Rev. Will Rice
Grace United Methodist Church
Corpus Christi, TX
pastorwillrice@gmail.com
It is not like I was the only person who life was disrupted this week, but I must admit, I had a different sermon set for today. The last two times I preached, my sermons were driven by the events of the day. Two weeks ago, it was the anniversary of 9-11, the week before that, we were reeling from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. So, this week, I set out to preach the way I like to preach. I selected the text, read it, studied it, thought about it, and then let the scriptures, with the help of the Holy Spirit begin to form a message within me. The message was quite interesting. It was a reflection on how Jesus refuses to answer bad questions. I was to talk about how instead of getting dragged into no-win ideological debates, we can tell stories like Jesus did.
But, as the week progressed, I realized that the message, while a decent message might be a little too abstract. Part of what I try to do when I preach is to take the scriptures and find a way for us all to see their relevance for our lives today, to try and put them in our context. Well a very large part of the context of our lives this week was a giant hurricane bearing down on us.
Like a TIVO slow-motion-replay of a terrible accident
is the mention of the name Rita,
layering dread upon souls
already drenched with misery;[1]
Imagine if once the disciples had actually awoken Jesus in this week’s text, instead of calming the waves, he had given the disciples an hour-long lecture on the finer points of salvation.
"Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?"
If it wasn’t so panic inspiring all by itself, the hurricane would be a perfect metaphor for chaos forcing its way into the order of our lives. It is not by coincidence that the Bible, with its words about the very beginning of everything begins with something like a hurricane.
Genesis 1 1In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, 2the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.
But onto today’s text.
35On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, "Let us go across to the other side."
Sometimes I don’t know if the disciples were just incredibly naïve or if they were just amazingly obedient. If you have never read Mark’s gospel, pick it up when you get home to see what it is that Jesus is getting these guys into, but let leave it with, the “other side” is not a place where nice young Jewish fishermen should be going. Besides that, as a person who grew up on a large shallow lake, Lake Erie, I wouldn’t be very likely to take an evening trip on the Sea of Galilee. Have you ever been out in a big lake or in the gulf on a little boat without lights at night? But, off they go.
36And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. 37A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped.
Now for those of you who went out of town for the last couple of days, I don’t know what you were doing. For the rest of you, I do know what you were doing. You were sitting in front of the TV watching CNN or The Weather Channel. Some of us know new terms like eyewall replacement cycle, others can decipher projected path computer models that use different storm path algorithms.
So, to try and keep your attention, I know many of you are tired from putting up, and then taking back down the plywood over your windows, I will try to explain what is going on in more meteorological terms.
The Sea of Galilee is about 700 feet below sea level. The hills around the inland lake reach to about 1,500 feet above, giving you about 2000 foot difference between the lake and the tops of the hills. With that kind of elevation shift, there are often huge differences in temperatures, cool dry air up top, warm, moist air below. When those start colliding, wind and storms come up. The Sea of Galilee is a shallow lake about 150 to 200 feet deep, very similar to Lake Erie where I grew up. In deep water, like in the ocean, the energy of the wind is absorbed into large, swelling waves. In shallow water, the wind whips up the water into sharp, violent waves, not very good for little boats with disciples in them.
38But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion;
There is always that one guy or girl. You know the one, you are on an airplane, being rocked by turbulence, you are pretty sure you are going to die, or at least lose that crummy airline lunch you had, and you realize the person next to you is asleep, oblivious to the danger around them, or perhaps fully aware of it and also aware of the fact that there is absolutely nothing in the world they can do about it.
38But 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?"
"Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" What a great line. "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" Sometimes we say it like, “God, do you not care that we are perishing?” “Hello God? Are you awake? Are you not interested in the fact that we are, in fact, in serious trouble down here?”
I mean who hasn’t, at least for a fleeting moment, entertained the idea that God, for one reason or another is just not paying attention has just fallen asleep at the wheel! I imagine for some, stranded on their rooftops after Katrina, their first thought was not about the socio-political systems that had led to a personal, local, state, or federal failure to provide the proper level of aid at the appropriate time. No, I imagine the first thought was, “God, are you gonna help me out here?”
I would imagine for someone inside that Superdome, in the dark, with not much to eat or drink, the smell of waste everywhere, and at total lack of certainty about one’s personal safety, I bet there were lots of questions of who was coming to help, but I bet there were lots of those questions directed up at God.
"Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?"
We talk a lot about New Orleans, but what about some of the other towns in Mississippi and Alabama where there is just nothing left. Imagine if you were lucky enough to get out and returned home to nothing. As you pull up to your lot, you only see where your house used to be and small piles of your belongings or perhaps your neighbor’s belongings scattered around your yard. Anything of value left has been picked over by looters. Photographs, keepsakes, memories, all washed away.
"Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?"
The devastating effects of storms are the most natural image for this passage, but there are other times when this question comes to mind. In hospital rooms, at clinics, sitting at home after receiving a life-changing phone call, standing by the grave of one who should have had more time and less suffering.
"Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?"
Wake up! Can you blame the disciples for their impatience? They were perishing in a very real way. Yes the waves can be looked at metaphorically, but they were really about to drown and the one who could save them was asleep!
"Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?"
