“Jesus and the storm”                        

Preached at Arusha Community Church

By Rebecca Mosley

June 24, 2018

My mother’s family had a tradition of spending time at a beautiful lake in Canada.

For those of you who know the area,

it was Kootenay Lake in British Colombia.

·          The lake was like a long thin knife of water,

·          cutting between mountains on either side,

·           very deep, very cold, very wild and very beautiful.

·          We would go and stay – uncles, aunts, cousins, grandmother –

·          in a simple log house on the populated side of the lake.

·          We would rent a small metal motor boat –

·           very simple, just 4 meters long with a small engine on the back.

·          Early Every morning and every evening, some of us would go out on the boat to fish for salmon and trout.

One time when I was a kid, we all decided to take a picnic across the lake and spend the middle of the day over there.

We were so many relatives, that we needed to make two trips in the boat to get everyone to the other side.

·          The other side was almost 4 km away, and completely wild.

·          There was no road over there, no one lived there permanently,

·          so it was perfect for swimming, exploring the forest,

·          throwing rocks into the water and enjoying the wilderness.

·          The sun was warm, the breeze crystal clear. We were content.

In the middle of the afternoon, we realized that some of us needed to make the trip back across to our cabin to start cooking dinner.

·          My Uncle Verne, my Mjomba, mom’s oldest brother, drove the boat.

·          He was a very tall, large, strong man, and had years of experience on the water.

·           So, he took one load of people back while the rest of us continued skip rocks into the lake.

·          The round trip took almost an hour.

·          While we waited, we suddenly realized that the sky had filled

·          with dark clouds, which had swept over the top of the mountains

·          and now were looming over the lake.

·          In the mountains, a big storm can build up so quickly and take you completely by surprise.

·          The wind began to blow.

·          Waves started forming on the lake.

·          We gathered up the rest of our picnic gear and waited anxiously for Uncle Verne to get back to us.

·          We could see him flying back across the water,

·          the light boat bouncing high above the growing waves.

·          We all tumbled into the boat as fast as we could,

·          and Verne turned the boat around back towards the safe shore.

And now the wind started to blow even more strongly down the lake,

pushing up large waves, white with foam.

·          They rolled across our direct path,

·          and so there was no way Verne could drive the boat straight back to the safe harbor.  Our small boat would have tipped and filled with water as we passed between the waves.

·          He had to turn and steer the boat up the lake,

·          hoping that he would be able to turn and take the boat back again at an angle once we had crossed the middle of the lake.

·          Still, waves were splashing into the boat.

·          The rain started pelting us.

·          My relatives were using cups and a bucket to bail water out of the bottom of the boat.

·          At one point, my big strong Uncle Verne handed the tiller to his son and unlaced his hiking boots.

·          I knew what that meant: if you ever are thrown into the cold lake, kick off your shoes so they don’t drag you down underwater.

·          Our captain was getting ready for the boat to capsize.

Suddenly, the reality of our situation was perfectly clear to me.

There we were, crouched in a tiny little piece of metal,

in the middle of a wild mountain thunderstorm,

tiny, helpless specks in a roiling, wild, chaotic expanse of water.

I became painfully aware of how deep and dark and cold the lake was

 – 150 meters.

Yes, my Uncle was an experienced sailor,

but there was absolutely nothing he could do against the forces of nature.

I was terrified. Are you?

I sure hope so.

Of course, I lived.

But I told this story to make absolutely sure that you are feeling very, very anxious right now.

Because we should not listen to the story of Jesus calming the storm,

sitting comfortably in our chairs, wearing our nice, dry clothes,

and thinking, “Oh those silly disciples! What were they so afraid of?”

Mark Davis, another pastor wrote:

“I think perhaps we ought to imagine ourselves and our entire congregation in an airplane that has lost its engines when we preach this text. Then we can explore panic and piety together.”

So, let’s not look down on the disciples.

These men were professional fishermen.

