November 18, 2001
Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
Mark 4:35-41
I recently read a newspaper article from the Washington Post titled, After the Fall. Written by Michael Powell, it talked about what Powell called the “edgy fragility” which continues to haunt New Yorkers since the events of September 11, no doubt a feeling that is now even more intense after the tragic plane crash last Monday. He quoted a New York resident who was attending an outside wedding and reception in Central Park. As the music played and the happy couple and guests celebrated beneath a glorious clear October sky, the man said, “Everything looks the same, but everything feels different. We know the world is changing. In our new world, the music plays and you look at airplanes gliding over Central Park, and you start doing evacuation drills in your head.”
It’s been over two months since the terrorist attack, but it seems to me that people remain nervous, fearful, everything still seems so uncertain. A private plane flew low over our home the other day, something that has happened numerous times over the years, but I have to admit I watched it with new eyes. Any of you do “evacuation drills in your heads?” As one commentator wrote, September 10th was “the last everyday morning of the rest of our lives.”
But if it is any comfort, and it probably isn’t, we aren’t the first people ever to feel that way - to feel vulnerable and insecure in what seems to be an increasingly hostile world. Today we heard a reading from the Gospel of Mark. Most think that Mark was written about 70 A.D., after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by Roman legions. This was an unprecedented disaster for both Jews and Christians, because most of the early Christians in Jerusalem were also Jews who still went to the Temple. How could God have allowed such a thing to happen? Had God removed the divine protection from God’s people? Many felt as if their world had come to an end.
It is also widely believed that the Gospel of Mark was written in Rome, during a time when the Christian church in that city was facing persecution. To be a Christian in Rome quite literally meant that you were laying your life on the line each and every day. A destroyed Temple…a persecuted church…familiar sources of support and security, hope and faith, now gone…perhaps forever. Where could believers turn? What word of hope could possibly be spoken?
“On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, ‘Let us go across to the other side.’ … A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped . .. and they woke him up and said to him, ‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?’ He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be Still!’ (shut up!) Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm.”
The Hebrews were not a sea-faring people. Oh yes, they took their small fishing boats out on the Sea of Galilee - really a large lake - but that was about as much water as they wanted to deal with. For them, big water, deep water, was a thing to be dreaded and avoided - a surging, dark, bubbling place of chaos, disorder, turbulence and death. It is o accident that in the Genesis creation story, God spends a good amount of time putting the water in its place . . . which is to say, bringing order out of the chaos of the deep. So part of the danger of a great storm on the lake, is the danger of chaos and disorder overcoming the disciples, the loss of security and any sense of safety. Sound familiar? “You look at airplanes gliding over Central Park - or maybe your own home - and you start doing evacuation drills in your mind.” What do you do when you face life’s storms of uncontrollable disorder, anxiety - storms which leave us feeling helpless in the face of chaos, which strip us of familiar sources of safety and security?
The disciples have Jesus right there in the boat with them, yet still they are afraid. All they see, all they focus on, is the storm. “Lord save us. We are going down!” In response, he wonders why they are afraid. He wonders about their faith. “Do not be afraid,” he says. “Do not heed the storm. Listen to me. I will not abandon you in even the most fearful circumstances. The chaos has no power over me. It has no power over you. Quit watching only the storm. I am with you.” From the canceling of travel plans to the closing of fish hatcheries to the round-up and detention of people who look Middle-Eastern, with the accompanying elimination of due process, the Lords of Fear find us to be such willing subjects. But Jesus, as he so often does, invites us to go a different direction, away from fear. It is an invitation to trust; it is an invitation to faith. What - Who - will have the final say in our lives? Chaos . . . or Christ?
You went in for surgery. Loving family and friends tried to be helpful. But that night - and nights can be endless in the hospital - as you lay in that hospital bed wondering what tomorrow might bring, you were alone, as alone as you have ever felt. Afraid? Yes, there was fear. But also, and this was a surprise, a growing sense of peace. Where did that come from? You began to know that you weren’t alone. He was there, in the room, in the storm-tossed boat with you. In the words of one minister: “In the storm when the illness is at its worst, when the clouds turn dark and the wind howls, when all seems lost, there is this strong voice, ‘Peace! Be Still!’ In the storm, Jesus cares, speaks, saves.” Why are you afraid?
