Weatherproof

A sermon preached at Old South Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, Hallowell, Maine, June 25, 2006.

Text:  Mark 4:35-41
The Rev. Susan M. Reisert, minister

            One of our favorite family activities in the summer is to kayak from our camp out to Oak Island on Great Pond.  Oak Island is a good-sized island that remains undeveloped.  The owners of the island have provided two campsites on the island.  People who can get to the island may use it and enjoy it as long as they take care of it by taking away their own trash and so forth.
            We like to kayak out there to explore and to have a snack or a picnic lunch. On a nice, calm day, it usually takes about 45 minutes to paddle out to Oak Island.  Just the other day, we ventured out there and saw a little loon family swimming around in one of Oak Island’s protected coves.   Later, another pair of loons found themselves on either side of our kayak.  Margaret and I were treated to the sight of one of the loons diving under and swimming underneath our kayak.
            As on most bodies of water, the weather can turn fast on Great Pond.  We have been out on Oak Island, having lunch and exploring, only to find that when we return to our kayaks, the sky has turned a disturbing shade of dark grey and the clouds look ominous and the wind has begun to pick up.  Getting back across the lake to our dock becomes an unwelcome challenge.
            I can’t say that I’ve ever feared for my life on these occasions when I have found myself out in the middle of Great Pond, far away from my house, when the weather has begun to turn and I am in a really little boat, but I have been concerned about my ability to get myself—and usually a passenger—across the lake without assistance or having to make a “pit stop” at the boys’ camp that is on the island between Oak Island and our dock.  There is something about being in a small boat in some rough weather that really makes one feel vulnerable.
            That is one of the central themes of this morning’s passage from the Gospel according to Mark—vulnerability.  How can it be that some of Jesus’ closest disciples, closest followers, find themselves in a small boat in some rough weather with Jesus HIMSELF among them and still find themselves feeling vulnerable?  How is it that these disciples with Jesus among them still felt insecure and disturbed by the raging sea around them?
            These are a couple of questions with which we will wrestle today.
            In our scripture passage for this morning we find ourselves in the presence of a wonderful and provocative story that is told about Jesus and the disciples.  The scene is a vivid one, punctuated by Mark’s spare and no-nonsense language.  Mark doesn’t mince words, nor does he attempt to create a well-developed story. 
This morning’s passage is a short tale of a small boat tossed in a furious squall on the Sea of Galilee.  The disciples, who were experienced fishermen, find themselves in a situation which was beyond their control, more than they could manage—even though Jesus was right there among them.
In the story, we are told that at the end of a long day of teaching and preaching and healing and helping, Jesus said to the disciples, “Let us go over to the other side of the sea.”  They left the crowd behind and took Jesus along in the boat just as He was:  tired, worn out, and exhausted.  There were also other boats with him.  A furious squall came up and the waves broke over the boat so that it was nearly swamped.  Jesus was in the stern sleeping on a cushion, seemingly undisturbed by the raging sea.
The disciples woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”  Jesus woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace!  Be still!”  Then the wind ceased and there was a dead calm.
And, then Jesus turned to them and added some stern words for the disciples, “Why are you afraid?  Have you still no faith?”  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?”
Now, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist or even a theologian to guess that this story has little to do with the disciples finding themselves in a small boat when a squall came up on the Sea of Galilee.  This story is about the vulnerability of those who were closest to Jesus—even those who worked with him during his earthly ministry.  This story is about the challenges of faith and a Savior who sometimes offered stern words to get his point across.
This story is also about power:  the power of Jesus to calm the sea; the power of Jesus to take charge of the weather; and, even as great as that appears, perhaps most importantly, the power of Jesus to look his closest followers in the face and see precisely what lurked in their hearts, to know the raging sea within them, and to speak to their vulnerabilities.
It may be helpful to get some sense of when and how Mark was writing to gain some important perspective on what he is trying to convey about Jesus.  Mark is the shortest of the Gospels.   It does not contain a birth story or some of the other stories that are important to us.  For instance, Mark does not contain a version of The Beatitudes (“Blessed are the poor,”  etc). Mark is very likely the earliest of the Gospels, written in the late sixties or the very early seventies of the first century.  It is the only gospel to identify itself as a Gospel. 
Significantly, Mark’s gospel is not really a piece of Christian evangelism for the increase of the numbers of Christians and for the future success of the Church.  Mark was more likely writing for the Christian community as it already existed in that time.  Mark was writing to the gentile Church about issues and concerns that were particular to that church in that time—and those concerns were many and difficult.
For our purposes today, the most critical piece of history for us to appreciate is the prevalence of persecutions under the Roman emperor, Nero, in the sixties.  This was the first of many periods of persecution of the Christian faith and the Christian church in its early years of development and before it became recognized as the religion of the empire in the fourth century.  All those subject to the empire were expected to offer respect to the gods, including the emperor, by whose favor the empire was preserved.