They had spent almost every night of their working lives out on this lake.

They were not afraid of sailing in the dark.

They were not silly scaredy-cats.

No, the tempest which had broken upon them was truly a huge danger.

They knew enough to realize that if the waves reach a certain height

– any longer than the length of their boat –

no amount of skill would save them.

The laws of physics would take over.

Their boat would capsize. They would all drown.

You know, I am all in favor of songs which stretch us and build our faith.

I think it’s good to teach our kids songs like,

“With Jesus in the boat, I can smile at the storm.”

But I think that the bible also invites to take our humanity seriously.

This is not a storm where the disciples can watch, safe and warm inside a house.

They are tiny and helpless and completely at the mercy of the powerful forces of chaos,

for which the sea is the consistent biblical symbol.

They are sure that they will be completely destroyed unless something miraculous happens.

let’s be honest.

We would love to believe that our lives will be comfortable and straightforward as soon as we decide to follow Jesus.

But our experience tells us otherwise.

As frail human beings, we remain at the mercy of chaos and sinful forces,

even after we have decided to follow Jesus.

I do not want to explain that away or defend God on that score.

We all know that it is true.

And I’m not talking about the way we suffer because of our own sin.

I’m talking about the unlooked-for suffering of this life.

Members of our community have suffered deeply in recent years.

·          A young woman was murdered.

·          A promising young leader was killed in an accident.

·          Two dear spouses have passed away after long illness.

·          Many are suffering from prolonged unemployment.

·          Marriages have fallen apart.

·          Others long to be married but have not found an appropriate spouse.

·          Children are born with serious illnesses.

We pass through storms, terrible dangerous storms.

And sometimes, in fact, we do not come out alive.

As disciples, as human beings, terror seems the appropriate immediate response to the very real dangers that we sometimes face.

Let’s take a step back. How did this all start?

Jesus was teaching the people by the lakeshore.

So many people had come to listen,

that he was in danger of being crushed and overrun.

So, he climbed into his friends’ boat and continued preaching.

·          He taught the people about the Kingdom of God.

·          He showed them, in word pictures, in parables,

·          that the Kingdom of God often appears in unexpected ways.

·          It may be hidden.

·          It may seem like a tiny beginning of no account.

·          It grows mysteriously.

·          God’s kingdom and God’s ways are unpredictable.

Jesus taught the people all day, and then, towards evening, he felt that he was done.

He decided that it would be right to cross the lake and go to the other side.

So, he dismissed the crowd

and then instructed his disciples to set sail for Gergesa.

They didn’t even pull the boats up on to the shore and get new provisions or change clothes or anything.

Jesus simply sat down, just as he was after preaching,

and they left for a distant and unfamiliar land.

Maybe he knew he couldn’t give his friends time to think about this,

or they would chicken out. I’ll explain that in a moment.

In any case, they were soon out in open water,

Jesus (exhausted from preaching) lay down in the back of the boat and fell immediately into a deep sleep.

One of his friends tenderly lifted his head

and placed a pillow there to cushion him from the wooden supports,

and then left him to rest.

But let’s remember, even though Jesus was sleeping, this voyage was his idea. If we had been following the Gospel readings in Mark over the past month,

we would have seen Jesus actively teaching and doing wonders.

All his ministry was done on the western side of the lake, the JEWISH side.

He was working among his own people,

and the power of God was at work in him, demonstrating his authority.

Now, for the first time, Jesus is crossing over to the other side.

The Gentile side. The unclean side.

The side where Roman, pagan culture holds sway.

Interestingly, this journey from one culture to another,

is the journey in which they meet a terrible storm.

Jesus invited – no, commanded – his friends to join him on this journey.

Did he know how much danger he was putting them in?

Are you bold like me? There are questions I am tempted to ask:

 Jesus, did you put your friends in danger intentionally?

But maybe these questions are just too simplistic.

In life, we pass through storms. Many we never understand.

