June 25, 2006 Des Moines
Text:
Mark 4:35-41
Interrupting the Wind
I really have no experience with such things. I can count on one hand the times I have been on a fishing boat – with fingers to spare, and while it would take both hands to account for my sailing adventures, suffice it to say that they have uniformly been fair-weather experiences. There was that time a couple of years ago, during the first few stormy and therefore “wavy” days of a cruise, during which the smell – let alone the sight – of the dining room sent me into the queasies, but a few doses of Dramamine nipped that in the bud.
I can’t, then, identify with the scene in the story in which the winds howled and the waves slammed and the boat heaved and pitched, convincing the sailors onboard that they had better learn how to swim and hold their breath.
But the point of the story does not really turn on sea-sickness. It’s not really concerned with the perils of water sport or transportation, or the volatility of the weather. For all its realism and drama, for all our fascination with the meteorological implications and skepticisms, the real plot of the story swims in the murky darkness somewhere in the fathoms below the surface of the water. The sea had always represented, to the Hebrew imagination, the abode of frightening mystery, monstrous chaos and slithering evil. The sea had always represented a kind of metaphorical luggage that carried the scent of danger, the allure of deadly seduction, and the dread of powerless vulnerability. Hadn’t the primordial world been immersed in watery chaos, and wasn’t the divine intervention to separate dry land from the flood? And wasn’t the holy punishment, imposed after a suitable trial period and from which Noah was spared, a return to chaos in the form of submergence – creation, as it were, undone? And wasn’t the power of God’s redeeming love made dramatically manifest in the manipulation of the Red Sea, treating it like a radio-controlled toy, first parting it to allow the Israelites safe passage, and then slamming it shut to prevent the Egyptians from capturing them?
Time and time again, the scriptures proclaim God’s power over the sea and all the chaos it represents. The Psalmist, as if anticipating this morning’s story observed that Some went down into the sea in boats…then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress; he made the storm be still, and the waves were hushed (107:23, 29). God rebuked the sea and controlled the waters (106:9; 114).
Doesn’t it make sense, then, that Mark, wanting to make the clear connection to the age-old metaphor, would alter, slightly, his reference to this body of water that serves as the setting for this tale – a “lake,” really, but here conveniently called “the sea”? Whatever Mark wants to say about Jesus’ miraculous power over nature, he is saying something even more amazing about Jesus’ ability to intervene in the fear and disorder that paralyzes a disciple.
But maybe not just any garden variety stress and disorder that may happen to swirl up into a storm. This particular turbulence, it is useful to remember, Jesus had led them into. It was, after all, Jesus’ own idea that they all climb into boats after dark and sail over to the other side. If you read on you’ll see that Jesus had a purpose in mind on that far shore, but all that the disciples knew at the time was that they, the ones who had some familiarity with the water and more than a little expertise in sailing, had gone along with the suggestion of Jesus – a carpenter; they had done what he had asked, and now look at the mess they were in. “Don’t you care that we are going under here?”
Before they could be mad at him, however, they would have to wake him up. Jesus, it turns out, was sleeping. It is a rather fitting and ironic turn around: here, Jesus is sleeping and his disciples are anxious. Later, in the Garden of Gethsemane, it’s the disciples who can’t stay awake and Jesus who is anxious. In that later story, however, the sleep of the disciples is a function of wine and fatigue. Here, the sleep of Jesus is the flower of trustful faith, and the nervous panic of the disciples is evidence of their lack of such faith.
This was a storm that Jesus had gotten them into, and it would not turn out to be the last for those who seek to follow him. In fact, objective disciples could be forgiven for eventually concluding that the Psalmist had gotten it wrong in that favorite hymn – that more truthfully this good shepherd has a habit of leading us, not simply beside still waters, but as often as not into the midst of turbulent ones. What people of faith have learned in each successive generation is that Jesus’ way often rocks the boats in which we, ourselves, are sailing. Maybe we climb aboard thinking we are in for a pleasure cruise, but the truth is, storms arise. Following Jesus is seldom smooth sailing. Those martyrs who faced the lions in the Roman Coliseum could attest to it. Abolitionists in 19th century America could as well. And there are others, more recent.
