"Courage for A New Time"
Mark 4:35-41
During the dark days of World War
II, the World Council of Churches adopted a symbol which had been important to
the early church during times of danger, hardship, and persecution: the church is depicted as a storm-tossed
boat, with a cross for a mast.
Over the
centuries, the ship has been a prominent symbol for the church in Christian art
and architecture. This part of the
church building is called the “nave,” which is the Latin name for “ship.” If you look up, you can see how the designers
of this building evoked the symbolism.
Then, if you look at the
stained glass windows, you’ll see that one of them depicts a ship tossing about
on the waters.
When the
early Christians tried to describe what it was like to be a Christian and to be
a member of the church, they said it was like being on a ship with Christ in a
storm. The story we just heard from
Mark's gospel seemed descriptive of the early church’s experience.
In the Gospel
lesson, we find the disciples on a journey.
The journey is not one of their own choosing, but one they've been commanded
to take.
It must
have been a long day. Jesus had been
teaching beside the sea. There had been
a huge crowd gathered on the shore, while he sat in the boat and spoke in
parables about the Reign of God.
When
evening came, Jesus said to the disciples, "Let us go across to the other
side of the sea." So, leaving the
crowd behind, they set off across the sea.
The time I
sailed across the Sea of Galilee, it was on a beautiful, calm, sunny day. It was smooth sailing. But Peter and the other fishermen among
Jesus' inner circle of disciples knew from experience the danger of sudden storms
on the Sea of Galilee. As the wind and
the waves fill the boat with water, the disciples are filled with fear. They're sinking, and they’re afraid they
might drown! In terror, they turn to
Jesus, who is calmly asleep in the stern of the boat. The disciples woke Jesus with words we may
use to address God when things get scary:
"Don't you care?"
Mark tells
us that Jesus had been sleeping through the storm. In the Hebrew Scriptures, the ability to
sleep peacefully is a sign of perfect trust in God's providential care. So when Jesus was sleeping through the storm
it didn't mean that he didn't care about his disciples. It showed that he had perfect trust in God to
keep them all safe.
Jesus woke
up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, "Peace! Be still!"
The words
Jesus addressed to the wind and the waves are exactly the same words he used in
the exorcism of the demon-possessed man in the first chapter of Mark. It's a forceful rebuke, as he commands the
forces of the storm, saying, “Be still.
Be calm!"
And the
wind ceased-- just like that. There was a dead calm.
Then Jesus
said to them, "Why are you afraid?
Have you still no faith?"
When you
read through a gospel from beginning to end, you get a much better feel for
what the evangelist means when he uses particular words and symbols that you
miss if you read little parts of the gospel in isolation. For Mark, faith isn't about holding correct,
orthodox beliefs or living an upstanding moral life. Faith is trust. Fearfulness is the lack of faith.
Mark tells
us that disciples are sometimes called to do things that are risky or scary to
us-- things that require that we trust in the power of God to sustain us, in
spite of our fears.
Mark wrote
his gospel in a time of great persecution, under the emperor Nero. Peter and Paul had in all likelihood been put
to death. The infant church was in
danger of being wiped out. So Mark
included stories in his gospel that would encourage the people in the church.
I think we all
live our lives somewhere between fear and faith. A certain amount of fear can
actually be healthy, when it protects us by motivating us to avoid unnecessary danger. But too much fear can be unhealthy. It can be crippling.
Bruce
Larson was once interviewing Christian psychiatrist Paul Tournier about his
counseling methods. He asked, "How
do you help your patients get rid of their fears?"
"Oh, I
don't,” was Tournier's immediate answer.
"That which does not frighten does not have meaning. All the best things in life have an element
of fear in them."
The
disciples may have been afraid to cross the sea at night. They must have felt fearful about going to
the gentile side of the Galilee and reaching out to people they'd always
regarded as unclean and unacceptable. Yet Jesus commanded them to get in the boat
and go.
We're all
caught somewhere between our desire for safety and security and our need to
move to new and fearful areas. It's
good to be sensible and responsible...
to provide for our loved ones...
and to avoid certain unnecessary risks.
It’s good for a congregation to use best practices to be faithful
stewards of the church’s resources.
But there's
a difference between having a healthy degree of fear-- and being fear-full. A certain amount of fear and struggle can
actually contribute to our spiritual development. But when fear takes charge of our lives, it can
prevent us from being all that God intends for us to be.
We might like
to think that if we follow Jesus, he'll keep us out of the storm. But, as disciples of Jesus Christ, we're not
promised a safe, successful, long, or trouble-free life. He never promised it would be easy.
Congregations
have a tendency to want to stay out of the storm. It's scary to set out into less familiar
territory... to reach out to people who
aren't just like us…. or to do some things in new ways. It would feel safer to stay close to home…or
to wait for a weather forecast that guarantees us that there won't be a storm.
I'm convinced that the storms and
the struggles of life-- both on a personal level and as a church-- are part of
how Christ teaches us to trust in God's love and power to save us. If we're going to travel with Jesus, we
have to weather some storms.
The good
news is that when we begin to trust in God's love and saving power we can overcome
some of our fears. We can begin to have
faith we can weather the storms of life-- because Christ is with us.
We live in
a tumultuous time—a time of great change and polarization and anxiety— in the
world and in the church.
And yet--- I believe God is working to do a new thing in
our time. I believe that this is a time
of new reformation-- re-formation--and that God is working to create a new church,
in and through us. I believe that God
wants to use us as instruments of justice and reconciliation in the world.
So… on this Reformation
Sunday, what do we hear the Spirit saying to us?
In
her blog a few years ago, Diana Butler Bass wrote of the Protestant Reformation
movement: “It strikes me as interesting that those who followed the teaching of
the new reform movement did not come to be known as “Reformists.” Rather, the moniker that stuck was “Protestant.” Luther and his associates were protesters rather
than reformers—they stood up against the religious conventions of the day,
arguing on behalf of those suffering under religious, social, and economic oppression.
These
religious protesters accused the church of their day of being too rich, too
political, in thrall to kings and princes, having sold its soul to the powerful.
The original Protestants preached,
taught, and argued for freedom—spiritual, economic, and political—and for God’s
justice to be embodied in the church and the world.”
The early Protestants believed that they were not only
creating a new church-- but that they were also creating a new world, one that
would resemble more fully God’s desire for humanity. They weren’t content
with the status quo. They felt a
deep discomfort within. They knew things were not right. And they
set out to change the world.
Long ago God spoke through the prophet Isaiah: “I am
about to do a new thing. Now it springs
forth. Don’t you perceive it?”[1]
I believe God is working to do a new thing in our
time. I believe that this is a time of
new reformation-- re-formation--and that God is working to create a new church,
in and through us. I believe that God
wants to use us as instruments of justice and reconciliation in the world.
So, on this Reformation Sunday, we can be
thankful for the Reformation of the 16th century. As we look around at the world we live in
and see things that are not right, we can be glad that we are freed for a great
adventure of faith.”
In the words of our Presbyterian Brief Statement
of Faith, “in a broken and fearful
world, the Spirit gives us courage to pray without ceasing, to witness among
all peoples to Christ as Lord and Savior, to unmask idolatries in Church and
culture, to hear the voices of peoples long silenced, and to work with others
for justice, freedom, and peace.”[2]
In this
ship we call the Christian life, we will go through some storms. But we don't need to be afraid, because we
know that Jesus is with us.
Thanks be
to God!
Amen.
Rev. Fran Hayes, Pastor
Littlefield Presbyterian Church
Dearborn, Michigan
October 30, 2016
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