with Jesus.  He is going to calm the storm.  He is going to mega-calm it.  Otherwise, God’s very good Bubble becomes a blackhole or something.  Something “Very Good” can come out of all this and I hope that faithful Christians will lead the way.

 Jesus asked his disciples after he calmed the storm. “Why are you cowardly?”  He also asks, “Do you still have no faith?”  The disciples answered those question saying, “Who is this that even the Wind and the Sea obey him?”  I can’t answer those questions for you.  I can only answer for myself.  I answer saying that I’ve had a glimpse of Who it is that I am in the boat with, the One whom even the Wind and the Sea obey.  Yes, times are hard.  The boat is swamping.  Yet, every day I remind myself that I am in the boat called faith and I am somehow participating in that sphere of what God is doing in his unimaginably great love to save his very good creation from Sin, Evil, and Death in, through, and as Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.  Every day I have to come back to the reality that I am a beloved child of God.  I won’t be jumping ship.  God works all things to the good for those who love him.  That’s my answer.  What’s yours?  Amen.

 

 

From Fear to Worship

Mark 4:35-41

Jesus said “Road trip”; except back then that meant getting into a boat and crossing over to the other side.  The disciples didn’t know why.  Didn’t ask.  They were faithfully, dutifully just doing what Jesus asked.  Then, like an episode from that psychic show back in the early 2000’s called Crossing over with John Edwards where people talked to the dead, things got weird.

It’s quite placid at the end of the day on the lake.  Jesus takes advantage of the opportunity and falls asleep on a pillow in the stern and – spoiler alert! –  this is when the disciples discover that they are more or less on their own in the middle of a big lake with a Jesus who’s checked out.  And wouldn’t you know it – wouldn’t you know it – it’s right then that a great windstorm comes up causing monstrous waves to break over into the boat and it begins to fill. 

Though it’s the wind at play here, it’s not the Holy Spirit.  The way Mark tells the story we are supposed to think that Creation, or at least the chaotic unknown elements of Creation, the wind and the sea, have personally decided to come after the disciples with the intent to destroy them.  The wind and the sea and storms often showed up back then in a particular genre of writing known as apocalyptic of which the Book of Revelation is one.  They represent the unknown and its destructive powers sort of like what we mean when saying things come flying at us out of left field.  What will the disciples do in this massively overwhelmed with fear moment?  What can they do? – and Jesus is sleeping.

Now, I said Mark is telling the story here in such a way as to make it sound like the wind and the sea are coming after them, like the Creation itself has got it in for them.  I say that because Mark says that when Jesus finally did do something he rebuked the wind.  He did not just command it.  He rebuked it, scolded it as we would someone who has done something terribly shameful.

 Now, we’ve all had days where it seems the world is out to get us.  But this is a bit different.  Here it seems the creation is out to get the fledgling church.  The same creation that Paul says in Romans 8 is groaning in labour pains and eagerly waiting the day when the children of God will be revealed and it will be set free from the futility of death.  We see here just how deep sin, our sin, affects the whole universe.  Sin affects everything to the extent that the creation itself would try to destroy the children of God who signal its liberation from the futility of decay to which it has been subjected because of sin, our sin.

Moving on, the disciples believe they are going to die.  They are utterly powerless before these chaotic, uncontrollable elements of creation.  No technology is going to save them.  They are utterly powerless.  They are perishing.  So they go to the sleeping Jesus with the complaint, “Teacher, we are perishing and you don’t seem to care.” 

I think life gets that way at times.  Things can come out of left field and the next thing we know life is careening in a half-million different directions and none of them look safe and we are powerless before it.  And then, where is our Lord in the midst of it…asleep on a pillow?  That’s early church code for enthroned way far off in glory.  We, like the Twelve complain, “Jesus, we’re perishing.  Don’t you care?”  I think that is a legitimate complaint. 

Well, as a matter of fact he does care and this is what he does and I have to warn you that the next couple of verses (actually the whole vignette) are full of code words and phrases that the early church used to describe its situation and its beliefs.  Jesus comes wide-awake, rebukes the wind, and calms the sea and it is a great calm not a ripple on the water. 

“Great calm” is early church code referring us to the day Jesus finally returns and puts things to right and also to the fact that he does now for us in his time and in his way put things right in our lives in a way that gives us a new start when things otherwise seem to have ended, a way that causes or learns us to lean on him in faith, a way that creates in us a deeper trust in him and his steadfast love and faithfulness. 

