(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “In a Boat to the Other Side”, originally shared on June 17, 2021. It was the 123rd video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
Have you ever been out at sea in a storm?
Have you ever been caught in a crisis beyond your control? I think we all know
about that. Today, we’re going to learn how to make it through.
I studied for a semester in Israel when I
was in college. One day, after a lecture at the Church of the Beatitudes built
on the traditional site of the Sermon on the Mount on the north side of the Sea
of Galilee, I sat by myself on the hill that sloped down to the Sea. I saw a
fisherman at the shore tending his boat and the provisions inside. I saw sun on
the Sea of Galilee and the bustle of the commercial activities around me and I
thought, “Jesus could have sat on this same spot and seen these same things two
thousand years ago.”
Then, the fisherman moved to the stern of
the boat, pulled a cord and the engine fired up and the boat shot across the
water, out to sea.
It kind of ruined the moment.
The sea of Galilee is the largest
fresh-water lake in Israel and the farthest body of water below sea-level in
the world, with the Dead Sea, a saltwater sea also in Israel, being the only
body of water in the world that is farther below sea level. It has a surface
area of almost 64.5 square miles. By comparison, the Puddingstone Reservoir in
the Bonelli Regional Park not far from where we live is less than .4 of one
square mile.
The Sea of Galilee is fed by underground springs,
but its greatest source of water is from the River Jordan that runs through it
from north to south. The area is subject to earthquakes and, a long time ago,
volcanos. In Jesus’ day, there was a continuous string of villages and
settlements around the Sea of Galilee. It still supports commercial fishing to
this day. The Sea of Galilee rests at the bottom of a basin, with hills and
mountains around it, kind of like LA. As the cooler mountain air and the much
warmer below sea-level sea air mix together, storms can come up unexpectedly on
the Sea of Galilee and can be quite violent. Today, we get to see one as the
disciples saw it.
We see it in the gospel of Mark, chapter 4,
starting at the 35th verse:
On that day, when
evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” 36 And
leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was.
Other boats were with him.
This reading immediately follows last week’s
stories about how the Kingdom of God is like sowing seeds and the mustard bush.
Today’s event took place “on that day, when evening had come.” Jesus had been
teaching all day and was exhausted and he said to his disciples, let’s go to
the other side of the Sea, from the Jewish side to the Gentile side. They took
him with them in the boat, “just as he was”. What, he wanted to go home and
change into his sailing outfit? No. He had been teaching from the boat and he
wanted to go, so they joined him in the boat and left. He went to the stern and
pulled up a nice pillow and went to sleep.
Have you ever slept so deeply that nothing
could wake you up? As a growing teenager? As an adult? I used to run, and I had
been a swimmer in high school. Many years ago I figured that I could ride a
bike so I could train for a triathlon. You know that proverb, “Pride goes
before a fall”? I was at my first call, in Compton, serving as a pastor,
working in the community, and training for a triathlon, I would sleep so deeply
that I wouldn’t move. I’d wake up in the morning with a sore neck because my
weight had shifted, and my exhaustion was greater than my pain.
Do you think that Jesus was that tired?
Maybe. He was fully human. But he was also fully divine. Many scholars think
that this Bible text is not just a miracle story. It’s an epiphany. It’s a
manifestation of Jesus as fully divine. A storm comes up and Jesus isn’t
afraid. Storms at sea were believed to be agents of evil and Jesus continues to
sleep. His disciples panic. We see it starting at Mark 4:37:
37 A
great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was
already being swamped. 38 But he was in the stern,
asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you
not care that we are perishing?”
Have you ever wondered that same thing? Have
you ever experienced chaos in your life and wondered where God was? Was he
asleep?
Here we see where God is. God is in the same
boat with the disciples.
