Our reading from Mark’s gospel this morning is about a dozen solid, strapping blokes in their prime, four of whom virtually lived at sea, scared witless by a spot of bad weather.
We know this gale must have been strong because the geography of the region is like a miniature of the Caribbean. The Sea of Galilee lies at the foot of Mount Hermon, which is high enough at the summit to be capped in snow all year round. At the same time it is only a bus ride from the Mediterranean Sea. When warm air rises from the sea and cold air descends from the mountains, the two fronts collide producing sudden and dangerously violent storms.
There’s a story about Queen Victoria’s ship running into some bad weather in the Irish Sea. A freak wave made the ship lurch to one side, almost knocking the queen off her feet. She sent an attendant to the bridge with the message, “Give my compliments to the captain, and tell him he’s not to let that happen again!” It seems to have escaped Her Majesty’s notice that the captain was only human.
And at the beginning of our short reading Jesus looks very human too. In v38 we catch him asleep after an exhausting day’s work. Jesus was a real man who needed to rest sometimes but he can also stop storm force winds by ordering them to calm down. Not everybody can do that. Not even the captain of the royal yacht.
I’m going to invite you to look at this story from three different angles; the storm, the disciples and then Jesus. Let’s look at the storm first.
1) When Storms Happen
Weather forecaster Michael Fish famously laughed off reports about a small hurricane heading towards the U.K. the day before Britain’s worst gales on record. I remember the day afterwards going out in the car and getting nowhere. There were fallen trees blocking roads, phone lines were down, advertising boards in shreds, whole towns were without power – southern England was like a war zone.
Michael Fish knows now that rainstorms break into your life when you least expect them to. They don’t phone you to make space in your diary for them. They mess your life up. They are inconvenient.
And here it’s the same. Verse 35 tells us that evening was drawing in. By the time they get out into the lake it must have been dark. That makes a bad storm feel worse. Matthew’s parallel account (chapter 8) says that it had been a long, stressful day. The disciples probably wanted a bit of time to unwind. How bothersome is it to have to battle with a life-threatening minor tornado in the dark when you are already shattered?
But isn’t that just life? Have you noticed that people lose their jobs and fall sick and discover their kids have been taking drugs and lose a loved one and discover their teenage daughters are pregnant at the most appallingly bad times – like when your marriage is struggling, your bills are going up, Boro are going down, someone dents your car without leaving a note and the boiler gives up? Don’t even mention swine flu, bird flu or what have you. Storms kick you when you are down.
To be frank with you, I think we have been weathering something of a storm at All Saints’ over the last month. Both Sylvia and I have had close family members in hospital at the same time as some difficult pastoral situations to attend to besides illness and exhaustion in the staff team, as you know. I’m not going to name them but some of your leaders here have spent long evenings trying to sort out some of the crises that have suddenly appeared. At the same time, there’s been malicious gossip coming from outside the church that we’ve had to set straight. I’d like to say more about that but the Diocese have advised me not to. And wouldn’t this just be the week that the church computer breaks down, creating additional work? Wouldn’t this be the week someone accidentally walked off with my keys, leaving me looking for them all afternoon! Then to cap it all I was awoken by a neighbour this morning to tell me that someone had vandalised the church centre overnight. I quickly got dressed, ran over to the church and found this.
Storms kick you when you are down and it all comes at once. But that’s not all. Storms are not just inconvenient, they’re indiscriminate too. Bad times don’t just visit people who have wandered off from God. We’d understand if they did. We’d say, “Ah, God’s trying to say something to you.” But in the real world storms often blow up – guess when? When you are plumb in the centre of God’s will for your life.
Notice Jesus says in verse 35, “Let us go over to the other side.” They could have replied, “Oh, not now! Lord, we need a rest. We are not going anywhere till tomorrow.” Suppose Jesus had said, “Look, it’s late now. Let’s bed down here and take a boat tomorrow morning.” Then we could all say, “See what happens when you ignore God’s will for your life – you end up in a storm.” But life isn’t that easy. If the disciples had refused to go out on the lake, they would have settled down for the night on dry land they would have slept in their beds like babies and never even known about the storm on the lake. The truth is they were right where Jesus told them to be - and they were still struck by a raging gale! Some people talk as if walking in God’s will means life will be a breeze. No. Walking in God’s will means life will be an adventure.
2) What Are You Supposed to Do in a Storm?
