Mark 4:35-41
“Who Is This?”
June 17, 2012 - Third Sunday after Pentecost

         Racks were falling over in the gift shop. Our family was halfway between the coast of Wales and our destination, Dublin in Ireland. We were on a huge car ferry. It’s typically a rock steady vessel that rides like you are standing on land. But it was bouncing around in the water enough to rattle the nerves of everyone on board and upset a number of stomachs, including Joanna’s and mine. We understood now why the other ferry normally scheduled for this journey had decided not to sail. We wondered if ours should have.

         That ferry ride and a couple of other rough boat trips give me some appreciation for how the disciples felt that evening when the storm came up. They were in a smaller craft, which would have been tossed around much more than our ferry was.

         In 1986, a drought around the Sea of Galilee revealed an ancient boat stuck in the mud. Carbon 14 dating puts this boat pretty much at the time of Jesus, between 100 B.C. and 40 A.D. It was made primarily of cedar, although there were ten types of wood in it, because it had been patched so often. It was 27 feet long, 7 and a half feet wide, and maybe about 4 feet high. It would have been rowed by 4 men and could have carried fifteen. It’s exactly the kind of fishing boat the disciples had.

         We’ve been listening to Jesus’ teaching in Mark 4. We need to remember that as He spoke, Mark 4:1 tells us He was teaching from a boat, pushed out a little from shore so that He could speak to the crowd. Now in verse 35, Jesus is weary and He asks them to simply row Him away, to the other side of the lake. Verse 36 says they took Him just like He was, sitting in the boat, probably on the deck in the stern. Which is where we find Him in verse 38 as the storm is rising.

         It’s easy to imagine Jesus falling asleep there. Public speaking for even a little while is tiring. On the occasions when I’ve had to teach all day I’ve been exhausted, even with breaks and a lunch time, which Jesus didn’t have. So as the disciples began to pull on the oars and the boat gently rocked away from the shore headed east, Jesus laid back on the cushions He had been sitting on and dozed off.

         The Sea of Galilee sits almost seven hundred feet below sea level, in a basin surrounded by hills and mountains. To the northeast, Mt. Hermon rises nearly 10,000 feet above the lake. The warm air at the level of the lake and the cold air rolling down the mountain can mix and kick up furious weather conditions. That’s what happened that evening. The word translated “windstorm” can mean “hurricane” in Greek. Boatmen on the Sea of Galilee today still call that evening east wind “Sharkia,” which is Arabic for “shark.”

         You don’t have to be on the water to feel like you’re in a small boat in a big storm. You don’t have to be overboard in the ocean to feel like the sharks are around you. Imagine how Eric and Shelby felt this past week as their little boy lay sick in the hospital in Chicago and they waited for a difficult diagnosis. Imagine how you’ve felt when the wind has rocked your own little vessels, whether those have been the ships of family, of health, of employment or just your own frail emotional boat.

         The memory of their boat in the storm stuck with these men. They must have repeated it often enough that it became a symbol for their whole enterprise. In the catacombs the early Christians painted pictures of that boat. Sometimes it was Noah’s ark, sometimes the boat with disciples in it, and sometimes just a ship on the water. But they understood themselves to be like those disciples, out on stormy seas with their Lord.

         It became an icon representing the Church. That sense of being in a boat together even carried over into the language of church architecture. In a traditional church building the area where the congregation sits is called “the nave,” deriving from that same root which gives us “navy.” Christians gather on Sunday morning to ride out the storms of the world, here in the boat together.

         Verse 37 says the storm came up, the winds beat into the boat, and it was being swamped. Water was coming over the sides. And water in your boat is scary. One day out on a lake in a rented rowboat with my friend Jay we lowered the anchor into deep water. But in our hurry to start fishing, we let the anchor rope catch for a second around the latch on the plug in the bottom of the boat. It popped loose and water started pooling around our feet. We were able to grab the plug and force it back in, but for a few seconds, we had visions of our boat sinking beneath us. It got our pulses racing.