But sometimes, God in his grace reveals his hand to us, as we look back.

It’s a bit dangerous to generalize from one person’s experience to another.

But I will take that risk for the sake of illustration.

Let me tell you another story, about a sort of lake-crossing in my life.

It was 2007. My husband and I were living in New York state.

Paul was working as a faculty at a college and

I was serving as an associate pastor in a United Methodist church.

Paul’s contract was ending in another year, and so he began to apply for teaching jobs at other universities.

I began to look for a Mennonite church where I could serve as pastor.

In that time, we realized that we were expecting a second child.

We were so grateful for God’s timing:

we would be able to give birth to this child in a community where we were known and cared for, before we had to move.

When I was more than 3 months pregnant, we decided to tell our church the good news of the baby we were expecting

– because that’s what we do in US culture, unlike here.

Everyone was excited.

Then I went away for a few days to attend a conference on healing prayer. While I was there, my fellow pastors really prayed for and blessed the child I was carrying.

I returned home, but I soon realized that something wasn’t right.

That next week, I lost the baby in a miscarriage.

It was a hard, physical experience – I ended up in the hospital –

but the grief and shame and confusion and anger were even greater.

A great deal of my anger was directed towards God,

who I felt could have prevented the loss of our child.

I felt like I could take the disciples’ storm-driven words as my own:

“Lord, don’t you care that we are being destroyed?”

It was not easy continuing in ministry for the next few months.

At the time, I was working with teenagers, and let me tell you, you can’t lie to teenagers, when you are struggling.

But I began to realize that I couldn’t judge God, simply because events had happened differently than I had hoped.

And through that experience of loss, Paul and I realized something very important.

We had been looking for new jobs which were basically the same as our old jobs.

We were hoping to continue our same life, just in a new location.

We were trying to stay on the familiar side of the lake.

And now, even in that pain, we remembered our commitment to someday,

enter into cross-cultural ministry.

We saw that now was the time.

We we would need to leave behind many things – Paul’s first profession, our families, close community – and follow God’s call.

Still, I was scared.

I really wanted to have another child,

but now that child would certainly be born into an unknown place.

One day, Paul and I were talking about those fears as we took a walk in the woods.

And we also were talking about passage from the Bible that meant a lot to us It’s in John’s gospel, when Jesus waits to visit Bethany and allows his friend Lazarus to die of an illness.

When he finally arrives in Bethany, Jesus is confronted by Lazarus’ grieving sisters.

Martha is resigned to wait for heaven to see God’s goodness.

Mary is really angry with Jesus.

And as we talked about their grief and ours, their fears and ours, suddenly, my husband turned to me,

with his eyes blazing and spoke the words of Jesus:

“I am the resurrection and the life. I am the resurrection and the life.”

I was filled with terror and awe and courage as those words sunk in.

Suddenly it was clear:

·          The good life is not defined by how well it matches my plans.

·          It is not judged by health or sickness, well-being or poverty, by life or death.

·          The good, abundant life is found ONLY in Jesus.

·          He himself IS the life.

·          And the choice to follow and trust is terrifying

o   – I need to abandon my own sense of ownership of my life

o   – but also incredibly liberating.

o   Jesus knows, better than we can, what will draw us to abundant life.

Jesus teaching us this truth liberated us to accept a 6-year call to serve in Burundi.

God in his grace granted us another child,

and I was able to trust that it would be ok to go pregnant into the unknown. During that time of service in Burundi, we truly saw God at work.

Just as the disciples were amazed by Jesus’ power among the Gentiles on the unfamiliar side of the lake.

I think of those friends of Jesus.  

I think that had their own moment of terrible liberation in the middle of that storm.

Up until that moment, they had been living their lives,

Honored to be chosen as companions and friends

to such a charismatic, wonderful person as Jesus.

But they did not really know who they were with.

It wasn’t until they saw Jesus in the storm that they knew.

They shook him awake.

They said, Teacher do you not care that we perish?

