Mark 4:35-41

11/30/11 Mark 4:35-41 GUMC Youth

Tonight, we look at the last passage the fourth chapter of the gospel according to Mark, which means that, as of tonight, we are already a quarter of the way through Mark's gospel. It has already moved pretty fast and it will only move faster as move closer and closer to the end of Christ's life on earth. We look tonight at Mark's account of Jesus calming the storm. But before we do that, we need to look at something that has come up a few times so far.

Our passage begins by having Jesus say, "Let us go to the other side," by which he means, the other side of the sea of Galilee. Jesus is leaving the West side of the sea of Galilee and going to the East side. Now, to us today, this might not seem like such a big deal; he's just going on a trip. From another point of view, it might seem at least a little bit interesting, since he is leaving a crowd on the one side and going to a place where basically nobody knows who he is. The big point that I want to make is to remind you that Mark uses geography to make some of his points about Jesus. We always need to remember which side of the sea he is on when he does things. When he is on the Western side, he is doing miracles for and giving teaching to the Jewish people, those who have been historically identified with God's interaction in our world of space and time. They are God's people and see themselves as belonging to God in a special way. When he is on the East side, he is doing miracles for and giving teaching to Gentiles, the people who have, historically, been a corrupting influence on the Jewish people. These are the people that "Good Jews" don't talk to. For Jesus to deliberately go and minister among the Gentiles is a huge deal.

All of this is to remind you that it isn't just important what Jesus does, it is also important where he does it. So far, everything that Jesus has done has been on the West side of the sea of Galilee, that is, he has been among the Jewish people. Now, for the first time, he is traveling to the Gentile side. So, when this storm comes up, it isn't just a storm on a lake, but a storm that arises as Jesus is on his way to minister to the Gentiles. So far we have seen that every encounter that Jesus has with unclean spirits, or demons if you like, has them freaking out and being overcome. The idea that we are left with is that Jesus is actually invading the territory of these unclean spirits. Here is Jesus marching into a region that has traditionally been hostile to God. This storm is not merely a natural event, but we could easily see it as a resistance to Jesus in the spiritual realm.

So, let us look at the concrete situation in our passage. Jesus and his disciples get into a boat and set off across the sea of Galilee. While they are on their way, a storm came up quickly, which is not an uncommon occurrence on that particular body of water. The storm was significant enough that the disciples, many of whom were experienced sailors, were very worried that they were going to sink. What is amazing is what Jesus is doing during this time. He is in the back of the boat, asleep on a cushion! Now, I don't have a huge amount of experience traveling by boat, but it seems to me that to sleep through a storm is a pretty significant thing. It is one thing to fall asleep while the sea is calm. After all, the rocking of the boat could be soothing. It is another thing altogether to be asleep while the boat is being tossed to and fro. And yet, there he is, sound asleep.

One of the things I hope you have gotten from me by now, or will get from me is that we are not only interested in what Jesus says. We are just as interested in what Jesus does and who Jesus is. Sometimes we learn more about Jesus, which is to say, sometimes we learn more about God, by looking at what Jesus does or does not do than by always looking at what he says. In this case, we see that, while the storm rages around the boat of disciples, Jesus is fast asleep. Here we have Jesus, that is, God, sleeping the night away while all around there are people who are panicking for their very lives. What are we to make of this?

I think that we learn something very important here. Jesus is not concerned with the things that we are concerned about, which means that God is not concerned with the things that we are concerned about. Now, this unconcern of God could be interpreted in two ways. First, we could interpret the fact that God is not concerned with the things that we are concerned about in a sense that God is simply unconcerned with human struggles and suffering. We could assume that Jesus is sound asleep in the midst of a crisis because he is heartless and doesn't care what happens to the disciples. This is precisely what the disciples think is going on. They wake Jesus up and say, or probably shout, to him, "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" They are basically saying, "Jesus, don't you care about us? The whole world is crashing down around us and you're sleeping! Don't you care at all?"

But that is not the only way to look at this unconcern. The other way to look at it is that maybe, just maybe, Jesus knows something that we don't and is living in light of it. Maybe Jesus knows that the things that we get worked up over aren't really worth getting all excited about. Think about it. Let's say that someone you know stubs their toe and are in pain. To them, in that moment, they are in a crisis. Their world is so tiny that they can't hardly think of anything outside of the pain in their toe. The worst thing you, as someone who knows just how small this pain is in the grand scheme of things, could possibly do is to freak out with them. You might show some signs of sympathy, but you wouldn't react as if the world was coming down because you know better and you know that, in spite of the momentary pain that they might be experiencing, it is not a big deal. And it isn't that you just know it in your mind, but you know it so deeply that you can actually live that way.