In his book Night, Elie Wiesel tells
the story of a group of men who were sentence to death by hanging for trying to
escape from Auschwitz, where Elie Wiesel was also a prisoner. There were 9 men
and a teenager. When the lever was pulled, each of the men died, but the neck
of the teenager, perhaps because of his suppleness, did not snap. Instead, he
hung there, dying on the gallows. Elie Wiesel said that he heard a voice, not
being sure whether it was from within him or from someone else, saying, “Where
is God?” After a several more moments it said, “Where is God now?” And another
voice said, “He is there, hanging on the gallows.” Any other answer, Wiesel
said, would have been blasphemy.
What does that story mean? Is it about the
end of hope, the end of belief; or is it God present with us in our suffering?
I’ve heard it said that we are living in
uncertain times but, I wonder, are events in any time certain? What can we hold
on to that is sure? I’ve read that “Don’t be afraid” or “Fear not” or something
like them appears 365 times in the Bible, one for every day of the year. I’ve
never counted them. But that seems reasonable to me. The event continues at Mark
4, verse 39:
39 He woke up and
rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased,
and there was a dead calm. 40 He said to them, “Why
are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”
The disciples have rebuked Jesus and accused
him of being indifferent to their circumstances. Jesus rebukes the wind and he
talks to the sea. He says to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased,
and there was a dead calm. A dead calm.
Jesus has rebuked the wind, and now he
rebukes his disciples.
He doesn’t rebuke them for being afraid. He
rebukes them for why they were afraid.
What? “Have you still no faith”.
Well, who could blame them? Jesus at this
point had done some preaching and cast out some demons. There were a lot of
people interpreting the Bible and tjere were other exorcists running around at
the time of Jesus. Who could say if they were the real or counterfeit, or if their
cures were mainly psychosomatic?
He was Jesus. The disciples just hadn’t quite
gotten tuned in to that yet.
But control over nature? That’s a whole new
ball game. This event concludes with verse 41:
41 And they were
filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the
wind and the sea obey him?”
“And they were filled with great awe.”
“That’s
awesome.” “That was an awesome protein shake.” “That game was awesome.” I think
that “awesome” is one of the most overused words in our language. “Awesome”
means “to be worthy of awe”. My theory is that we overuse the word “awesome”
because there is so little real awe in our lives.
“Who is this, that even the wind and the sea
obey him?” Is that a rhetorical question? That’s awesome. God created
everything out of nothing. That’s awesome. God did it as an act of will
with a spoken word. That’s
awesome. Jesus stilled the wind and the sea through an act of will with a
spoken word. That is awesome.
We’ve been in a crisis, our own storm at
sea, for over a year now. We didn’t know what it was at first. It spread,
uncontrolled. Then, we found that we could control it with our behavior. Well,
some of us did. We found that we couldn’t control the behavior of other people,
and that meant that people died or wound up with long-term health consequences.
Then we discovered vaccines, and some of us
received them. And some didn’t, and that meant that more people died or wound
up with long-term health consequences. And some had to have a chance at a
personal benefit, but they got vaccinated. And some still haven’t gotten
vaccinated. Some can’t for various reasons, but most can.
Where has Jesus been in this crisis? Right
there in the boat with us. He calms us in our life’s storms with the peace that
passes human understanding.
Christians are not exempt from life’s
storms. Jesus certainly wasn’t.
It’s been said that happiness is overrated.
Christians do not always know happiness, but Christians always know that joy
deep within us that nothing can take away from us. It is the presence of God at
work within us.
His disciples didn’t have quiet lives. All
but one died violent deaths because of their faith.
Do you know the old riddle, “How do you make
God laugh?” Tell him your plans.
What lies on the other side, a common
metaphor for death?
We know, but we may be in for a bumpy ride
before we get there.
When Steve Jobs spoke at a Stanford University
graduation years ago, I recall him taking a jab saying, “No one wants to die.
Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there.” He drew a cynical laugh, but he was wrong.
We want
to live, not because we are afraid to die, that’s already happened anyway in
our baptisms, but because the purpose of our lives, hidden in Christ, is to
serve others with what we have been given for as long as we can.
The disciples asked, “Teacher, do you
not care that we are perishing?” Jesus gave his answer at the cross.
The builders of the Titanic found out that
there is always a storm bigger than any boat. The good news for us is that God
is bigger than any storm.
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