President Newell Williams of Brite Divinity School recently reminded me of the story of Bert Cartwright who, when I was in seminary, was Area Minister for Disciples churches in and around Fort Worth, Texas, but in 1957 was pastor of a Disciples of Christ congregation in Little Rock, Arkansas. It was during his ministry there that Federal soldiers escorted nine black students through a crowd of white students and their parents into what had been an all-white public school.
Bert was actively
involved in the fight for desegregation.
In a sermon that Bert delivered during that time, “he told of visiting in the home of Elizabeth Eckford, one
of the nine students who, not getting a message to meet with the other eight,
had tried to enter the high school on her own, only to be met by a mob that
spit upon her and taunted her with threats. With her family gathered
around her, Elizabeth told Bert that she had read the fourth Psalm the
night before, and the twenty-seventh Psalm that morning before catching
the bus.
Opening a Bible to the twenty-seventh Psalm Bert had
begun to read aloud. As he told his congregation, “I knew the source of
Elizabeth’s strength to face the most horrible and frightening moment of her
life. ‘The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The
Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? When the
wicked, even my enemies and my foes, came upon me to eat my flesh, they
stumbled and fell. Though a host should encamp against me, my heart shall
not fear; though war should rise against me in this will I be confident.”
“I could picture her now,” Bert preached, “with the words
of the Psalmist seeping into her consciousness as she walked a walk which
seemed never to end. When we think of the problems facing us, let us think
of an Elizabeth Eckford, who has more guts than anyone present here today…we
shall be in danger of losing our own souls if in the midst of great impersonal
issues, we lose sight of some very bright children of high moral character who want
an education…not available to them in the formerly Negro schools….in my book,
Elizabeth Eckford is one of the most noble spirits I have ever known.”
But if Elizabeth found herself in a storm of holy origin, so did Bert Cartwright. As Newell then observed, “For this sermon and published articles supporting integration, Cartwright was criticized by some members of his church for discussing social issues and for not respecting the prejudices of white people. Within months, a full ten percent of his membership had transferred to another congregation whose minister assured them that segregation is the will of God.” [1]
Our own congregation has climbed into that boat before, as well – sailing, at some point, into the tumult over how much water was required for baptism, and overturning the long-held, “closed-membership” stipulation that members must be immersed, becoming instead an “open membership” fellowship that welcomed transferring members regardless of the form their baptism had taken. Turbulent waters, again, in the 1970’s when the question of women’s role in church leadership was the wind that threatened to scuttle the ship. And we have not sailed out of the wind, even now, for the way of Jesus still kicks up boat-rocking waves that force us to consider just how far we will follow this one who is “the way, the truth, the life.”
The message of the story, then, seems two-fold: first, that if you get into the boat with Jesus you had better be ready for some storm. Whatever else is drawn to Jesus, Mark wants us to be clear that Jesus attracts the wind and the thunder. But the second message follows quickly behind: following Jesus through holy storms is ultimately safe passage. Jesus is salvation. We may not keep our job; we may well get spit in our face; we very likely will become unpopular and the object of ridicule if not attack. But we will be able to sleep at night. One of the great lines in recent contemporary music is, “I made my bed and I sleep like a baby.” Even, Jesus demonstrates, in the thrashing of a storm.
We could, I suppose, just stay on the safe side of the water – protecting ourselves against any contentious vulnerability. We could. But Jesus didn’t. He climbed into the boat, set sail to the other side, and despite wind and wave and thunder and rain, he slept. Holy, faith-filled, slumber.
Would that we could sleep so well.
[1] From a
sermon delivered at University Christian Church,