And they used the same word Jesus used later:

whoever would save his life will perish.

And immediately, Jesus arose! Yes he arose – with all that means –

and he turned and faced the powers of chaos and he REBUKED the wind.

And he cried out to the roaring sea: Acha! Avast! Be muzzled.

He tamed that wildness to his bidding with a word.

And then he turned to his disciples and asked,

“Why are you so shaken? Have you no faith?”

In fact, they had only had faith in a God they could understand.

They had not yet learned to have faith in an uncontrollable God.

Ironically, all through the storm,

Mark never speaks of the disciples being afraid.

But now, only now, in the face of this

powerful, mysterious, unfathomable figure whom they thought they knew, they are “Afeared great fear.”

They are shaken by an even greater terror.

They say to each other,

“Who in the world is this, that even the wind and sea obey him?”

Their terror and awe go far beyond terror of the natural order.

Theirs is terror of a God they cannot understand or control.

This God makes decisions and wields power according to his own wisdom.

We cannot even begin to understand his purposes.

This God does not simply bless our plans.

He leads us into terrifying storms and across boundaries.

He calms the storms again, but only in his time.

We can no longer define what is good or right or best for us.

We may never even understand God’s plan, even up to the end of our lives.

It is not about us at all.

Meeting face to face with this God, is awe and terror of the highest degree.

I think it’s fitting that in the Roman Catholic Lectionary of this week,

A passage from Job 38 is also read on this same Sunday.

The disciples’ terror is the terror that Job felt when God finally agreed to meet and speak with him.

Job had been through the worst storm any human being has ever suffered.

He demanded to confront God with the unfairness of his situation.

And this is what their encounter sounded like:

The Lord Speaks

38 Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said:

2 “Who is this that obscures my plans

    with words without knowledge?

3 Brace yourself like a man;

    I will question you,

    and you shall answer me.

4 “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?

    Tell me, if you understand.

5 Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!

    Who stretched a measuring line across it?

7 while the morning stars sang together

    and all the angels[a] shouted for joy?

8 “Who shut up the sea behind doors

    when it burst forth from the womb,

9 when I made the clouds its garment

    and wrapped it in thick darkness,

10 when I fixed limits for it

    and set its doors and bars in place,

11 when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther;

    here is where your proud waves halt’?

And God goes on to question Job at length about his role in creation – which of course he was no part of.

I could leave this sermon there – in awe and terror of the living God.

But I won’t.

The calling of a preacher is to preach good news.

SO far, We’ve only seen this story as filled with anxiety and chaos.

But there is good news hidden in this passage,

Later in Jesus’ ministry, his disciples felt this kind of fear again.

It was when they were following him up the road to Jerusalem,

where he had promised them that he would be executed.

They were terrified and astonished by this Savior who made decisions that were completely unthinkable to any normal human.

In our wisdom, we would have saved Jesus from destruction of that storm on the cross. and we would have been destroyed ourselves.

But thanks be to God that his wisdom exceeds ours so greatly that he gave up his life to redeem all of creation.

He arose to bring us out of the storm and onto a new shore of resurrected life.

But even before that, we see this good news, lying quietly in our story.

In the middle of the tempest, we cry out,

“Jesus! This was your idea! We are on this journey because you called us.

Why are you doing this to us? Where are you, God?”

And when we look, we see him.

God is with us.

There he is sleeping, his head resting on a pillow in the midst of the storm.

the living God put himself at greatest peril to be with us.

Jesus could have gone down with the whole ship –

the entire plan of salvation is hanging by a thread.

And Jesus, our friend, chooses to be with us.

Yes, this whole trip is his idea.

Through it, we learn that the fear is real,

and it takes a lot of faith to keep our heads.

We learn that the greater fear is trusting a God we cannot understand or control.

But in the end, we learn of his sacrificial love.

We learn that he is a friend we can trust.

Jesus is with us through the danger.

And he leads us across the water and through and to another shore.