The following sermon was preached at saint benedict’s table on Sunday June 21, 2018. You can also listen to the live recording or subscribe to our podcast. Just click here.
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable and pleasing in your sight O God, for you are our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
In the section preceding tonight’s gospel, Jesus has been doing a fair bit of teaching about the Kingdom of God using agricultural metaphors. Brian McLaren has suggested that because Kings and Queens and Kingdoms seem so distant from our present day reality that a better way to translate this term might be “God’s dream for the world.” God’s dream for the world that has begun to take shape and is moving steadily towards its final goal.
In Mark’s gospel, Jesus teaches that God’s dream for the world may be “as vulnerable as seeds thrown on a path, on rocks, among thorns (4:1-20); it may be hidden now (4:21-22); its beginnings may be as small as a mustard seed (4:30-32) and its growth as mysterious as growing crops (4:26,27). But nothing can prevent the great future harvest, the light from shining, the mustard shrub from providing shelter and shade. The Kingdom will succeed, [God’s dream will come true], no matter what setbacks there might be along the way. And in case the disciples should have missed the intended meanings, Jesus explained the parables to them in private (4:33-34).”
Today’s gospel passage begins in the evening. Jesus has spent the day floating in a boat and speaking to crowds of people. Some on the shore, some in other boats. Now he suggests to the disciples that they leave the crowds behind and they do.
There are two details I find particularly interesting in this part of the story. First, when the disciples leave in the boat to go with Jesus, they aren’t alone. Other boats are also there with them. (v. 36) Who is in those boats? What is their experience of the rest of this story? We simply don’t know.
The second detail I find interesting is the phrase that has been translated “just as he was.” The verse reads, “And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was.” (v. 36)
Many commentators suggest that this phrase means that Jesus was already in the boat when he asked the disciples to join him and go to the other side. That may very well be, but it does tickle my funny bone a bit to imagine the scene. It’s funny enough to me to imagine Jesus floating in a boat on the water while people stand on shore and listen to him teach, but it’s even funnier to imagine him, tired and noticing that it’s started to get dark, stopping, directly addressing his disciples while everyone else can still hear him, telling them it’s time to leave. The disciples then wade into the water, scramble into the boat and sail away, leaving no time for handshakes, autographs, or selfies with the people who are standing on the shore watching them sail away.
Talk about a dramatic exit.
But Jesus doesn’t stop teaching when they sail away. Rather, as Tim Geddert notes, the boat becomes the classroom, and the lesson plan shifts from metaphors to lived experience. It will soon be time for the disciples to apply what they have been learning in a practical situation.
I have always been a city girl, but when I was in junior high and high school, I lived in St John’s NL, an city on an island surrounded by water and I quickly learned that I was living with people whose culture, who entire way of life was shaped by their relationship to the sea.
Just in case I didn’t pick that up by osmosis, almost every single book I read in my high school literature class were stories of the sea. We read Robinson Crusoe, The Old Man and the Sea, Lord of the Flies and the Newfoundland classics, Death on the Ice and Bartlett the Great Explorer.
And that’s just the books. We studied poetry, drama, and short stories too.
People who live by water learn very quickly that not everything in life is black and white. The ocean is beautiful, it can provide you with a livelihood and food to feed your family, it can be the place that you feel most truly at peace and at home. But the ocean can change in a split second and cause you to experience great terror and suffering. The sea can give life, and just as easily, the sea can take it away.
The setting for tonight’s gospel passage, the Sea of Galilee, is no different. In his book Jesus: A Pilgrimage, James Martin writes: “Even today storms suddenly stir up the Sea of Galilee, the result of dramatic differences in temperatures between the shoreline (680 feet below sea level) and the surrounding hills (which can reach 2000 feet). The strong winds that funnel through the hills easily whip up waves in the relatively shallow waters (only two hundred feet deep). … It’s important to remember the terror that storms held for those in Jesus’ day as well as the rich religious symbolism of water. In ancient times water was a symbol for life and a means of purification, but it also held out the potential for death and was an occasion of danger, as in the story of the flood or the story of Jonah. The Psalms speak of God’s power over the seas and also use water as a symbol of peril: ‘Save me, O God,’ says the psalmist, ‘for the waters have come up to my neck.’ Raging seas and howling storms would have represented to Jesus’ contemporaries chaos and danger. Jewish belief was that the sea could also be the abode of demonic forces. On a less theological level, [- Martins continues -] sea voyages were simply dangerous, as St Paul would attest. A storm at sea could be frightening even for experienced fishermen. Far worse is the storm at sea at night.” (228-9)
Mark tells us that on this particular evening, “a great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already swamped.”
Try to imagine how terrifying this would be. It’s dark, the wind is howling and whipping everything around you. You are wet, you are cold, you can’t see anything because your eyes are stinging and full of water. Nothing around you feels stable, because nothing around you is stable. The boat is pitching and heaving and you know that the boat is also taking on water because you can feel it steadily rising past your toes to your ankles and now its inching up your calves.
This is a pretty good time to freak out. It’s a better time to grab the ropes holding the sails, or an oar, or a bucket and get to work. Try to gain some control of the movement of the boat or, at the very least, try to make sure that there is more water outside the boat, than in it.
And everyone agrees with you. Everyone is feeling and doing the same things you are and then… and then…
You notice that one person is behaving very differently. You frantically try to wipe the water from your eyes, certain they must be playing tricks on you, but no, you are seeing correctly.
Jesus isn’t panicking. Jesus isn’t helping. Jesus is asleep. Jesus is sleeping on a cushion. A cushion? I love Mark’s addition of this little detail. The storm is raging, the boat is pitching and heaving, and Jesus is sleeping on a cushion.
