June 23, 2024
1 Samuel 17:32-49
Mark 4:35-41
That little boat on the Sea of Galilee was in real danger. Galilee is shallow and surrounded by hills. That means that sometimes the wind gets channeled between the hills and kicks up the water into good-sized waves. It turns out that one of the worst times to embark upon the Sea of Galilee is night.
When Jesus and his disciples set sail.
Jesus, apparently, was worn out, because the heaving boat, the sound of waves and wind, and the cries of his friends didn’t wake him. This is somebody who could sleep on an airplane. The flying spray and the groaning boat eventually persuaded his disciples, some of them sailors, that something more than nautical skill was needed. In danger, in desperation, they called on Jesus.
And Jesus accused them of being cowards (that’s a translation offered by several commentators). Jesus accused them of not having any faith.
Huh?
Fear is the natural response of a human body in danger. Fear gets various glands busy, producing things like adrenalin that will give that extra kick of energy to fight or flee from danger. Fear is normal. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.
As for faith: they woke Jesus up for help, didn’t they? They went as far as human skill and strength could go, and then they followed their faith right to Jesus. He could help. He did help. See what faith can do?
Why didn’t Jesus see it that way?
I suppose it might be the way they asked for help.
“Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”
Yeah. That might be it.
How many of us, frustrated at something that didn’t happen that we wanted to happen, have asked a father or mother, an auntie or an uncle, “Don’t you love me? Then why didn’t you do this for me?” I’m pretty sure I remember doing that to my mother when I was four. It’s possible that I did it to my father when I was forty, but let’s not go into that.
It must be said that God has heard such things for centuries. Jeremiah called God a “deceitful brook, like waters that fail.” (Jeremiah 15:18) Psalm 10 asks, “Why, O LORD, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” Psalm 80 wonders, “How long will you be angry with your people’s prayers?” And of course, Psalm 22 opens with the words, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus quoted that psalm from the cross.
The disciples knew what that felt like when they woke Jesus with those accusing words.
It turns out that wasn’t the faith Jesus had been hoping for.
It was one thing to believe that Jesus could make a difference in the storm. It was another to trust in his willingness to do so. Which would offend you more? That someone isn’t certain that you can do something, or whether you care enough about them to do it? These people were, at that time, the closest people in Jesus’ life. Of course he ached when they asked him, “Don’t you care?”
As for that fear, Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “The problem isn’t fear; the problem is where fear leads. When I face fearsome circumstances, my go-to position is not trust or even curiosity; it’s full-on suspicion. In my fear, I conjure up a God who is stony-faced, implacable, and loveless. A God to whom I am expendable. A God who withdraws. Once I’ve conjured that God, I withdraw, too. I curl up tight and focus on mere survival, convinced that I’m alone. All capacity for reflection disappears.”
The disciples were afraid. Nothing was going to change that. What did they do in their fear? Did they maintain their confidence that their friend and teacher loved them? Cared about them? Shared their lives and their trust? They could have done that, but that took courage, and they let courage fly away on the wind.
They got rebuked for it, but I’ll tell you, better a rebuke than drowning, in my opinion.
When Mark’s Gospel began to circulate among Christians, things were not good. The rebellion against Rome had erupted in Jerusalem, and the Temple had burned. Christians had been persecuted in the city of Rome under Nero and sporadically in other provinces of the Empire. Sharon H. Ringe writes at Working Preacher, “If Mark’s account of Jesus’ life and ministry were to be ‘good news’ for the church, it would have to proclaim that message in the midst of the storms through which they were living (and in which many were dying). It would have to shine a light of hope in the nighttime of the life of the church, and not only proclaim the coming ‘day’ of Christ’s longed-for return in power. This story affirms that still in that nighttime, when the long and perilous journey is in process, the cosmic authority of the crucified and risen Christ is with us. God is with us, and we are not alone.”
We are not alone. We are in danger, but we are not alone.
This is not the first century Roman Empire, and we are not subject to arrest and detention for being Christians in the US, no matter what some people claim. This is no longer 2020, and our risk from COVID-19 is much reduced from four years ago. Again, despite what some people claim, violent crime in the United States is down. Eric Levenson at CNN quotes FBI statistics for the first quarter of 2024: “The new numbers show violent crime from January to March dropped 15.2% compared to the same period in 2023, while murders fell 26.4% and reported rapes decreased by 25.7%. Aggravated assaults decreased during that period when compared to last year by 12.5%, according to the data, while robberies fell 17.8%.”
Rates in Hawai’i, by the way, tend to be significantly lower than the US as a whole.
So what are we in danger from? What’s the storm that’s threatening our boat?
Has anybody noticed that we’re getting older?
OK. You aren’t. But I certainly am. My portrait that hangs on the wall in the church Lounge alongside all the other pastors of this church shows somebody with a dark red mustache. It’s pretty much white now. When I worked for the Connecticut Conference, one of my tasks was to take photos at events. That meant I spent a lot of time crouching at the front of a room. Well, a few years ago I was visiting someone in a nursing home, and I crouched beside the bed because it was set low and there wasn’t a chair in the room. My legs went to sleep. When I finally got them awake enough to carry me out, I was sure that I was going to fall flat on my face in the hallway and the staff was going to admit me.
Sleepy legs aside, the simple truth is that aging is a pretty stormy thing, isn’t it? Not only do our bodies have more trouble doing the things we’re used to, they also start doing things we don’t want them to do. Hypertension. Heart disease. Decreased lung capacity. Neurological conditions. Cancer. How many of us have been in the boat accompanying someone through their storms? How many of us look ahead and see that the seas ahead may be rising, that the winds might be strengthening?
As I look ahead as a church leader, I see storm clouds. We in the United Church of Christ and in the mainline Protestant tradition have lost members, and influence, and resources over the years. Aging membership means storms for each of us, and it also means a storm for the church as a whole, as we confront the world’s deep needs with fewer people, and with less money, than we’ve had before. Well we might ask if Jesus cares whether the United Church of Christ, or Church of the Holy Cross UCC, exist.
Debie Thomas writes, “I think I will spend the rest of my life seeking this one grace — the grace to experience God’s presence in the storm. The grace to know that I am accompanied by the divine in the bleakest, most treacherous places. The grace to trust that Jesus cares even when I’m drowning. The grace to believe in both the existence and the power of Love even when Jesus ‘sleeps.’ Even when the miraculous calm doesn’t come.”
The one thing I am sure of is that when the storm is upon us, Jesus is there. God is there. The Holy Spirit is there. Sometimes over the years that has been a comfort. Sometimes over the years that has been a frustration. Sometimes over the years it’s been all that kept me going. Sometimes over the years it’s been the gentle arm over my shoulders when I had to come to a stop.
In danger, in the storm, go ahead and call for Jesus. Wake him if you feel you must. If you can help it, try to avoid, “Don’t you care?” It didn’t work with your mother, it’s not going to work much better with Jesus. But either way, Jesus will be there, the Holy Spirit will be there, God will be there, and in the midst of the storm, you will not be alone.
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Pastor Eric makes changes in the course of preaching. Mostly he hope these are improvements.
The image is Christ on the Sea of Galilee by Eugene Delacroix (1853) – https://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/51982.html?mulR=258816936%7C28, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=77326827.