Then he turns to the disciples saying not, “Why are you so afraid?”  But rather, “Why are you so cowardly?  Do you not yet have faith?”  Cowardly, Jesus calls them cowardly.  The Greek word there isn't the word for afraid.  It is the word for cowardly, deilos.  A word was used in the early church for Christians who renounced faith in Jesus Christ in order to escape persecution, for turning away from Jesus in the midst of those struggles that test our faith, for turning away from Jesus rather than going to him when he seems so obviously asleep on the pillow.  I think what Jesus was expecting from them was their standing firm in the face of the storm because they knew Jesus was in the boat with them; indeed, high expectations for so early in their relationship.  They did the next best thing and confronted the sleeping Jesus, something I'm quite prone to do.

After this rebuke to disciples Mark says that the disciples were filled with great fear or as the Greek says afraid with great fearful awe.  Fearful awe is also early church code for worship, worship that arises when we find ourselves utterly depending on Jesus for life come what may.  Before they were looking at the storm but after seeing Jesus and experiencing the calm they worship.  This experience taught them to worship in the face of fear. 

True worship arises in us when in the midst of the storms we realize that Jesus really is with us and our lives really are in his caring hands.  The hymn How Great Thou Art attempts to capture this fearful awe.  That worship is the stilled waters of what once were howling winds and a raging sea.

Worship begins with this question the disciples asked, “Who then is this that the wind and the sea obey him?”  Who is this Jesus who can take the most messed up of circumstances and turn them to good for us.  Who is this Jesus?  The point to this road trip that Jesus took his disciples out on a stormy sea to learn is that Jesus is himself God.  The Jesus we meet by the working of the Holy Spirit is God and as I like to say there is no other God hidden behind Jesus who is other than Jesus in the way he is towards us, steadfastly loving and faithful.  God may have to tell us we’re being cowardly at times but even that is meant to move us to worship, to calm, to peace, to restful assurance of the loving care with which God regards us, as we are his beloved children.  So, friends, stand firm.  Whatever may come Jesus is still in the boat.  Life quite often feels like all Hell is breaking loose around us and Jesus, if he’s there, he must be asleep on a pillow somewhere in the back of the boat.  But he’s still in the boat and he is God and he absolutely will not let anything separate us from the great love he has for us.  Stand firm and remember who he is and stand waiting in fearful awe for what he is going to do for you in his great love for you.

Feel the Calm, Share the Peace

Text: Mark 4:35-41; John 20:19-23
Audio Recording

Jesus calms the storm.  I knew a man who many years ago his life was a storm, a very painful storm.  He never was really all that interested in church.  His wife liked to take the children, but struggled to get him to go.  He had a good job building his own business, a home with projects to keep him busy, a monster garden in the summer.  Life was good.  But then the storm came.  His wife wanted a divorce.  He moved out.  The rejection, the loss of family, the loss of a home, the loss of an ideal…all that emotional stuff was a storm that did indeed threaten his life. 

In his old house he had neighbours on either side of him.  On one side his neighbour was a strong Christian, on the other side his neighbour was a devoted alcoholic.  In a way these neighbours represented the paths he could walk down.  Alcohol was winning.  Yet, from time to time though no longer neighbours his Christian neighbour would check in on him, listen to him, and encourage him, and tell him that God loved him and to seek Jesus and he would find the peace he was drinking for.  Don’t judge this man.  He was a very good man, well liked and well loved by everybody.  But what he went through when he was alone with himself was living hell.  He couldn’t work it away.  He couldn’t drink it away.  It was just the way he felt about himself.

The storm went on heavy for a couple of years.  One day he was in his car driving.  His work involved a lot of driving, a lot of time alone.  He was at the end of his rope and it wasn’t like this was the first time he cried out to God.  But this time, he told me something came over him.  He said it was the most peaceful feeling he had ever felt.  His old neighbour told him that was Jesus.  He started going to church.  Got some counselling from the minister.  The need to drink left him.  The storm was still there, but not like it was for he knew he was not alone in the boat.  Though Jesus can indeed calm our storms, he’ll let the storms continue while we learn that he himself, his presence with us, is the calm in the storm and it is a felt calm.

