Sermon - The Rev. Robert G. Walker - Pentecost  III , year B - June 21, 2009                    Mark 4:35-41

It was the summer of 1970.  My wife Cecelia, our two daughters and I were camping out west of Tallahassee, where we had made all of the necessary final arrangements for me to work on a doctorate at Florida State.  We had found an apartment that would meet our needs, and everything was squared away with the university.  We didn’t realize it, but we were on the edge of a hurricane that had come up the Gulf coast and then veered to the east across the northern part of the state.  Cecelia woke me up from a sound sleep.   We were experiencing very strong winds that rocked our little tent trailer and torrential rains that sounded like staccato gunfire.  You know what Cecelia said to me?  “Bob, do something.”  The only thing I could do was to get out of the tent into knee deep water, go to the car and listen to the radio to see if the storm would get any worse.  I did, and got pretty drenched in the process, and for 45 minutes there I listened to music, without a word about the storm.  I did the only thing I could.  Not enough to calm the storm, since calming the storm was not within my capabilities, of course, but what I could.

I never read this passage from Mark about the storm on the lake without thinking about the one we experienced near Tallahassee.  Somehow, the image of Christ sleeping comfortably through the storm while His disciples were scared to death is reminiscent of this other one.  And no, I do not have a messianic complex because I was asleep in the storm.  There obviously are elements of this Marcan passage that bear looking into. 

The first is that Christ suggested that they go to the other side of the lake.  That’s maybe a hint that He wanted a little peace and solitude away from the crowds that had gathered so consistently to hear His words or to witness a miracle.  Two things come to mind: (1) sometimes we have a need in our lives for solitude, and (2) can we be comfortable away from the crowds?  These are really opposite sides of the same coin. 

Many in our society can’t tolerate silence.  Former members of our parish in Virginia have a son who is a lay brother in the Order of the Holy Cross, which is the oldest monastic order in our Episcopal Church.  This couple will often go to the Order’s monastery in West Park, NY, for Holy Week and Easter, where silence is imposed from Maundy Thursday night to sunrise on Easter Sunday morning.  If you’ve never experienced the discipline of silence, you really ought to try it for yourself in your home.  Be silent, without any other voices or noise --- no radio or TV or cell phones or conversation --- maintain that silence for just 15 minutes, and see how you feel about it.  Yates told me that the first time they experienced silence at West Park for those days, it was really quite difficult, but with each succeeding year, it not only gets easier, but it becomes a time that he and his wife Ida, truly welcome.  There is a need for silence and solitude, and to borrow from Thomas Hardy, a place “Far from the Madding Crowd.”

How often do scriptures record that Christ went out into the wilderness to pray?  It was in the wilderness that He refreshed and enriched that relationship which He had with His heavenly Father.  It was in the wilderness that Christ was tempted and where His commitment to the salvation task that was His was reconfirmed.  That’s not a bad model.  We might do well to emulate it for ourselves, and get a refreshed perspective on our own life and our relationship with God.

Meanwhile, back to the Sea of Galilee and that particular storm.  Apparently it was a tremendous storm, and the disciples panicked, thinking that the boat would sink with them in it.  That was reasonable, because I can imagine the water sloshing over the gunwales of their boat and coming in faster than they could bail it out.  And what did Christ do?  He slept through the whole thing.   The disciples panicked, but Jesus slept.  But then, they woke Him up and asked if He didn’t care whether they perished or not. 

We sometimes don’t pay attention to the content of their question, because we are so caught up in the fact that Christ simply said, “Peace, be still,” and the storm was over.   Inherent in their question is the idea, the belief, that Christ could in fact do something about the situation.  By this time in their brief relationship with Jesus, they knew that He was certainly different from your normal run-of-the-mill person, but did they really think He could do something about the wind and the waves and the water that was filling the boat?  That flies in the face of all logic, but then, they had already had experiences that defied logic anyway.  They had seen Jesus heal the sick --- lots of them --- with a touch of His hand or a few well chosen words.  They had seen Him heal a man who had been lowered through a hole in the roof, and the man got up and walked away.  Different, yes, but could He do something about the storm? 

He could, and He did.  “Peace.  Be still.”  The storm ended, and there was no reason for panic any more.  And then He challenged them with the words, “Why are you afraid?  Have you no faith?”  These words were addressed to the twelve people whom Christ Himself had chosen to be His emissaries to the uttermost corners of the earth.  But they had been afraid.  I think we might have been afraid, too, if we had been in that boat, and Christ would have challenged our faith as well.  We all have fears of some sort.  The question is, Do we have an implicit faith, as I believe the disciples did, that Christ can do anything about our fears?  Do we want to wake Him up as He sleeps through the storms of our personal lives and ask, “Christ, will you please do something for me in this situation?”

It is inescapable that we hold a cosmological view of Christ.  He came to save the whole world.  He carried the sins of the whole world with Him to Calvary’s Cross.  That’s what made His crucifixion, His sacrifice, so tragically terrible.  But while He addressed His message of God’s love and care and concern to thousands of people, He really was speaking to each one individually, and that includes you and me.   Cosmological, yes, but also very personal. 

The ancients believed in miracles.  In our more sophisticated and perhaps jaded way, we sometimes have a hard time believing in them.  But at the end of our lesson for today, the only question was, “What sort of man is this, that even the wind and the storm obey Him?”  No question about the miracle of the storm’s coming to a very abrupt end.  That was readily accepted.  But the question had to do really with who Christ is.  And just maybe we have the same question. Is He really what He appears to be from the scriptures?  Is He really the Son of God?  After all, that was a claim that was made about Him.  In fact, that was what the voice of God said at His Baptism in the Jordan River, and on the Mount of Transfiguration.  Yes, He is the Son of God.

 So accept the miracle.  In doing so, accept the power and capability.  Accept the love.  Accept His sacrifice.  Accept the fact that He wants to be awakened and involved in the storms of our lives, whether they be hurricanes or little inconvenient rain showers.

“Who is this man?”  He is God’s loving Son, sent here by God for you and me.  And aren’t we glad?

Amen.