         Water in the boats of our lives takes all sorts of forms. It can be a conversation with a doctor. It can be a phone call from a son or daughter in the middle of the night. It can be a piece of paper demanding payment for more money than we have. At those moments when the waves slosh over the side, we sometimes ask, “Where is God?” “Why isn’t He here?”

         In the storm it’s time to remember that the answer to that question, “Where is God?” It’s the same as it was for the disciples, although they didn’t realize it yet. He’s here. For them, Jesus was right there, in the back of the boat all along. The Lord was with them in the boat, in the storm.

         Yes, Jesus was asleep in the boat. But the very fact that Jesus was sleeping offers us an odd assurance. Our Lord was there because became one of us. He knew what it was like to have worked all day and be so weary that He just had to rest. He felt what it’s like to be aching tired at the end of a grueling day. He went through the kind of stress that makes us just want to flop on the couch and close our eyes. He is with us in every way, including His own experience of what it’s like to be bone weary of work and life.

         So we know He’s there. The bigger problem is the question that arises once we realize that God is present. That question is the one the disciples cry in desperation in verse 38. Matthew and Luke tone it down. They have the disciples calling to Jesus to save them, or simply waking Him up with an appraisal of their situation, “We’re perishing!” But Mark, who got this story from Peter, is more honest about what they really said, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”

         That’s how we feel sometimes, isn’t it. God may be here, but He just doesn’t care. He’s in the boat beside us and He knows perfectly well it’s sinking, but it doesn’t matter to Him. He isn’t helping. The job, the marriage, the bills, God must know all about them. So why isn’t He doing anything? Is He asleep in the back of our boat?

         Jesus didn’t respond to the question about whether He cared. Instead He showed them the answer. Verse 40 tells us how He woke up and “rebuked” the wind. That word for “rebuke” is the same one used in chapter 1 and chapter 3 when Jesus rebuked evil spirits. Jesus spoke to the storm, to the water, like one who has authority over a person. He said, “Peace! Be still!” The tenses of the verbs suggest something like, “Be still and stay still.” Then, says Mark, “there was a great calm.”

         To get the picture we need to imagine something like those images from the film, “The Perfect Storm.” Hear the sound of the wind, the slam of the waves against the wooden boat. Feel the chill of cold air and soaked clothing. See the disciples pulling down the sails and dragging at the oars to turn the boat into the waves. Everyone is yelling, moving, desperately trying to do anything that might save them.

         Then Jesus sits up, speaks a couple of words, and all is quiet. The disciples also quieted. Frantic, shouting, even shouting at Jesus one moment, but in the next moment they were sitting still, completely dumfounded. Oars, ropes, gunwales still in hand, they sat gaping open-mouthed at the Man in the back of the boat.

         They’ve just been through a harrowing experience. They are catching their breath. They collecting their wits. And now in verse 40, Jesus wants to help them learn from it. So He asks, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”

         Think about it from the point of view of Mark’s Gospel. What have they seen from Jesus? He has healed a lot of people and He’s driven out a lot of demons. And He’s just been teaching them about how the kingdom of God grows like planted seeds, springing by the work of the Holy Spirit and growing large from tiny beginnings. Now Jesus is asking them to make an application of all that. He’s wondering why they haven’t put two and two together and made a discovery about who is with them.

         Remember the “Messianic Secret” in Mark? We talked about how in Mark’s telling of the story, Jesus is always warning the disciples and the demons not to reveal who He is. But part of it is that the disciples are still figuring the secret out. We read this and we’re not surprised at all that Jesus speaks to the wind and the waves and they calm down. We’ve hear for twenty centuries that Jesus is God. But for those first believers it was an incredible revelation.

         It wasn’t enough that He could command evil spirits. It wasn’t enough that He could say a word or place a hand and bodies would be made whole. It wasn’t enough that He offered people forgiveness for sin. It wasn’t enough that He taught like no one ever taught before. They still weren’t connecting the dots, they weren’t to the point of faith where they could say, “Jesus is Lord,” and mean that He really is Lord, that is, Lord and God of all creation.