Jesus gives peace.  I know another man.  He had been raised around the church, and never got too far from the church.  As a child he enjoyed Sunday School.  He learned to read from the books some old lady brought to his Sunday School class on the church library cart.  He was the kid who very much enjoyed the story Bible for kids they had at home.  This man’s parents divorced when he was a young child bringing a storm into his life that he never asked for.  Broken homes are still broken no matter how normal you try to keep things. 

About the age of nineteen, all the anger and hurt caught up with him.  As far as he could determine his choices were to end his life or give it to Jesus.  He chose the later.  It was a fateful New Year’s Day morning after having hosted a New Year’s Eve party to which nobody showed up, not even his closest friends.  At the toll of midnight he was thinking to himself that if this was the sum total of his life why live it.  After a long squint at suicidal ideations, he went on to bed and New Year’s Day morning he rose and called his best friend’s mom and informed her he would be seeing her in church that morning.

He then went to church as often as he could and formed some strong opinions about things that passed as Christian beliefs.  At this small little Presbyterian church he was given quite a bit of acceptance because he was the only young person.  Regardless of church acceptance and his beliefs/opinions about God, the storm went on.  He still hurt but now there was a new direction to go in, a real purpose, a hope to hang on to.  Where would Jesus lead him?  There were no definites but it felt good to be on the right path.  

It happened that he met a girl who told him he should come to her “spiritually alive” church because the one he was going to was “spiritually dead”.  He gave it a try.  It was a new fellowship that met in an elementary school cafeteria.  The minute he walked in the door, he felt a peaceful feeling he had never felt before.  All of a sudden he knew God really was real and loved him and Jesus really was alive and with him and there really is something to this Holy Spirit stuff and it wasn’t crazy.  The peace that Jesus breathed upon his disciples, he had just stepped into and that’s what has kept him coming back to church for over thirty years now because he knows, push come to shove no matter how messed up things may get, he is a dearly loved child of God and God is faithful.  Moreover, there was someone in that church who led him to forgive his parents.  The peace of Christ begets peace through Christian people ministering with their gifts for ministry.  Jesus is the calm in the storm.

I received a phone call earlier this week.  The person called with a question that I think draws the line as to why some churches, most of them of the more charismatic variety, have been thriving since the mid-sixties all the while the Mainline churches have been dwindling.  The question this person asked was “You and Timothy both talk about the Holy Spirit.  I just want to know if I’m missing something.”  Basically, the root question was how do we know if the Holy Spirit is at work in our lives.  To be blunt, in the Mainline churches we tend to not talk much if at all about our experiences of God because we tend to think that people who do are crazy.  But it is time we get over that.  The church that will move forward into the future will be the one that insists on experiencing God, that promises spiritual awakening, that focuses on how to maintain a devotional life, and that indeed expects resurrection, expects people to find new life in Jesus.[1] 

Anyone can have religious opinions about God, Jesus, the church, and what’s right and what’s wrong.  The work of the Holy Spirit is to bring us to Jesus, God the Son, in a way that is relational, personal, and unique to us each and it quite often involves the storms and the result of that relationship is that we find ourselves sharing in his knowing and trusting of the steadfast love and faithfulness of God the Father and in response we find ourselves sharing his love of the Father and desire to do the Father’s will.  When the followers of Jesus who know he is the calm in the storm get together we should be experiencing the peace he breathed on his disciples and has continued to breath on us through the gift of the Holy Spirit who comes to do his work.  That peace begets peace as we Christians learn to listen to and pray for each other.

Since we have this calm, the peace, we have something no one else in the world has.  The peace of Christ isn’t something we keep to ourselves.  I’ve a song to share with you that I hope captures what I’m saying.  It’s called The Peace of Christ by Glen Soderholm.  It’s rooted in Psalm 133 and makes use of the traditional Christian greeting of the peace of Christ.

The Peace of Christ

May the peace of Christ be with and also with you.

May the peace of Christ be with you in all you do.

Its like the precious oil that flows down Aaron’s beard.

And as dew falls from the mountain

The blessing bursts forth here.

So we throw down all our weapons and the things we long to control.

And call now for Jesus’ presence

To restore our very souls.

We turn now from the solitary

to the dance of kindred hearts and laughing with each other

as each one takes their part.[2]

The peace of Christ be with you.  Amen.