Jesus wakes up and rebukes the wind. I can’t say that I have ever rebuked anything. Rebuke, that is the funny word we hear in the very first chapter of the Gospel of Mark. Jesus was back in Capernaum teaching at the synagogue when a man with an unclean spirit came in. An unclean spirit talked a little trash to Jesus and…
But Jesus rebuked him, saying, "Be silent, and come out of him!"[2]
It is this word: rebuke! evpitima,w (epistimawo) – which means strictly to appraise or assess a penalty, but less formally as in this case to warn, admonish or threaten. Jesus rebuked the spirit and now, he is rebuking the wind.
and said to the sea, "Peace! Be still!" Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm.
Jesus, the man who somehow thinks it is ok to talk to the sea says to things to it:
"Peace! Be still!"
They are both imperatives – commands!
You calm down!
You be still!
The word he uses for be still! comes from the same word we see back in the first chapter:
But Jesus rebuked him, saying, "Be silent (fimw,qhti), and come out of him!"[3]
The same thing Jesus has done to the unclean spirit he has done to the waves. He has rebuked them both and told them both to shut up!
And they listen!
39He 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 he has a word for the disciples:
40He said to them, "Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?"
I’m sorry, but if you put me in a rickety boat out on the sea of Galilee at night in the midst of a sudden violent storm, I would be afraid to! Wouldn’t you? But Jesus suggests that perhaps they are missing something. That despite all that they have witnessed so far while following Jesus, they have not yet figured out who they are with. Could this be the same one that spoke to the water once before
1In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, 2the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. 3Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.[4]
The one who with a word separated the chaos and created order. The one who spoke and there was light. And now the one who with an order can still the sea, can bring stillness, peace from chaos.
41And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, "Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?"
Filled with great awe might be an understatement, we could also translate it as “they were filled with a great fear.” I don’t mean to say they were afraid, like when the waves were pounding, but they were filled with reverence, awe, the good kind of fear you should have for someone who just told the sea to be quiet and it listened.
But what about us? There were people in those hurricanes who cried out, “Lord, don’t you care that we are perishing?” And the wind wasn’t rebuked, it didn’t become still. It just kept blowing. What about us? What about those of us who are swamped, pounded by waves, about to go under. “Lord, don’t you care that we are perishing?”
It is an overused platitude to say, don’t worry, Jesus will rebuke the wind of your life if you just have faith. I’m sorry, I just don’t believe that is always true. Sometimes the wind and water really overcomes us. If you don’t believe me, take a trip to Haiti where over 1000 people died last year in tropical storm Jeanne. Ask those who have lost loved ones in Katrina, those who lost elderly parents on a bus trying to escape Rita. Ask any parent whose child hasn’t come home from Iraq or Afghanistan.
This scripture doesn’t tell us that Jesus will rebuke the wind of your life, but it does tell us who Jesus is. Jesus is the one, who just like in the beginning brings order from chaos and we continue to create plenty of chaos. God created and God continues to create. The creation is an ordering of the chaos and we can choose to be faithful and follow Jesus or we can just scream out in fear.
Let me read to you from the journal of John Wesley, the man who began the movement that led to the creation of what we now call the United Methodist Church. He writes this during his journey aboard ship from England to the new colonies in what we now call America.
Sunday, November 25, 1735.—At noon our third storm began. At four it was more violent than before. At seven I went to the Germans. I had long before observed the great seriousness of their behavior.
In the midst of the psalm wherewith their service began, the sea broke over, split the mainsail in pieces, covered the ship, and poured in between the decks, as if the great deep had already swallowed us up. A terrible screaming began among the English. The Germans calmly sang. I asked one of them afterward, “Were you not afraid?” He answered, “I thank God, no.” I asked, “But were not your women and children afraid?” He replied, mildly, “No; our women and children are not afraid to die.”[5]
Wesley latched on to the faith of these German Moravians. They were not afraid. Not because they expected Jesus to wake up and calm the storm, in fact they were quite prepared for the fact that the storm might kill them. They were calm because they had somehow embraced the greater creative goodness of God. The greater creative goodness of the God who calls order out of chaos, the God who is still creating, the ever present God of creation who became and remains very real to us in Jesus Christ.
In the midst of storms at sea or on land, storms that bring rain and wind or storms that bring inner turmoil in pain, it is quite natural and probably a good thing that we cry out to God. Hello! Can’t you see that we are perishing! It is perfectly natural to hope that God will come and rebuke the storm and bring peace to the sea.
But, what is more important is to begin to have faith in the overall goodness of the creation. It is more important to embrace the creative power of God and follow the one who can still the sea with just a word. All of us will some day perish. Many of us will face storms that we cannot beat. What will make the difference is whether we can hold fast to the faith that no matter what our ultimate physical outcome, we will always be held tightly in the loving embrace of our creator.
[1] Safiyah Fosua is the Director of Invitational Preaching Ministries at the General Board of Discipleship, Nashville, Tennessee. "Waiting for Rita — A Prayer" Copyright © 2005 The General Board of Discipleship of The United Methodist Church, PO Box 340003, Nashville TN 37203-0003. Worship website: www.umcworship.org.
[2] Mark 1:25
[3] Mark 1:25
[4] Genesis 1
[5] John Wesley, The Journal of John Wesley, (Chicago: Moody Press, 1951) 17-18
