Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
June 22, 2003

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Our Gospel lesson this morning is one of those Bible stories about Jesus that everyone knows, even people who don’t know much about Jesus or the Bible. I suppose the story of him walking on water is better known, but this one too has made its way into the general culture of the Western world. It’s a pretty remarkable story. I mean, I’ve been on ships and in boats at times when I was so seasick that I would have given anything to be able to say to the water "Peace! Be still!" and have the sickening rolling and pitching of the vessel stop. I couldn’t make it stop, and I doubt that any of you could either. The story tells us that Jesus could, and did.

Now, for good Christian liberals like me, these miracle stories about Jesus, especially these nature miracle stories, are pretty hard to take literally. It stretches the credulity of those of us raised in the scientific age to believe that the story Mark tells here actually happened the way he tells it. Maybe it did, but I find it hard to believe. The great thing about the great Bible stories, however, is that when we truly understand them, it doesn’t matter whether they really happened or not. Because, you see, stories like ours this morning carry their most profound meaning for us, their most profound truth, precisely when we do not understand them literally but understand them as metaphor.

Now, Mark apparently had one point in mind when he told this story. It’s suggested by the last line of the lesson: "And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, ‘Who is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?’" For Mark, that’s a rhetorical question. Mark tells the story to make the point that Jesus is the Christ, God’s Anointed One, to whom God has given power even over creation itself. The point is valid, but frankly I don’t need this story to convince me of its truth. On that level, this story is, to me, merely a bit of ancient rhetoric that is interesting but in itself unconvincing.

So let’s look closer and see what other meaning this story might hold that is, perhaps, more meaningful to us. The story starts with Jesus telling the disciples: "Let’s go across to the other side." He means the other side of the Sea of Galilee. So we have a metaphor of a journey, a trip across a large body of water, that is, a trip that has potential danger in it. Think of crossing Puget Sound in a small open boat. On a good day, the crossing will be peaceful, uneventful. But on a bad day you’ll be lucky if your boat isn’t swamped and you’re not drowned. That, I think, is a pretty good metaphor for life itself. Life is a crossing from our beginning in God to our end in God. That crossing might be peaceful, easy, serene. But for most of us, at times at least, there are storms, fierce storms that threaten to swamp our boat and drown us, either literally or figuratively in the sense of our being overwhelmed by troubles we cannot overcome.

Then there’s an interesting twist in the story. Although Jesus suggested the trip, the story says that "they," that is, the disciples, took "him," that is, Jesus, with them, not the other way around. That’s how it is with the Christian life, isn’t it? Our life journey begins with God at God’s initiative. That’s what it means to say that God is our Creator. But when we actually start the trip, we Christians at least take Jesus with us. If he’s going to come along-at least, if we are going to be aware that he is coming along-it has to be because we take him with us. So here the disciples start out on a potentially hazardous journey, and they take Jesus with them. We are told that other boats were with them, an indication that we make this journey with others-our immediate companions in our own boat but also with a larger community, the community of humanity.

So what did Jesus do as he and his disciples began this potentially hazardous journey? Why he immediately curled up on a cushion in the back of the boat and went to sleep! And isn’t that how it is with us most of the time? It sure is with me. Most of the time we think we don’t need him. He is asleep in our consciousness, out of sight and out of (conscious) mind.

Then, predictably for a metaphor, and to a large extent predictably for life as well, a great storm arose. The boat was being swamped. Imagine it: You’re in a small, open boat in the middle of Puget Sound, and one of our infamous November windstorms hits-the kind that sinks floating bridges or causes suspension bridges to gyrate wildly, break apart, and fall into the Tacoma Narrows. Waver are breaking over the gunwales, the boat is pitching wildly, threatening to capsize. You can’t control it (after all, the disciples didn’t have a trusty Evinrude at their disposal). And what’s Jesus doing? Sleeping! He’s still asleep! He didn’t come rushing to their rescue. No! They had to wake him up! And that’s how it is with life too, isn’t it. Although we know that faith is itself a gift from God, in our everyday experience Jesus doesn’t come to us until we turn to him. Note too: The disciples turned to Jesus only when it appeared all was lost. It took a real crisis before they woke him from his sleep, that is, before they roused him from their unconscious life into their consciousness. Sound familiar? It does to me.

And when they finally turned to him, they were mad! "What the hell is the matter with you? You don’t give a damn if we drown or not! Here we are trying to save our lives, and yours, straining at the oars, bailing for all we’re worth, and you’re asleep! If it were anyone else, we’d throw him overboard!" You ever feel that way about God? As good, proper Christians we think we aren’t supposed to. Our Jewish cousins know better. They have a wonderful tradition of being able to express anger at God. If you doubt it, go rent Fiddler on the Roof.

Anyway, they were mad. Jesus doesn’t seem to have held their anger against them. He didn’t rebuke them; he rebuked the wind and told the sea to knock it off. And the wind stopped, and the sea became calm. The NRSV translation we read this morning says "there was a dead calm." The New Jerusalem Bible translates it "there followed a great calm." That’s better, isn’t it. When we call on Jesus to intervene in troubles, there follows a great calm. There, I think, is the real lesson in this story, in this metaphor, for us. The story tells us that we should not put our trust in our own oars and bailing cans but in God. Our oars and bailing cans will fail us, but God never will. In faith we can know that even if the storm does not stop God has not failed us.

The calm after the storm is ours for the asking. It comes from trusting our lives to Jesus Christ. That isn’t an easy thing to do. In our culture we are supposed to be self-reliant. We are told to solve our own problems. We rely on "Yankee ingenuity," hard work, and hard-earned skills, to get us through, or at least we try. The problem is, there are times when none of those things works. We all face crises in life that we can’t work our way out of. We all suffer illness and pain, and we all see our loved ones suffer as well. We are all mortal, and, even worse, our loved ones are mortal. Those storms we cannot still. Jesus can. Not literally. He doesn’t make us invulnerable and immortal. But the calm after the storm is a metaphor too, an image of quieted waters to tell us of a quieted soul. If we let him, Christ calms our inner turmoil, our fear and anguish, our sorrow and our grief. All we have to do is wake him up and ask. And for that we can all say: Thanks be to God. Amen.