Sermon: Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, Mark 4:35-41

June 23, 2024 

Faith-La Fe Lutheran Church,
Pastor Jonathan Linman

We live in stormy times, don’t we? And not just because of Stormy Daniels…. though that whole scandal and responses to it have added much to the tumult of our days. Then we’re also bracing ourselves for enduring lots of storminess in the coming months with the presidential election looming ever larger on the horizon. Of course, literal storms like the weekslong outbreaks of tornadoes in other parts of the nation have wreaked much havoc. And they are predicting a busier than average hurricane season. Mexico and Texas have just suffered damages from a first tropical storm of the season. For us, our version of storminess is the oppression of the heat and absence of rain. We actually need quite a few more rain storms in Arizona. 

You get the point, and you could create your own list of the storms raging in your own lives, adding to the long list of stormy situations evident in the news headlines each and every day – war, gun violence, partisan divides in Congress and everywhere else, and on and on. 

So, the image in today’s gospel reading of the disciples enduring stormy conditions on the Sea of Galilee is an apt metaphor for our current time in the life of the world. Things seem more tumultuous than ever. Isn’t that true to your experience? 

And we can easily have the sense of feeling swamped, inundated by the deluge of everything swirling around us and within us (for we endure storms within ourselves, too, don’t’ we?). We are filled to overflowing with too much, not unlike the disciples’ boat on the rough seas which was filling to the brim with water and was sinking. 

So, we cry out to the Lord in our own ways like the disciples: “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” 

And yet amidst all of this “sturm und drang,” the storm and stress in our lives, Jesus is peacefully asleep on the cushion in the front of the boat. How could he sleep through all the noise, the beating of the waves? How could he not have been awakened by getting wet with the water that was inundating the boat? I’m awakened even by the momentary, quiet buzz on my iPhone when there’s an incoming text message. But Jesus persists at rest as a classic non-anxious presence….

How could Jesus sleep through such tumult on the sea? Because he, in fact, is the Lord of that very sea. He’s the same Lord of the Trinity who confronted Job as we heard in today’s first reading: “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding….” 

“Who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb, when I made the clouds its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band, and prescribed bounds for it, and set bars and doors, and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall you proud waves be stopped’?” (cf. Job 38:1-11). We believe that Jesus was there at the time of creation.

This lordship of Christ even over the seas, and indeed, over all the forces of nature and of the entire cosmos, has its culminating moment in Jesus’ death and resurrection. It’s there on the cross that Christ reigns as king, the cross being the throne. And the resurrection, Christ’s victory over death, establishes his reign, his dominion eternally, forever. No wonder Jesus could sleep through it all….

Jesus Christ, him dead, him raised, is the one who has authority to rebuke the wind and the waves, offering the command that must be obeyed, “Be silent!” “Be still!” Those are words of the law to the wind and the waves of our world, a command to the lawless disrupters who cause the storms to rage around us and to swamp us. 

And yet at the same time, these words of rebuke to the forces of chaos are also words of grace and promise to us, we who are enduring all the storminess. “Be silent!” “Be still” “Be still and know that I am God,” Jesus says to us (cf. Psalm 46). Sounds good, doesn’t it?

Jesus’ stern rebuke to wind and sea brings to us the gift of silence, which is a gift of peace. This, along with the gift of stillness, of stability in our lives. Thanks be to God.

But sometimes it seems as though Jesus remains asleep to our plight, that Jesus doesn’t seem to be awake to our need. Again, and again, we cry out like the disciples, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” 

You know, we have our own liturgical version of making this plea. It’s when we cry out in song every Sunday, “Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.” And the plea is on our lips with every petition of our Sunday intercessory prayers – “Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.” “Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer,” we pray, we plead, again and again.

And our cry is offered up in our own prayers at home when we pray for those on our prayer list and those who are near and dear to us, and when we pray, calling out in response and reaction to the daily headlines that provoke our pleading. “Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.”

And Jesus awakens and responds to our prayerful pleas every time his presence is made known to us in his holy word and in the sacrament of the table, a presence that has the effect oftentimes of settling us down, bringing stillness and calm again. That’s the gift of prayer, the gift of engaging the word, and that’s the gift of sharing in the sacrament of the altar. I pray that these things we do bring comfort and calm to you!

Also, consider baptism and its effects. We’re plunged into those stormy waters which wash away the claims of human sin that cause the many other storms that swamp us. And then Jesus shows up in rescue, raising us up out of the deep abyss, taking us into his gracious embrace which brings stillness, calm, peace, and the beautiful silence of eternity, interpreted by love.

In the presence of Jesus, in the stillness and calm which accompany that presence, our faith is kindled anew. And like the disciples we are filled with reverence, awe, and even a good bit of holy fear, offering our own version of the disciples’ confession of faith: “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” It’s a rhetorical question for us because we know and confess even amidst remaining mystery that “This is Jesus, the Lord of life, Savior of the nations, God of all creation.”

With our faith thus restored, renewed, and strengthened in the silence and stillness resulting from Jesus’ rebuke of the wind and the waves, we then are ready to be sent on the mission God entrusts to us in the power of the Spirit. That mission is to engage in prophetic ministry, like that of Jesus, to rebuke those who cause the storms in our lives. Then also, we’re beckoned to bring the peace and calm of Jesus’ presence to the many victims of the storms of injustice that continue to afflict humanity. This is our calling: to offer the peace of Jesus in our words and deeds, and as we seek God’s loving justice as peacemakers. 

This is not easy work, for it puts us right back into the stormy waters. And our lives of discipleship reflect what Paul named in today’s second reading in describing his own ministry and that of his companion co-workers. It’s a life marked by “afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger…” (cf. 2 Corinthians 6:4b-5)

And yet in Christ, who continues to rebuke the storms all around us, “We are,” as Paul says, “treated…. as dying and look – we are alive, as punished and yet not killed, as sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making many rich, as having nothing and yet possessing everything.” (2 Corinthians 6:8b, 9-10)

Praise be to Christ Jesus who says to us and to the world even today, right here, right now, those words of rebuke and grace: “Be silent!” … “Be still!” …. Amen.