So much for the storm. What about the guys in the boat? What would you have done if you had been in that vessel with the twelve? Let’s say it; they were pathetic bunch. One of them, Thomas, must have been something of a pessimist. Only three things he ever said are recorded in the Bible. There’s the famous “I don’t believe it” speech after Jesus was raised from the dead. Then he says (in John 13), “Lord, we don’t know where you’re going. So we’re completely lost.” And the other quote is when they get bad news about Lazarus and he says, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” What a blessing it must have been having Thomas in the boat...
Then two others were enemies; there’s Matthew, the ever-popular taxman and de facto supporter of the military occupation, and Simon the zealot (who was an insurgent). I’m guessing they were seated at opposite ends of the boat.
Then four of them were fishermen; Peter, Andrew, James and John. You would have thought that their maritime experience would have been a comfort to the others in this crisis but these guys seem to have been a special case. There is no record in the Gospels of any of them catching a single fish, not even a dead sardine, except by a miracle. Look it up. If you can find one fish that Peter, Andrew, James or John caught without Jesus having do a miracle I’ll eat my Bible. If you can find two I’ll eat yours.
So sharing a boat with this lot would not inspire confidence. And I haven’t even mentioned Judas… Now here’s the question. What would you have done, in a storm, with this rogues’ gallery of losers and lame ducks as travelling companions? I can see four options.
Option 1; you leave Jesus alone in the stern and bail water over the side like men possessed. There are twelve of you. That’s 24 hands on deck. Many hands make light work… I think that’s what I would be tempted to do, if I’m honest; handle the situation myself, to boldly bail like no man has bailed before.
But this appears to have been a serious storm. Verse 37 says that “waves were breaking over the boat, so that it was nearly flooded.” For every cup you threw overboard there was a bucket coming back in over your head. For all my boldness, I would have gone down to the seabed a heroic failure.
Option 2. You panic, wake Jesus up, grab his lapels and shout faithlessly for help… which is what they did do of course. And what happens? Jesus tells them off. “What are you so scared about?” he says, “Do you still have no faith?” Remember this; Jesus has a problem with having his sleep disturbed over the trifling matter of a small tornado.
So to option 3. Perhaps the problem was not that they woke Jesus up, but that they were so terribly loud and vulgar about it? You still wake Jesus up and appeal for help, but without panicking. In that phlegmatic stereotypically English way you tap him on the shoulder and go; “I say old chap, sorry to disturb you and all that, but it’s a tad bracing here. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind giving us a bit of a hand, there’s a sport.” But no, Jesus’ reply in v40 seems to suggest that he detected in their manner a serious lack of faith.
Option 4. What else is there? You take authority in faith. Why is it so annoying when someone suggests prayer in an emergency?
When our daughter Anna was about three, we had to get to Bible College in our old Citroën 2CV on a cold February morning. 20 minutes of turning the ignition key, waiting, turning again, giving it more choke and pumping the gas pedal got us nowhere. Kathie knows that in these situations it’s best to say nothing. After about 25 minutes of fuming and muttering and, like a typical man, looking under the bonnet (as if I knew what to look for), I was ready to give up. That’s when Anna, only just able to talk, said in a loud voice from the back seat, “Come on Jesus, start the car!” I put the key back in the ignition, turned it again and the engine fired first time.
People were praying when the Titanic went down. Then again, people were playing chamber music as if nothing was wrong when the Titanic went down… Which activity do you think was most useful?
I think Jesus wanted his disciples to realize they could take authority in faith themselves. Jesus’ primary rebuke is that they still had no faith. “Still.” So much of Jesus’ ministry up till that point had been focussed on building his disciples’ faith and encouraging them to imitate his own simple trust in his Father. “How is it that you still have no faith?”
“Why are you so fearful?” he says. Verse 40 describes them as afraid. But in verse 41, after Jesus has turned the raging waters into an oily calm, the Bible says they were “terrified.” In other words they were frightened about the bad weather but – you know what? Not as much as they were when God moved with power and might in their lives.
I think they wanted a domesticated God, a safe God, a nice God - and not God Almighty, the great and awesome God of Scripture. God deliver all of us from that.
I feel sorry for the disciples. I bet when Jesus said in chapter 1, “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men,” they thought, “Ah, fishing, this sounds good.” By chapter 4 I think they were probably saying, “If I had known it was going to be like this, with him, I wouldn’t have come.” Do you know that feeling? I’ve heard people say, “If I knew all the trouble I was going to get before becoming a Christian I wouldn’t have bothered.” I’m sure the twelve apostles, with all the trouble they got into following Jesus around, often wondered why they hadn’t just stuck to tax collecting, fishing or armed revolt - and had a quiet life.