I’m not sure how this would make you feel, but I know that it would make me really angry. The storm is a crisis that requires all hands on deck and Jesus – who should be modelling impeccable servant leadership – is slacking off. He’s asleep! On a cushion!
The next section of the story contains 4 questions.
The disciples ask two of them. During the storm, they ask, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing.” Later, when Jesus has calmed the storm they ask, “Who is this, that even the wind and sea obey him?
The second question suggests that the disciples did not expect that Jesus could stop the storm. Jesus’ ability to command that the wind and sea obey him surprises them. It wasn’t what they were expecting.
So what did they expect Jesus to do when they woke him up?” Grab a bucket and bail? Say something comforting?
Or did they not actually expect him to be able to do anything, they were just shocked that anyone could possibly sleep through a storm. Were they waking him up less to say, “save us” and more to say “what is wrong with you?”
That would be my question. Jesus, your behaviour seems extremely selfish and inappropriate. Don’t you care that we are dying? The text doesn’t say “might perish,” it says “are perishing.” Jesus, we are actively dying, how can you possibly be sleeping at a time like this?
Jesus’ response is to stop the storm, and ask the a few questions of his own. “Why are you afraid?” and “Have you still no faith?”
On first reading, Jesus’ question seems a tad insensitive to me. I don’t think I’d given him top marks in a pastoral care course for this one. It seems obvious that almost dying in a storm and then seeing a man stand up, speak some words that stop a fierce storm in its tracks would be terrifying. Why ask the obvious?
How you interpret these questions will depend largely on the way you imagine Jesus asked these questions. The text doesn’t give us Jesus’ tone, we add that in ourselves. Is he angry? Judgemental? Sad?
I wonder if, having just calmed the storm with seemingly little difficulty, Jesus is now moving on to the more difficult task of calming the disciples. (Geddert 65) The storm may be over, but the disciples are still filled with fear – not awe as the NRSV suggests – they have just confronted their own human mortality and then witnessed Jesus doing the unimaginable. The fear hasn’t left, it’s intensified.
I wonder if Jesus is asking these questions, because he is a good spiritual director. That’s the tone I hear in his questions.
Jesus is asking the disciples to think through and articulate the whys behind their feelings. The wording of the question suggests that he isn’t asking why they were afraid during the storm, but why they are afraid right now after the storm has passed.
I think, there is reason to suggest that the disciples are actually more afraid, or at bare minimum differently afraid, after the storm has subsided than during it. Fear of dying in a storm at sea would have been something they understood, it was likely something they had experienced before. They had a framework for understanding that fear. The revelation of just how powerful Jesus might be – that he can even make the wind and waves obey him – wasn’t something they had a frame of reference for. It wasn’t even close to something they had a frame of reference for.
And that’s terrifying.
And it would be helpful for the disciples to understand not only that they are afraid, but why they are afraid.
Jesus also asks, “Have you still no faith?”
The text doesn’t tell us and I don’t know if the disciples have “no faith.” I suspect that they did have some faith, but it’s a growing and developing faith.
I worked for years with people who were exploring the practice of living in intentional communities and we’d often bump up against the difference between their expectation of what community would be, and what it actually was. They’d read about community and talk about community and then they would live in community and after a few weeks, or a few months, they would begin to realize that they were only really just beginning to discover what that word actually means.
It is very different to talk about community than to live in one. I think the disciples would understand that. It has been one thing to listen and nod in agreement as Jesus compares God’s dream for the world to a mustard shrub, it’s an entirely different thing to watch Jesus wake up, rise to his full height, command that the storm be still and… it listens.
They have been observing and listening to Jesus and each one of Jesus’s stories, each experience they have with him stretches and changes their understanding of who Jesus is. It isn’t necessarily a change from no faith to faith, but from faith to an ever expanding and deepening faith.
Like Newfoundland, England is a land surrounded by water and that has shaped their culture. It has also shaped the Anglican Church.
If you look up, you’ll notice that the church is shaped like the hull of a boat. The Book of Common Prayer contains an entire section of prayers to be said at sea, including a prayer service to be used when encountering a storm at sea. These prayers are often a beautiful combination of theological and psychological reflection. Perhaps because they are designed to be used in crisis, they are particularly honest about the ways human beings react in difficult times.
There is the classic bargaining that tends to occur when we encounter crisis. One in particular, begs that God will save our lives while also reminding God that “The living, the living shall praise thee!”
In other words, don’t let us die in this storm or we won’t be able to praise you!
And here’s the part I think is particularly fascinating:
“We confess, when we have been safe, and seen all things quiet about us, we have forgot thee our God, and refused to hearken to the still voice of thy word, and to obey thy commandments: But now we see how terrible thou art in all thy great works of wonder; the great God to be feared above all.”
I’ve sometimes heard people preach about this gospel story and say that the point of the story is that Jesus can calm all the storms in our lives. That if you just have enough faith, your life will be smooth sailing.
I don’t think that’s the point of the story at all. I’m not sure any gospel story has a single point, but the thing I am noticing in a particular way today is that there is always more we can learn about God. God is always bigger than we think. You can’t just read the story about the mustard shrub and think you’ve got it all figured out. You can’t just have one encounter with Jesus and believe you know all there is to know.
The storm expanded the disciples understanding of who Jesus is. Our experiences, all our experiences can do the same, if we let them. If we resist the temptation reflected in that prayer from the prayer book to forget God when things are quiet. Because there are insights to be gleaned about who God is from meditating on mustard seeds and storms at sea, and we don’t want to miss out on any of them.
Amen.