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[1] See “15 Things Alcoholics Anonymous Can Teach the Church” at http://www.ministrymatters.com/all/entry/6101/15-things-alcoholics-anonymous-can-teach-the-church

[2] Printed with the permission of Glen Soderholm.

Even the Wind and the Sea Obey Him

Text: Mark 4:35-41

Presbytery met this past May down at Camp Kintail on the shore of Lake Huron.  A massive storm came off of Lake Huron that Tuesday afternoon.  I was riding with the Owen Sound Rep Elder down HWY21 and all was fine until just south of Southampton when the wind began to pick up and dark clouds began to gather over.  Just south of Port Elgin we got a good view of a "Day of the Lord" storm laying it on the Bruce Power plant.  I started to have those apocalyptic sorts of thoughts that you have when big thunderstorms are putting it to a nuclear power plant.  I think the plant itself even lost power.  Storms are scary.  I couldn’t image what it would have been like to be out on the lake underneath that storm in a little twelve-seater rowboat.  I probably would have panicked to death or in the very least soiled myself.

Well, it was in such a storm as that we find this little group of believers, the Twelve Disciples, the fledgling church, in a small boat with Jesus.  It had been a long day and for some unknown reason Jesus wanted to go across to the other side of the Sea of Galilee.  So they got a boat (but no pony to ride on the boat) and started out, several other boats accompanied them as well.  Jesus takes advantage of the opportunity and falls asleep on a pillow in the stern of the boat.  The disciples soon find that they are more or less on their own in the middle of a big lake with a Jesus who’s checked out.  And wouldn’t you know it, its right then while Jesus seemingly has his guard down that a great windstorm arose causing monstrous waves to break over into the boat and it begins to fill.

The way Mark tells the story we are supposed to think that Creation, or at least the chaotic unknown elements of Creation, the wind and the sea, have personally decided to come after the disciples with the intent to destroy them.  The wind and the sea and storms often showed up back then in a particular genre of writing known as apocalyptic of which the Book of Revelation is one.  They represent the unknown and its destructive powers sort of like what we mean when saying things come flying at us out of left field.  What will the disciples do in such a massively overwhelmed with fear kind of moment?  Indeed, what can they do?

Now, I said Mark is telling the story here in such a way as to make it sound like the wind and the sea are coming after them, like the Creation itself has got it in for them.  I say that because Mark says Jesus rebuked the wind.  He rebuked it.  He did not just command it.  He rebuked it scolding it as we would someone who has done something terribly shameful.  We’ve all had days where it seems the world is out to get us.  Indeed, here it seems the creation is out to get the fledgling church.  The same creation that Paul says in Romans 8 is groaning in labor pains and eagerly waiting the day when the children of God will be revealed and it will be set free from the futility of death.  We see here just how deep sin, our sin, affects the whole universe.  Human sin affects everything to the extent that the creation itself would try to destroy the children of God who signal its liberation from the futility of decay to which it has been subjected because of sin, our sin.  We like to think of the creation as non-personal, meaning impersonal and unable to relate.  The Bible seems to say otherwise.  What that “otherwise” might be is a topic for another day, but for now it is safe to say that Mark is portraying the Creation here as out to get the fledgling church, doing something it should not be doing for which Jesus rebukes it.  That's your interesting thought for the day.

   Moving on, the disciples believe they are going to die.  They are utterly powerless before these chaotic, uncontrollable elements of creation.  No technology is going to save them.  They are utterly powerless.  They are perishing.  So they go to the sleeping Jesus with the complaint, “Teacher, we are perishing and you don’t seem to care.”  I think life gets that way at times.  Things can come out of left field and the next thing we know life is careening in a half-million different directions and none of them look safe and we are powerless before it.  And then, where is our Lord in the midst of it…asleep on a pillow?  That’s early church code for enthroned way far off in glory.  We, like the Twelve complain, “Jesus, we’re perishing.  Don’t you care?”  I think that is a legitimate complaint. 

Well, as a matter of fact he does care and this is what he does and I have to warn you that the next couple of verses (actually the whole vignette) are full of code words and phrases that the early church used to describe its situation and its beliefs.  Jesus comes wide-awake, rebukes the wind, and calms the sea and it is a great calm not a ripple on the water.  That's early church code referring us to the day Jesus finally returns and puts things to right and also to the fact that he does now for us in his time and in his way put things right in our lives in a way that gives us a new start when things otherwise seem to have ended, a way that causes or learns us to lean on him in faith, a way that creates in us a deeper trust in him and his steadfast love and faithfulness. 

