Mark 4: 35-41
June 14, 2009
Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ
400 Glenwood Drive
Chattanooga, Tennessee 37404
Rev. David Brown
Jeff Briere of the Unitarian Universalist Church here in Chattanooga and I have a small running contest about whose sermon topics will appear most often as one of the most interesting topics in Saturday’s Times Free Press. So far, I am ahead two to one. I thought today’s topic would give me a three to one advantage!
The problem, of course, is that sermon topics can be too cute for words. Literally, the words of the sermon. The topic, while clever, has little to do with the actual message. I hope I have not committed that preacherly sin this morning. You’ll decide about that afterwards!
In any case, I did wonder how many women in our congregation noticed my sermon title for today and wondered if I was going to speak about her husband! Why is it that sound sleeping is always associated with men? Don’t women sleep through things? Well, yes. In the first church I pastored two older ladies came faithfully to church every Sunday and just as faithfully slept through my sermon every Sunday. But men, from Dagwood Bumstead on, are believed to evade responsibilities by snoozing through domestic affairs in which men are the nappers and women are the naggers. Is that fair? Tell me after the service.
But sleep-related problems are no laughing matter for some. There are many people who simply cannot sleep without the aid of medication. I’m one of them. And there are others, smaller in number but more serious in affliction, who can’t stay awake without medication. A recent newspaper article I read pointed out that a proper amount of sleep – actually, more than most of us get at any age – is pretty much a biological necessity. But the Bible goes even farther and suggests that the experience of genuine rest also has the character of a spiritual blessing.
So the subject of sleep is most properly before us this morning. A few moments ago we heard Mark’s familiar story about Jesus and his disciples in a boat in a storm. There is little doubt that the story took place on the Sea of Galilee. It is one of several “boat stories” in the gospels. It is quite likely that at one time or another all of these “boat stories” were one group and later were split up by the different gospel writers and placed in different contexts.
Whatever the case, what we have before us this morning may well be the earliest of these “boat stories.” The details are simple. It has been a long day. Jesus has done much teaching. He has experienced the neediness of many people trying to get to him. As evening comes, he tries to extricate himself and his disciples. “Let’s get in the boat and go across to the other side of the lake,” he says. I suppose that leaving by boat would make it difficult for the crowd to follow him. I am sure that anyone in the helping professions knows exactly how Jesus felt. The needs of people can sometimes be overwhelming. And when we feel that way we must take a break or soon we will be of no help to anyone.
While crossing the Sea of Galilee, the winds come up suddenly and blow up a gale. That actually happens. I was once in a boat going from Tiberius to Capernaum and a sudden storm tossed our boat around violently. But Jesus’ boat was much smaller than my excursion craft. We are told that waves were breaking into the boat so that it was almost swamped. While this is happening, Jesus is asleep in the stern, his head resting on a cushion. Do we need any further evidence that Jesus was exhausted by the demands of the people seeking his help?
But the storm is getting worse and worse. The boat is filling up with water and likely to sink. At this point, the disciples decide to wake their sleeping Lord. They call to him out of equal parts of panic and anger. It is panic that cries, “Master we are going down.” It is anger that cries, “Don’t you care what’s happening to us?” And the story ends with a pair of rebukes from Jesus. The first rebuke is delivered to the waves. “Be quiet! Be still!” The second rebuke is delivered to the disciples: “Why are you afraid? What happened to your faith?”
This is a simple story on the surface but looking deeper it’s not that simple at all. To really “get” this story we have to do several things. And the first thing we have to do is get in the boat. We need to see ourselves in the same fix as the disciples. We have to see ourselves as friends of Jesus, followers of Jesus, in the same boat with Jesus, but still scared to death.
In the Gardiner Museum in Boston there is a painting by Rembrandt entitled “The Storm on the Sea of Galilee.” It is Rembrandt’s interpretation of this scene. Those who have seen it say it is a marvelous painting. It shows the panic etched on the faces of the disciples as their small vessel is being raised up on a high wave, about to be crashed down. Two of the disciples are trying to rouse Jesus who is asleep in the stern of the boat, his head resting upon a pillow. But when we look closely at the painting we discover there is something about it that is not quite right. There seem to be too many people in the boat. And when we count them there are fourteen. There should only be thirteen – twelve disciples and Jesus – but instead there are fourteen. When we look even closer at the picture we notice that one of the men in the boat is Rembrandt himself. He has painted himself into the picture. He has placed himself in the same boat.