From time to time, beginning in the sixties of the first century, Christians were persecuted and even martyred for their refusal to offer such acknowledgement and respect.  They could suffer imprisonment, torture, being flung to wild beasts in the amphitheater or beheading.
This was likely the atmosphere in which Mark was writing.  Christians were being persecuted and even tortured and killed.  But, to escape such persecution, almost all that was necessary was to offer incense on a pagan altar.  For the serious Christian, even such a simple act would have meant disaster to the faith.
So, Mark wrote about Jesus—Jesus the Christ; Jesus as the Son of God; Jesus as the One who would save and redeem; Jesus as the only source of true life and faith and hope.  The importance of being steadfast in one’s faith cannot be understated.
Mark’s retelling of this story about Jesus, his disciples and the raging sea likely fit right into the troubles that the Christians around Mark were facing—all because of their adherence to this new faith that required allegiance to a different God, to his Son and to the Holy Spirit and not to the Emperor.  Persecutions, imprisonment and martyrdoms—all very real, all profoundly difficult to face for these early Christians.  Many of those early Christians likely felt very vulnerable and insecure about their faith and the demands that the faith made of them.
Where was Jesus when the tempests of the local political landscape began to rage and foam?  Where was Jesus when the sea of living in the midst of the Roman Empire began to threaten and swamp the fledgling Christian community with flood waters and darkness?  Where was Jesus in this time of uncertainty and difficulty?  Why did Jesus seem to be asleep while the storm raged and Christians were being harassed, imprisoned, killed, flung to the wild beasts for sport?  Where was Jesus and why did he seem not to care?
Some of us might ask the very same question today.  Where is Jesus when the storms of our lives begin to overwhelm us and threaten to undo us?  Where is Jesus when the circumstances of life seem more than we can bear and when everything seems to be out of control, when life seems to bring more than we can manage?
As the disciples discovered, it seems that Jesus is right there all along.  Becoming a Christian and living lives of faith does not provide a kind of “get out of jail free card” from the difficulties of this earthly life.  But, being a Christian and living lives of faith does offer a path out of fearful lives of insecurity and vulnerability.
Jesus is there all along.  Faced with an unexpected and frightening medical diagnosis, struggling with financial pressures, hovering around the bedside of a sick loved one, thrown out of work, caught in a bad relationship, or a phone call that comes all of sudden, the heart leaps in pain and anguish and we cry out in spite of ourselves:  “Don’t you care, Lord, that I drowning?”
Jesus in other places in the New Testament says to us that it is alright to cry to God.  In fact, God invites us to cry.  We are told to ask, to seek, to knock, and to pound the door of heaven.  You can almost see the disciples here as the waves break in and the storm is furious.  They do the one thing that is left to do.  They had done all that was possible to do with their human skill and now they cry in their neediness to Jesus.  One might wonder if that is what Jesus was doing on that cushion all that time—waiting for those disciples to realize that they couldn’t deal with the storm by themselves.  Not only did they need Jesus, but they needed to realize that they needed Jesus.
And Jesus hears and responds to that cry.  Our fears are so often very strong when the storms threaten to overwhelm us, that we can cry to Jesus and know that he hears and that he will respond to the cry of our hearts.
In Mark’s story, the disciples found that once they cried out, that Jesus got up.  Then he did something that even the disciples, with their experience with Jesus, had not expected.  He actually speaks to the waves and to the wind:  “Peace!  Be still!”  And then the wind died down, and there was calm.  Much of the turmoil in our lives isn’t simply the turmoil from the outer circumstances, it’s the turmoil that churns within us, tearing us apart.  We cry out to God and then to our astonishment we discover that God comes.  God is not absent, but present, and God speaks to the storm that is within our turbulent and tossed spirits.
Not all of our questions are answered in this little story today.  Not all of our wonderings are put to rest.  But, though we still have questions—questions that are left in the mystery of God’s love—still we see God’s comfort, God’s power, God’s presence and God’s strength.  God’s help is there for us.  The disciples, when they cried out to Jesus and experienced Jesus rising and rebuking the wind and calling for peace, we are told, were more than surprised when they saw not only the compassion but the power of god at work in Jesus.  We are told that their response was one of awe and even terror because they had never experienced this kind of loving power in a person; in Jesus whom they, in the adventure of faith, were discovering about more and more, day by day.  This one like them yet more than they were.  One who cared and helped and came to be with them in their circumstances, just as God came to the early Christians who faced persecutions and just as God comes to us still today.
God, our Savior knows our cry and knows what it means to be in a boat swamped by the storm and yet has the power to give peace and strength and help even in the midst of the turbulence of human life.
But, at the same time, in these turbulent moments of life that push us to cry out and to panic, there is also the question of Jesus:  “Why are you so fearful?”  Even in those times when we doubt the presence of Jesus, we are reminded again and again that Jesus is indeed with us.  Jesus does not always calm the storm in the manner in which we would like, but Jesus is yet with us.  And, in those moments of panic, Jesus looks us right in the face and knows our vulnerability.  Jesus knows our insecurities.
Amid the storms and turbulence of our lives, Jesus is in the middle of all of it.  And, we are weatherproof.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.