I want to encourage you this morning. God knows that troubles in life often precede new triumphs. God knows that your troubles can precede your triumphs. I’ll show you how in just a minute.
3) Looking to Jesus
But first, having looked at the storm and the disciples, let’s quickly look at it this story from Jesus’ perspective. How does he respond to it?
From first to last, he is in control. Even when he is off duty he’s totally in charge. Bear in mind that he is shattered. He can’t keep his eyes open. I think we can safely say that Jesus has been putting in serious overtime. The squall is jostling the boat this way and that, but Jesus is out for the count. And then his deep, dreamy sleep is abruptly ended by twelve noisy blokes. You can see why he sounds a bit cross.
But then what does he do? He rebukes the wind and tells the sea to be quiet, to put a sock on it (the word means literally “be muzzled”). Jesus addresses the storm and says, “Shut up!” That is profound. Jesus knows that the storm has a voice. It says to you, “You’re no good, you’re a loser.” It shouts, “You’re going down, nothing can save you now.” It yells, “Look at your kids! Call yourself a good Christian parent?” It roars at you and intimidates you and harasses you until you believe everything it says to you. “God doesn’t love you! Why would he let you have so many problems if he really cared for you? Don’t bother witnessing to your colleague; you’ll fail.” Have you been listening to the storm? Is it time to take authority in the name of Jesus and say, “That’s enough talk from you! Be quiet!”
Ending
I’m going to end by telling you how one ordinary person took authority in faith to still the raging storms in her life. She turned troubles into triumphs by refusing to fear and by telling the storm to be quiet. Her name was Wilma and was the 20th of 22 children! She was born prematurely and weighed only 4.5 pounds but she and her mother were not permitted to be cared for at the local hospital which was for whites only. There was only one black doctor where she lived, and money was tight, so Wilma’s mother spent the next several years nursing her through one illness after another: measles, mumps, scarlet fever, chicken pox and double pneumonia. Then it was discovered that her left leg and foot were becoming weak and deformed. She was told she had polio, a crippling disease with no cure. The doctor said that Wilma would never walk.
But Wilma’s mother was a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ and she knew better than to listen to the storm. Even though it was 50 miles away, she took her daughter to a special hospital twice a week for two years, until she was able to walk with the aid of a metal leg brace. When Wilma was 8 she watched her sister Yolanda play basketball and, even though her legs were in braces, she refused to listen to the storm and she said to her mum, “One day I want to do that.” And her mum said to her, “Honey, if you believe, you will.” And Wilma said “I believe, mamma.”
On her twelfth birthday Wilma said to her parents, “I have a birthday surprise for you.” And she took her leg braces off and walked unaided for the first time in her life. Soon after, when the basketball club selected youngsters for the new season, Yolanda was taken by the team but Wilma was not chosen. So her dad, refusing to listen to the storm, looked the coach in the eye and said, “You take one of my daughters, you take two. I am not going until you take Wilma as well.” So he took them both but he didn’t play Wilma in a single game for three years. She was the only member of the team to suffer the indignity of having a vest with no number on it. But Wilma still didn’t listen to the storm and finally, she got a few games.
It was then that she was spotted by Ed Temple, the coach for the women's track team at Tennessee State University. He saw straight away that Wilma was built for athletics, not basketball, and he invited her to a summer sports camp. Wilma got better and better. She even started to win races, first in her town, then in her state, and then nationally, even going on to the Olympic Games in Melbourne in 1956 at the age of 16, where she won a bronze medal in the 4x400 relay.
“Honey, if you believe, you will.” “I believe, mamma.” Four years later in 1960, Wilma Rudolph went to the Olympic Games again in Rome, where she took the 100 meter gold, the 200 meter gold, and the 4x400 meter relay gold, breaking three world records.
People of God, we too can turn troubles into triumphs in the name of Jesus by refusing fear and by telling the storm to be quiet. It says in 2 Corinthians 4, “Therefore we do not lose heart... For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.”
Faith hears the inaudible, sees the invisible, believes the incredible and receives the impossible, because when we do what we can God does what we can’t. “Why are you so fearful? How is it that you still have no faith?”
Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 3rd May 2009
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