Which is, of course, exactly where we should put ourselves. We are with those disciples in the boat, people of faith but still frightened. The story should remind us of a basic reality in human life: none of us escapes going through a storm. Sooner or later, younger or older, the wind and waves of some storm will seem to overwhelm us. There is no immunity for any of us. A treasured relationship will be broken. An important opportunity will be lost. A hope will be dashed. Much as we may hope that a storm will never strike us, that is wishful thinking. The storm will come. But we may also want to believe that at such a moment our faith will never fail us. We’d like to live out that lyric from Rogers and Hammerstein’s “Carousel:” “When you walk through a storm, keep your head up high.” Would that we could. But even the best and brightest, the most committed and faithful, find ourselves in the same small boat with our heads down, crying out for help. That is the first thing we need to understand.
The second thing we need to understand is what the boat itself means. From ancient time the boat has been the symbol for the Church. The World Council of Churches has as its logo a ship with a cross riding on the waves. And some churches with their timbered roofs and cross beams even look like an upside down boat when we look up at the ceiling. And the names we use for parts of the church remind us we are in a boat. The back of the church is called the narthex. Where the musicians and I sit is called the chancel. But where you sit is called the nave. That word “nave” is literally the Latin word for “ship.” Even as we sit here in church we are in the boat with Jesus and the disciples.
This leads us to a third thing we need to understand. We need to understand what the storm means. There is something significant going on when the writer talks about Jesus sailing out into the sea. In those days, it was believed that the sea was the home of the demonic powers. It was believed that all of the enemies of life had their headquarters in the sea. So when Jesus sails out into the sea, he is sailing into the middle of enemy territory.
Now don’t let this slip away without taking it seriously. Recall, if you will, a bit of biblical history. In the very earliest creation account, creation is described as a struggle between God and the sea, with the sea representing chaos and all that is evil in the world. God separates the sea so that creation can come out. And then in this marvelous literary symmetry that Bible stories seem to have, God separates the sea one more time. Only the second separation is done so that God’s people can come out of Egypt in the Exodus. And when Job is granted that marvelous audience with God, the great Hebrew poet has God say this to Job: “Where were you when I shut the sea with doors and said to the waves, you shall come this far and no farther.” And from Isaiah we receive God’s wonderful promise, “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you.” A stormy sea represents the demonic. The sea is not just something the disciples have to battle. The sea represents something that God has to battle.
Which brings us to the fourth thing we need to understand about this story and that concerns this business of the sleeping Jesus. The purpose of having Jesus sleep during the storm is to demonstrate the superiority of Jesus over the demonic powers of the sea. It actually represents a form of mockery. It is as if Jesus is saying. “Let the forces of evil blow all they want. Let them give out with their best shot. I’ll sleep through it!”
It is easy for me to poke fun at the liberals because I am one of them. Over the years, there have been some biblical scholars of the more liberal type who have come at Scripture with the notion that, above all else, Scripture ought to make sense. And so, in order to make Scripture make sense, these scholars try to figure out a logical way to explain everything in the Bible that sounds fantastic. Now I suppose that the idea of a man standing up in a boat and rebuking waves of such magnitude that they are about to swamp the vessel borders on the fantastic. And since the idea of a mere mortal telling the mighty waves to be quiet sounds so illogical, liberal scholars are fond of saying, “Ah! Jesus was not talking to the waves at all. When Jesus said “Peace, be still”, Jesus was talking to the disciples. He was calming them. And once they were calmed they could face the storm without the need of any supernatural intervention.
Now that’s nifty. Except for one small fact. The story doesn’t read that way. In Mark’s version, Jesus speaks to the waves. He does not speak to his disciples. And this is one of those stories where we find that the familiar translation utterly fails us. The familiar translation of the text is both deceptive and wrong. When Jesus calms the storm he is not overly gentle about it. He doesn’t say, “Peace! Be still.” That translation is far too mild. A better translation would have Jesus saying to the waves, “Hush! Be silent.” Better still would be, “Shut up! Stop it!”
The entire purpose of the story, you see, is not to show Jesus as an insensitive boob where storms are concerned. Neither is the purpose of the story to show Jesus as some great heroic figure who gives us an example as to how to be properly courageous when waves start to swamp our boat. (“Now remember children, if you are ever caught in a storm, try to be a little more like Jesus”). The purpose of the story is altogether different. The purpose of the story is to identify Jesus as one who can master the demonic and unruly forces of life and hold them at bay. When the storms come, Mark says he’ll be there. He will be right in the boat with you and me. But we may not know it until the storm comes. We may not know it until it looks as if our boat is going under. Ultimately I believe this is a story that tells us three things.
1. Jesus is the one whom even the wind and sea obey.
2. We meet Him when the storms of life are raging.
3. We ought to trust Him . . . more than most of us do.
When I was a kid in Sunday School we sang an old Gospel hymn whose words still move me: (“‘Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus.”)
“Jesus, Jesus, how I trust Him! How I’ve proved him o’er and o’er!
Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus! O for grace to trust Him more!”