Then he turns to the disciples saying not, “Why are you so afraid?”  But rather, “Why are you so cowardly?  Do you not yet have faith?”  Cowardly, Jesus calls them cowardly.  The Greek word there isn't the word for afraid.  It is the word for cowardly, deilos.  A word was used in the early church for Christians who renounced faith in Jesus Christ in order to escape persecution, for turning away from Jesus in the midst of those struggles that test our faith, for turning away from Jesus rather than going to him when he seems so obviously asleep on the pillow.  I think what Jesus was expecting from them was their standing firm in the face of the storm because they knew Jesus was in the boat with them; indeed, high expectations for so early in their relationship.  They did the next best thing and confronted the sleeping Jesus, something I'm quite prone to do.

After this rebuke to disciples Mark says that the disciples were filled with great fear or as the Greek says afraid with great fearful awe.  Fearful awe is also early church code for worship, worship that arises when we find ourselves utterly depending on Jesus for life come what may.  Before they were looking at the storm but after seeing Jesus and experiencing the calm they worship.  This experience taught them to worship in the face of fear.  True worship arises from us when in the midst of the storms we realize that Jesus really is with us and our lives really are in his caring hands.  The hymn How Great Thou Art attempts to capture this fearful awe.  That worship is the stilled waters of what once were howling winds and a raging sea.  When it seems the world is out to get us, indeed like the creation itself is out to get us, we worship.  Worship and faith go hand and hand.  Standing firm in prayer, waiting, and worshipping, reminding ourselves who Jesus is and realizing he may be asleep, but he's still in the boat and will not leave us - that's the way to deal with worry, anxiety, fear, and faith-trying circumstances.

Worship begins with this question the disciples asked, “Who then is this that the wind and the sea obey him?”  Who is this Jesus who can take the most messed up of circumstances and turn them to good for us.  Who is this Jesus?  The point of this lesson that Jesus took his disciples out on a stormy sea to learn is that Jesus is himself God.  The Jesus we meet by the working of the Holy Spirit is God and as I like to say there is no other God hidden behind Jesus who is other than Jesus in the way he is towards us, steadfastly loving and faithful.  God may have to tell us we’re being cowardly at times but even that is meant to move us to worship, to calm, to peace, to restful assurance of the loving care with which God regards us, as we are his beloved children.  So, friends, stand firm.  Whatever may come Jesus is still in the boat.  Life quite often feels like all Hell is breaking loose around us and Jesus, if he’s there, he must be asleep on a pillow somewhere in the back of the boat.  But he’s still in the boat and he is God and he absolutely will not let anything separate us from the great love he has for us.  Stand firm and remember who he is and stand waiting in fearful awe for what he is going to do for you in his great love for you.

Mark wrote this Gospel for a Christian community that was being persecuted for their faith and in danger of turning away.  This passage as much as any in the Gospel of Mark reflects this.  We may find this difficult to relate to for none of us here is in danger of dying because of our faith in Jesus Christ.  But, the text still has a message encouraging us to be faithful while faith is being tried, when it seems Jesus is asleep on a pillow.  The trial of faith that we face today is staying faithful while our faith is not being overtly tried with the threat of persecution.  This I think is more difficult.  What threatens our Christian faith is a religion of overly individualized belief amidst a culture of comfort.  What’s at stake is the local congregation.  There is no such thing as the Christian faith without the fellowship of believers gathering together to worship, pray, learn, and serve together.  The trial we face is very subtle, because we believe hook, line, and sinker our culture’s teaching that faith is simply individual belief and one’s own inner experience and the fellowship of believers is not necessary for that.  That’s cowardly.  How can we learn and gain the courage to love one another without each other.  Mark wrote his gospel to this group of perishing Christians who were in danger of doing the “cowardly” thing of renouncing faith and returning to life as everyone else lives it.  He wrote it to get them asking again, “Who is this?”  Many churches today are perishing and are deep down preoccupied with complaints.  To them Jesus seems asleep on the pillow and their hearts are bent rather to ask him “Don’t you care?”  The thing to do instead of letting our hearts become filled with complaint is to just go ahead and start asking, “Who are you, Lord?”  Get preoccupied with that question and you will find out exactly who Jesus is, that he is God and even the wind and the sea obey him.  Amen.