And yet, still the disciples are afraid. Even after the calming of the storm, they still aren’t too sure about Jesus. I find myself returning to their fear. On one hand, you might say, who wouldn’t be afraid? They were convinced they were about to drown. Sitting in a small boat that was filling with water in the midst of a storm might leave one just a bit fearful. And yet, I wonder if there might not be more to it than that. Peter Gomes, chaplain at Harvard University, has said, “Miracles are terrifying things. We imagine that if we saw a miracle we would all fall down on our knees and say, ‘Praise the Lord’ or ‘Hallelujah!’ Those who see miracles, however, especially those nearest to Jesus, are usually confused, or terrified, or both.” Certainly that is the case here.
I’ve shared this story with you before. A young pastor was visiting an old, very sick woman in the hospital. Before he left, he took her hand and asked her, “What would you like me to pray for today?”
With her last ounce of energy, she whispered, “Pray that God will make me well.”
He wasn’t too comfortable with such a direct and specific petition to the Almighty, but still he was able to stammer out a prayer that went something like this: “Lord, if it be thy will, we pray that this sick sister might be healed. On the other hand, if it is not thy will, we pray that she might be given a positive attitude and a willingness to accept her situation. Amen.”
As soon as he finished his prayer, her eyes opened. She then sat up in bed, threw her feet over the side and stood up, saying, “I’m feeling much better. I’m well. I really think I’m well!” She then bounded out of the room and headed for the nurses’ station shouting, “Look at me, I’m well!”
The pastor watched her go down the corridor, then he stumbled out of the hospital and into the parking lot. Before he pulled out his key to unlock his car, he looked up and said, “Don’t you ever do that to me again!”
We don’t want to admit it, but sometimes it is easier to give in to the storm, the chaos, the uncertainty and confusion. Sometimes despair and hopelessness are the easy way out. Oh well, there’s nothing I can do about it anyway. Gives us an excuse for apathy, for inaction. But what if our cries for help are heard? What if an old woman who was quietly dying in her bed suddenly gets better? What if the storm is calmed? What if Jesus really shows up and makes a difference in our lives? Are we ready for that? Do we even want that? For suddenly things are more open-ended than we thought. Suddenly there is hope, a way when there seemed no way, and we realize that things are not over until Christ, in his wisdom, says they are over. He is not defeated, he is not finished, no matter how fierce the storm.
Again, are we ready for that? Maybe the disciples were afraid because they knew that the end of the storm was really only the beginning; that the One who calmed the storm was the same One who invited them into the boat in the first place. Even as he saves them from distress, so he also calls them to set aside their fear and join him on an adventure that will involve risk, service, and yes, inevitably more storms. Again, it isn’t over until Jesus says it’s over.
A pastor shares this true story: “I was visiting an older woman, well past ninety, in a nursing home. She had lost her sight, most of her hearing. Now her days were spent mostly sitting there, waiting for someone to pay her a visit, which few did. Before I left, I asked her, ‘Would you like me to pray with you before I leave?’
“She responded, ‘No. If you want to pray, that’s fine with me. But I’ve already had plenty of time to say everything to God I wanted to say. Besides, I best not bother God at this point.’
“’Oh, you are never too old to bother God,’ I reassured her. ‘God is always eager to hear from you.’
“’It’s not that,’ she said, ‘I just don’t know whether or not I want to hear from God. God has asked me to do so many difficult things over the years, demanded so much of me. I think I best leave God alone for now.’”
I love that woman, a woman who knew very well the God whom the disciples in the boat seemed to fear - an active, demanding, living God who, even as he comforts and reassures us, still does not mind bothering us, always calling us back, beyond our fear, to join Christ - and each other - in the storm.