Perhaps that is what Jesus is doing. Jesus can be relaxed, not because he doesn't know how powerful and dangerous the storm is, but because he knows precisely how powerful and dangerous the storm is and that it isn't that big a deal. After all, in a moment he will stand up and, with a word, calm the storm. However powerful the storm is, it is not nearly as powerful as Jesus. The disciples are worried, but Jesus isn't, because he knows that the storm is no match for himself and that, at the end of the day, it won't matter all that much. Now, just because Jesus knows that doesn't mean that his disciples do. In fact, the opposite would be the case. They are worried because, even though they have seen all kinds of miracles, they are still not certain that Jesus can do anything to stop the storm (though they must have hoped he could do something, or they wouldn't have bothered to wake him up and plead for help).

Now, this is actually really hard for us today, because though we might know that Jesus is more powerful than our troubles in our heads, we haven't really internalized it, we don't know it so deeply in the core of who we are that we are willing to trust everything into his hands. When we as Christians say things like, "Everything will be alright," we don't mean, "Nothing bad will happen, or if it does, it won't be all that bad." Sometimes, things that are really bad happen to Christians as well as to non-Christians. When we say, "Everything will be alright," what we really mean is, "Everything will be alright, even if it kills us," because, at the end of the day, we as Christians believe that death is not the end, that Jesus is more powerful even than death and that we will one day be rescued even from death. And if even death is not a deal-breaker, then what do we have to fear? The trick is getting that truth so deeply into our very being that we actually live every day knowing and trusting that we are secure in Christ, regardless of what happens.

I want to make a connection between this story and one from the Old Testament. Are you familiar with the story of Jonah and the Whale? Jonah, while running from the calling that God had given him, got on board a boat with a bunch of other people. Not long into the voyage, a storm came up, so strong that the boat was in danger of sinking. The people on board were panicking, but Jonah was asleep. Sound familiar? The other people wake Jonah up and ask him to do something. This is where the difference comes in. Jonah says, "Pick me up and throw me into the sea. Then the sea will become calm for you, for I know that on account of me this great storm has come upon you."

Jonah said, "Alright, because we have this storm, I will throw myself on God's mercy." By having himself thrown out of the boat, Jonah was hoping that God would move, especially since it was his fault that the storm came in the first place. But where Jonah hoped that God would intervene, Jesus just stands up and stops the storm. Jonah basically said, "Nobody but God can stop this storm," Jesus stands up and stops his storm. Do you get the connection? Jesus is doing what has been shown in the Old Testament as something that only God can do.

Now, we in our day have had two thousand years of church history, of people working hard to make sense out of who Jesus is, so when we read that the disciples were filled with great awe and said to one another "Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?" we want to say, "Duh, he's the Son of God, God in flesh, God with us." But the people at the time didn't really know what to make of him at that point. To them, Jesus was a man; yes he was a miracle worker, he was an exorcist, he was a great healer, but he was just a man. After all, just about everything that Jesus did, miracle-wise, had been done at least once in history by other prophets in the history of Israel. The fact that this man who had authority over the unclean spirits had just as much authority over the wind and waves was astonishing.

But given the fact that, in Jesus of Nazareth, God himself came among us, we shouldn't really be all that surprised that Jesus could calm a storm. After all, we read all over the New Testament that the whole universe was created through Jesus. We read "All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being," and "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers - all things have been created through him and for him," and "Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds." If this is who Jesus is, it should come as no surprise that he can calm a storm. After all, he was the one who created the world in which the storm happened. Jesus is Lord, even over nature.

I do want to draw attention to the word that is used when Jesus calms the storm. The word in the Greek that is used is επιτιμαω and it means "to rebuke," which means to sharply correct or to scold. The reason why I bring this up is because it shows up every once in a while in Mark. For example, it is the word that is used to describe how Jesus deals with the unclean spirits we read about earlier, he "rebuked" them. At one point, it is even used when Jesus rebukes one of his disciples. The point here is that Jesus rebukes a storm, an inanimate thing. The sense we get is that Jesus is telling the storm to get in line, to behave itself, to do what it knows it's supposed to do. I have read that the idea is that Jesus is treating the storm like "an unruly heckler," behaving toward it as if it were someone who was interrupting his teaching. This is hard for us to understand because it doesn't make much sense for us to rebuke something that is not alive, but that just means that we need to understand that God approaches the storms of this life differently than we do.

I want to leave you tonight with the question that the people asked. "Who then is this?" There are lots of people in the world who say, "Jesus was a great teacher," or "Jesus is a nice guy, but I don't like his followers," or a bunch of other stuff that makes it seem like they want to honor Jesus but we need to remember that Jesus is not merely another teacher but is the one who can stop a storm that threatened to kill his disciples with a word from his mouth. Jesus is the one who sees the big picture, who has an understanding of context that is far beyond what any of us can imagine. We have a God who is not worried about the things that we are worried about, not because he doesn't care about us, but because he cares about us so much that he will not allow every little crisis, every little difficulty to shake him from his plans. Remember, even though Jesus did not prevent the storm and seemed to be unconcerned about it, nobody died that day. Nobody's boat sank and nobody drowned. In the end, it wasn't the panic of the disciples but the calm of the Savior that made the most sense. So let's go day by day and trust that, even though our troubles might be strong, and even if they kill us, our God is still in heaven and still cares for us. Let us pray.

AMEN