Sermon — June 23, 2024
The Rev. Greg Johnston
I’m always amazed by whose daily work consists of dealing with relatively stressful parts of the rest of our lives. The surgeon who walks into a room and describes precisely how she’s going to slice through your heart, with no apparent anxiety about the procedure, because while this is the scariest moment of your life, for her, it’s just a Tuesday at the office. The skydiving instructor who casually launches people out of an airplane before jumping out himself, as he’s done hundreds of times before. The airline pilot who pops onto the announcements to say, “This is your captain speaking. It looks like we’ve got a little bit of bumpy air up ahead, so I’m going to put on the seatbelt sign…” You can’t see him through the door, but he’s probably up there popping Fritos while you’re clutching the armrests for dear life! These people can be soothing—surely, if they think it’s not such a big deal, maybe it’s not such a big deal. But they’re also unnerving—after all, isn’t there a chance they’re just completely nuts?
Jesus is one of these people, for sure. Jesus is with the disciples in the boat, but he’s acting in a way that’s not at all like the disciples in the boat.
As a matter of fact, he’s been with the disciples in the boat all day. Such a large crowd had gathered that morning that Jesus had gotten into a boat on the sea and sat there, while people crowded around on land to listen. (Mark 4:1) He told them parables about sowing seed, and hiding lamps under a bushel, and how the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, and “on that day, when evening had come, he said to them, ‘Let’s go across to the other side.’” (4:35) Now, Jesus is tired—speaking to a crowd without a microphone will do that to you—and he falls asleep. Deeply asleep. A huge wind starts to blow, and the waves are breaking over the bow, and the boat is being swamped. You can imagine the scene: people rushing around, trying to bail out; throwing things overboard, and desperately trying to remember how to swim.
But in the stern, Jesus is asnooze. And they go back and start shaking him—“Teacher,” they say, “Don’t you care that we’re perishing!?” (4:38) And he wakes up, and yawns. And what does he do?
Does he start shouting orders, like a seasoned sea captain, like the commanding Messiah they might expect him to be? “Batten down the hatches! Ease the sails!” (I’m not a sailor.) No. He does not.
Does he call upon the name of God, like a wise pastor, praying in words that give voice to the fear and pain of his people and bring them comfort, that artfully articulate their deepest desires in the moment of their greatest need? “O God, you still the storms of the sea; surround us with your loving care; protect us from all danger; and bring us in safety to our journey’s end. Amen.” No. He does not.
Does he grab a bucket and start bailing? Nope. Does he panic, too? Of course not. He looks over the side of the boat at the sea, and he says, “You stop it! Chill!” And it does.
This little vignette tells us so much about God, and about Jesus, and about our lives, and I think it goes back to a distinction I noted earlier: just as Jesus was with the disciples in that boat on those stormy seas, but he wasn’t like the disciples in that boat on those stormy seas, Jesus is with us on our sometimes-stormy pathways through life—but Jesus isn’t quite like us, and that’s a very good thing.
Jesus is with us. And Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us. Our God is not a cruel god, playing with us for sport, creating storms to torment us. And our God is not a cold, clinical god, swamping us with waves to test our faith or improve our endurance. God is not an absent god, creating the universe and laying down a moral order and then gone off somewhere on vacation, while the world burns and our prayers pile up in the inbox. Our God is a compassionate God, a God who “suffers with” us—this is what “compassion” means, “suffering with”—a God who comes among us on earth, and experiences what we experience. God feels every wave as it hits the boat, and God knows what it’s like to be swamped.
God is with us, but God is not exactly like us. Jesus doesn’t panic, when the people around him are panicking. He’s not afraid of the wind and the storm. He absorbs their panic and their fear. Like that skilled surgeon or jaded airline pilot he remains unbothered, infuriatingly calm. But he doesn’t just stay calm. He acts, in an unexpected way. He speaks directly to the sea, and tells it to be still, and it is.
There’s a dramatic irony in this story, something we know that the disciples don’t. “Teacher, don’t you care that we are perishing?” they ask, and we know that in fact, he cares very much. He cares not just about them, but about all of us; not just about the fact that they might be perishing in that boat, but that we are all perishing; that we are all only mortal, in the end. He knows, and he cares, and he acts.
In this story, he immediately stills the storm. But there’s an echo of another ending here, another way that he could act. Did anyone hear the echo of the book of Jonah in this story? Jonah flees from God’s call, and gets on a ship, and God sends a storm. There’s wind and waves and the sailors are afraid, but Jonah lies asleep. The two scenes are the same. The sailors wake Jonah up, and tell him to pray to his god, like they are praying to theirs. And Jonah, like Jesus, chooses to act. Unlike Jesus, he doesn’t rebuke the storm. He tells the sailors, “Pick me up and hurl me into the sea.” (Jonah 1:12) And they do. And the ship is saved. And that’s where the whale comes in, by the way—God sends a whale to swallow him up, and Jonah remains entombed in the belly of the whale three days, and then rises again. (Does that ring any bells?)
Jesus doesn’t throw himself into the sea to save his companions. Not yet. But that’s where the story is going. The echoes of Jonah are no accident. Jesus is going to throw himself off the boat, metaphorically speaking, to save the people around him. Jesus is going to hand himself over to death on the Cross, and after three days, rise again. And it’s that act of self-sacrificing love that saves us from the power of death so that we, too, can travel safely across the stormy seas to the other side.
Maybe this morning you feel battered by the storm, tossed around by the waves and barely hanging on. Maybe this morning you feel good, but you remember what that’s like. Or maybe you look around at a world that’s full of chaos, and violence, and war, and like the disciples, sometimes you feel afraid.
You’re not alone. God is with you in the boat. God loves you, and God cares that you’re in danger, and God comes to be with you there. And you are allowed to cry out! You’re allowed to say to God, like the disciples say to Jesus, “Don’t you care!?” That doesn’t bother God one bit. Jesus is calm, whatever the source of the storm. And when you bring that fear and pain to God in prayer, God can help to lighten the load, because God can carry any amount of it for you, and God will not be swamped.
Sometimes God works through other people, of course. Sometimes God is present to us in our own, quiet prayer, but often God is present to us in a friend’s listening ear, or in a conversation with someone we trust. You even pay someone to sit and listen while you talk to God sometimes, even if you think you’re talking to me. And that’s all well and good, and I hope that it helps calm the waves.
But God is not just a listening ear. Like Jesus, waking up in that boat, God chooses to act, in mysterious and sometimes surprising ways. I wish it were the case that God would simply still the storm. I wish it were the case that we could see such quick results. But who am I to try to guess where God is acting and where God’s not? I wasn’t there, nor was Job, when God laid the foundation of the earth, when the morning stars sang together and the heavenly beings shouted for joy. (Job 38:4, 7) I can only trust that God is stilling the storm to a whisper, that God is working in our lives and in our world to calm the waves, and that God will one day bring us safely that distant shore.