BProp7

1 Samuel 17:32-49; Psalm 9:9-20; 2 Corinthians 6:1-13; Mark 4:35-41

June 21, 2009 - Commissioning of youth for mission trip, Father’s Day

Last week we heard the parable of the mustard seed.

Mark begins his gospel with Jesus proclaiming that the ‘kingdom of God has come near’

and describing in parables,

using common images like farmers and seeds,

to give a picture of what the kingdom is like.

Now, Mark gives us four miracles in which the kingdom of God

is revealed in Jesus himself.

Jesus first calms the storm

and then three more miracles occur through him, each one more spectacular.

He first has command of the wind and water.

Then in a vivid lengthy description of a dramatic exorcism,

he shows power over the evils that plague the human mind.

He heals a woman from a chronic physical illness.

And then, in his power to give life, he raises a little girl from the dead.

Even in the drama of these miracles

the focus remains on Jesus himself.

He is this open doorway of divine power

acting within a setting so inadequate to understand him.

Mark relays these miracles in the classic format

found in the Hellenistic and Jewish writings.

First there is a dire threat.

Next, a call for help.

Then, the miracle.

And, finally a response.

Mark connects Jesus with God’s actions from the ancient story of Jonah.

A divinely commissioned prophet boards a boat.

A violent windstorm comes up at sea.

While Jonah the prophet sleeps, the seasoned sailors panic.

God calms the storm

(but in this case with no help from Jonah

because he’s been thrown overboard

and is swishing around in the belly of a big fish).

In the end, the sailors are converted and believe in God.

Mark connects Jesus with God, the Lord of wind and wave,

who at the beginning of creation,

rebuked chaos and drove it back, and held it at bay.

And Mark invites us to step into the doorway that Jesus is

and begin to see the life he came to offer.

Let’s look into this first miracle of Jesus calming the wind and wave.

Jesus has had a long day at the shore of the Sea of Galilee –

teaching about the kingdom of God in parables and dealing with controversies.

It’s time to end the day.

He has been sitting just off shore in a fishing boat that would hold up to 15 people.

Other boats have anchored near him so people can listen.

There are also those on the shore, letting the water amplify and carry his words.

The sun is beginning to go down.

Jesus looks to the shore and all the people he will have to go through

to get to a place of rest.

He looks at his disciples and tells them,

“Let’s go on across to the other side.”

And, while he remains in the boat,

they hoist the sails and begin to move out into the water.

Jesus, tired from his day of work,

lets the professional sailors and fishermen do their work,

and he curls up in the raised stern of the boat

on the cushion normally occupied by the helmsman.

Mark reminds the reader that even though God has chosen Jesus

to be the doorway through to the kingdom,

Jesus is human and he is tired.

Yet, he is in the boat with them

– true humanity, at rest, at peace, with no fear is at the helm.

And so, Jesus sleeps - a deep, calm, bone-tired sleep.

If you take a deep bucket of water and blow across its surface,

it doesn’t disturb the water too much.

But if you take a plate of water and blow across it,

it disturbs the whole thing.

The Sea of Galilee is very shallow and very large.

Sudden storms could cause its waters to swell into 10 foot waves.

Once they are out on the sea,

a great whirlwind rises up.

(The same word used in the Book of Job

when God speaks to Job out of the whirlwind.)

To ancient sailors the sea could be an angry seat of chaos,

always waiting and ready to rise up.

Sea monsters roamed the depths.

Destructive spirits waited there.

The sea is a place of fear.

Jesus sleeps through this storm,

but he can’t sleep through the cries of his disciples.

That is comforting to know.

And so Jesus wakes up

and speaks the same words to the treacherous water and wind

that he will speak to the demons in the next miracle

when he casts them out of the crazed violent man shackled in chains.

He rebukes the chaos of the wind.

He silences the raging waters.

He claps the yawning sea closed like you would muzzle a growling animal.

“Peace! Be quiet! Be still!”

Then the wind ceases, and there is a dead calm.

Not even a gentle lapping of the water against the boat.

That same ‘sound of sheer silence’

when Elijah encountered God in the cave,

after the whirlwind passed him by.

Jesus looks at them and says

not, “Why couldn’t you handle this yourselves?”

or, “I expected you to have better skills than this.”

He asks them about their fear.

“Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”

And we could ask of Jesus,

“What would have happened if they had let you stay asleep?”

or

“Are you saying, Jesus, that we should just lay down

in the face of terror and not actively respond?”

or

“Why did you calm those waters, and you didn’t stop my storm?”

But, this miracle is not about his skills or our logic.

It’s about fear. And it’s about trust.

This miracle story in Mark would have resonated

with the anguished prayers of Christians

just before this gospel was written,

in the time of Nero’s rampage against them in Rome in 64 CE.

“Don’t you care that we are perishing?”

We cry out to God in the midst of our storms.

“Do you know what’s happening? Don’t you care?”

We try to wake God up to take care of us.

It’s not so much about Jesus saving them from the storm,

but that he with them - literally in the same boat with them–

is the way to live.

Humanity at rest, at peace with the Lord of the storm

who saves them through and beyond death,

not necessarily from death.

Peter wrote in his first letter:

Cast all your anxiety on God,

because he cares for you. [1 Peter 5:7]

A caring that outlasts storms and life and even death.

“Don’t you care that we are perishing?”

[God so loved the world that he sent his son,

that whoever believes in him will NOT perish,

but have everlasting life.]

Jesus didn’t come to teach us how to simply survive the storms of life.

We have the God-given intelligence to develop ways to maneuver through life.

Jesus came as a doorway through which we can walk away from fear

into the peace and trust that is ours

as children of an always present, always loving God.

Jesus shows us the calm place where God is given to us.

If such a portal for the Divine is offered to us,

shouldn’t we humans do everything possible

to leave fear behind and rest in the presence and care of God,

with a trust that allows even a deep sleep in the midst of storms?

To be freed from fear of what can go wrong,

To be freed from fear of what IS wrong,

To be in that place of deep peace,

with Jesus up at the helm of the boat.

There, stilled in the midst of our storms, quieted in the midst of waves,

we can, as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin put it,

‘harness for God the energies of love’.

[With Open Hands, Nouwen]

Who is this then that even our storms obey him?