         Even more, they could not yet say that Jesus was Lord of their storms. Not just the squalls that kicked up on that big lake where they earned their living, but the storms they would each face as they kept on following Him. Peter would wind up on his own cross. James would have his head cut off. John would be sent into exile. They needed to learn that Jesus would be their Lord even in that sort of gale, when the winds of death were blowing. They needed to learn faith in Him.

         Their faith began with fear. Our English version says “they were filled with great awe,” but that’s too tame. Literally, it says “they feared a great fear,” repeating the word for fear twice. They had been afraid when the wind was blowing, but now that it had stopped they were more afraid, afraid of the One who calmed the storm.

         Proverbs 9:10 says that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” In their awe and fear of Jesus they were beginning to learn some wisdom. It was that wisdom which make them begin to ask each other the question we find in verse 41, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” That was exactly the question Jesus wanted them to ask. “Who is this?”

         How often do we hear people talk about going through some rough patch, some storm of life, and say, “You just gotta have faith.” The question that goes unanswered is “faith in what?” When Jesus asked those scared men why they still had no faith He didn’t mean some general faith in a universe where everything will just work out for the best. Faith like that, generic faith that somehow life will turn out O.K., is meaningless, hopeless faith. Jesus meant faith in Him. After all that they had seen of Him, didn’t they have any more faith, any more confidence in Him?

         So that question, “Who is this?” is the start on the road to faith. To discover bit by bit, storm by storm, who Jesus is and what it means to have Him in the boat with us, is to grow in faith.

         A number of years ago, I went with others from our church and we took a raft trip down the wild and scenic section of the Rogue River. Two of us who had no experience, Jeff and I, rode with an experienced oarsman, Gus. Most of the trip was just a pleasant, relaxing float through beautiful country. But after we put in, just around a bend, we came to some rapids. At that point, I was glad that Gus had been rowing a boat for years. He told us to hold on, and he took us through the heavy water smooth as silk.

         Later in the day we came to a rougher patch, the rapids around what they call the “Coffee Pot,” I  think for the way it percolates. By then I had confidence in Gus, so I wasn’t prepared for what happened. Right in the middle of the river, our raft got stuck, tilted up against a big rock. We weren’t pinned, the water wasn’t holding us there, but we needed to get unstuck and back out into the main flow.

         So Gus had Jeff and I shift our weight to the other side. He had us rock back and forth. He had us grab paddles and try to push off the rock. But we were stuck. Finally, Gus jumped out the boat, picked up the side of the raft and began to heave it off the rock. I sat there thinking, “What happens if the boat comes free and he doesn’t get back in the raft before it moves off?” I realized the answer to that question was that Jeff and I would be sitting ducks for whatever the Rogue River and the Coffee Pot cared to do to us.

         Fortunately, the raft came free and Gus was ready. He leapt back into the boat, grabbed the oars and took us through the rapids like nothing had ever happened. Now, even more, I said a prayer of thanks that Gus was in our boat and that he was who he was, an experienced navigator on that river.

         When you head into your own storms, when the river turns and you see the rapids coming, when the wind comes up and the waves start coming over the side, my hope is that you will remember a couple things. The first is to stay in the boat. A number of times I’ve talked with someone who’s going through a problem with family or work or some other stress and they will say, “Pastor, I don’t know if I will come to church.” But this is the boat. This is where we ride out the storms. This is where the Lord meets us together. Sailing into the storm is not the time to jump out.

         Most of all, though, the second hope I have is that you will remember who is here in the boat with us. He’s the Lord who made the water and the waves and the wood out of which our boat is constructed. Our faith in Jesus Christ is faith in God, that God Himself is taking us through the storm. He’s more than an experienced navigator. He’s more even than a miracle worker who can control the weather. He cares about what is happening to you. He cared enough to ride out the storm of His own death so that He could save you.

         May those thoughts calm your heart if not the storm around you. May you be able to be still and stay still as you think of Who it is that is with you. And may you then be filled with awe and with peace, because Jesus the Lord is in your boat.

         Amen.

         Valley Covenant Church
         Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
         Copyright © 2012 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj