4th Sunday after Pentecost - June 20th/21st, 2015 - Mark
4:35-41
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit +
Luther's
explanations to the Commandments always begin, "We should fear
and love God so that." On commandments 2 through 10, if I ask,
"what does this mean," you should all be able to get the
first seven words right, they always stay the same. And yet, for us
today, that third word, "fear", stands out as strange. We
tend not to think in terms of fearing God - and yet, that's a common
Scriptural way of speaking; it is, in fact, the climax of our Gospel
text today, "And they were filled with great
fear..."
That's the point, and a good point. And one that we today often do
not get - so let us listen again to our text and see what it teaches
us about the fear of God.
"On
that day, when evening had come, [Jesus] said to them, 'Let us go
across to the other side.'"
Jesus has spent a long day preaching, a long day preaching parables.
The sower and the seed was that morning. The parables we heard last
week as well - the parable of the ground, the parable of the mustard
seed. And finally, Jesus is just plain tuckered out. He wants to
rest, so He calls for the disciples to take Him across the sea of
Galilee. Which makes sense - at the beginning of the chapter we hear
that Jesus was teaching from the boat - it was acting like a natural
amphitheater. Which is why Mark notes the following - "And
leaving the crowd, they took Him with them in the boat, just as He
was."
Jesus is tired with a capital T. They don't go back on shore to
freshen up, they don't run to town for a nice dinner - it is just,
"I'm done teaching, get the boat going." Think for a
moment just how tired and ragged Jesus would have looked on that
boat. He had been in the sun, on the lake, constantly talking and
teaching. You guys have been to the lake enough, a good day on the
lake tires you out. Especially if you've gotten a lot of sun. He's a
mess - and they take him "just as He was" - and off they
go. And this is why Jesus promptly falls asleep. Deeply.
And
that's where the rub comes in. "And a great
windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that
the boat was already filling."
A duster kicks up. The sea of Galilee would often have these
squalls that would stir up - and the fishermen and boaters had
learned to fear them. They could swamp a boat like that - so if you
hit one, you rowed to shore (and hoped the winds weren't pushing you
further out to sea) and everyone else started bailing water as
quickly as possible. And this storm was apparently a bad one,
because they aren't bailing fast enough. And if the boat goes under
in a windstorm, with wild, heavy waves, you aren't swimming out of
that very easily. In other words, it is bad.
And
yet, there is Jesus, still asleep. "But he
was in the stern, asleep on the cushion."
This is one of the things we miss - we hear that word "cushion"
- some translations put it as "pillow". It's not a nice,
fluffy comfortable thing. In the back and bottom of the fishing
boats of the time there was a nice big rock to provide ballast - and
it was called the pillow. While that sounds really strange to us -
it made sense. Think on Jacob in Genesis chapter 28 - "Jacob
left Beersheba and went toward Haran. And he came to certain place
and stayed there that night, because the sun had set. Taking one of
the the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in
that place to sleep."
Then follows the dream of Jacob's ladder. But the point is this - a
"pillow" wasn't that soft fluffy thing we have - it was a
smooth, rounded stone. And what did the giant ballast stones look
like - like a big, smooth, rounded stone. Jesus isn't asleep in some
comfy bed. He is lying down on a rock. In the bottom of a boat that
is starting to fill with water... so the sea water would be starting
to lap up on Him - and there He is, still asleep.
Which
is why the disciples are surprised and wake Him up and say, "Teacher,
do you not care that we are perishing?"
Dude, wake up, we are dying here! How in the world do you sleep
through this?!? So get the picture in your head - there is a worn
out Jesus, probably now covered not only with the grime of the day,
but sea water and kelp and flotsam. Doesn't look like much, does He?
Not at His freshest. And the disciples are in full panic mode - you
don't tell your teacher, "You don't care" unless you are
freaking out. It is a wild and woolly scene.
And
then, Jesus wakes up. This isn't even the word for getting up and
standing up from sleep, it's just that one where He just opens up His
eyes, and then He "rebuked the wind and the
said to the sea, 'Peace! Be still!' And the wind ceased, and there
was a great calm." Peace
is too gentle a translation in my opinion - it's "silence",
it's "shut it", "quit your gabbin' sea." And "be
still" is a weak translation - it's "Be muzzled" --
it's when you got your hands wrapped around the dog's snout with it's
mouth clamped shut. He's "rebuking" - Jesus is laying some
verbal smack down upon the wind and the sea... having just woken up,
looking worn and groggy and tired. You know what Jesus looks like -
you know when the little kid comes bounding into the parents' room
all excited and bouncing, and mom rolls over and croaks out, "Go
back to bed." That's what Jesus looked like here... except it
worked. The winds died down, the sea became still.
And
Jesus gets to the point. After the wind and sea are taken care of,
He looks to the disciples and says, "Why are
you so afraid? Have you still no faith?"
Why were you afraid of the sea, why were you afraid of the wind...
don't you realize Whom you have with you in this boat right now? And
that's when we hear of the disciples, "And
they were filled with great fear and said to one another, 'Who is
this, that even the wind and sea obey Him?'"
That is a rhetorical question - that is wonderment, that is
amazement. Who is it? It's God Almighty, the very maker of heaven
and earth, the maker of the Sea and the Wind. And if you wonder who
is more powerful - the sea or God Almighty, the One with "Almighty"
in His title is going to win. There's the old pop song with the
line, "You don't tug on Superman's cape, you don't spit into the
wind." Well, what happened with the disciples? The wind was
scary... and so they decide to basically tug on Jesus' clothes and
tell Him to start bailing water. Hey Jesus, get up, get to work.
And then they see Who Jesus is - the One who controls the wind and
sea.
This
is one of the common themes of the Old Testament - where people
lament to God, start to tell God what He should or shouldn't be
doing, and God comes and puts them in their place. That's what we
had in our Old Testament Lesson. Job had been complaining to God,
telling God that He was being unfair. And God decides to speak back.
"Who is this that darkens counsel by words
without knowledge. Dress for action like a man; I will question you,
and you make it known to me. Where were you when I laid the
foundations of the earth?"
Alright hot stuff, you think you know how things should work - Gird
your loins - dress for battle, because you are going to tangle with
God. So - creation, what were you doing then? Oh, you weren't doing
Jack because *I* hadn't created you yet... so "shh". And
of course, the reason that this is our OT lesson today: "Or
who shut in the sea with doors when it burst forth from the womb,
when I made clouds its garments and thick darkness its swaddling
bands, and prescribed limits for it and set bars and doors, and said,
'Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud
waves be stayed'?"
For the Jew, God was the ruler of wind and wave - the waters were
His thing to control... and in fact, when we were all really lousy,
He controlled those waters to send a flood. And then, there is
Jesus. Looking almost like a drowned rat, worn, tired. And He just
casually controls the wind and the sea, He shows Himself to be God.
And the disciples fear Him. Now, when we say "fear"
we often think of terror, of trembling. That's not the fullness of
what this idea is - to rightly fear is to rightly recognize who has
power and control. You've got to know who has the most power and who
can do the most harm to you. If you are up on the top of a 20 foot
ladder, and a bee comes by, and you panic and flail your arms... yes,
you feared the bee... but you should have feared the heights - you
should have prioritized the situation, because unless you are deathly
allergic, a 20 foot fall is worse than a bee sting. This is why we
aren't supposed to text and drive - while you might be afraid of what
Ethan told Jenny last night, you really ought to be more afraid of
swerving into the oncoming traffic or into the ditch.
We
fear so many things - we often call them worries. We worry about what
we will eat or wear, we worry about what people will think of us. We
worry about declining health, or family problems. That's all fear.
Those are all things that can cause us harm, things we don't enjoy,
things that could hurt us. All fear. And they can all make us go
and do stupid, foolish things. In the face of these worries, our
fear ought to be a fear of the Lord - we should be more concerned
with what God thinks of us than what the folks across town think of
us - because while we might say that our neighbor "gives us
hell", they don't, not really, not like God can. We ought to be
more concerned with our spiritual health than just our physical
health - because while temporal death ain't pleasant, it's eternal
death and hell that is really bad. And so to "fear God" is
to have your priorities put in order - where instead of you waking up
God and having Him dance to your tune, God gives you the wake-up
call, saying that yes, He is the One in charge.
And that's a good thing. You think Jesus looks ragged
and haggard in the stern of that boat? It ain't nothing compared to
what He looks like upon the cross - and while the world with it's
pride and arrogance and misplaced fear sees nothing but a beaten and
dying man - behold there is Christ Jesus, God Almighty - just letting
the world do its worst to Him, because He is bigger and stronger than
the world, bigger and stronger than sin, bigger and stronger than you
sin, bigger and strong than death, bigger and stronger than you
death. And He dies and rises, and He says, "I, the Lord God,
Maker of Heaven and Earth, Ruler of all things, the One who casts
Satan and His legions into Hell, into the unquenchable fire - I
forgive you all your sins. I tie Myself to you in Baptism, so that
no ploy, no plot of Satan or the world can separate you from Me, for
My Word and Promise is stronger than them. I give you My own Body and
Blood, so that Your Body will rise, and you will enter eternal life
washed in the blood of the Lamb." Dear friends, It is good to
fear God, to remember who is in control - for He is in control for
you. Don't let the world distract you from this great and wondrous
truth. Be still and know that I am the Lord. Amen. In the Name of
the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit +
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