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The Fourth Sunday After Pentecost
O Lord, we beseech thee, make us to have a perpetual fear and love of thy holy Name, for thou never failest to help and govern those whom thou hast set upon the sure foundation of thy loving-kindness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Proper 7)
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The Fourth Sunday After Pentecost
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Scripture citation(s): Job 38:1-11; II Corinthians 6:1-13; Mark 4:35-41
A Sermon by
Fr. Spurlock
on
Job 38:1-11; II Corinthians 6:1-13; Mark 4:35-41
✛
I Had Thought the World Was Ending
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I have recently finished reading a book about a woman who trains a hawk for falconry as a means of coping with her grief over her father’s death. Near the end of the book she recounts waking from what she thought was an apocalyptic dream that included a poltergeist shaking her bed, only to realize she was experiencing the tremors of an earthquake. Her first thought is for her hawk. She writes, “I’ve heard all these stories about animals fleeing earthquakes. Oh… she must be terrified. I race downstairs, three steps at a time, burst through the door and turn on the light in her room. She is asleep. She wakes, pulls her head from her mantle-feathers and looks at me with clear eyes. She’s surprised to see me… She [must have] felt the tremors. And then she went back to sleep, entirely unmoved by the moving earth. The quake brought no panic, no fear, no sense of wrongness to her at all. She’s at home in the world… I had thought the world was ending.” H is for Hawk, H. Macdonald
The author and the hawk experience the same natural phenomenon, but have polar reactions to it, much the way Jesus and the disciples experience a storm together on the open sea. We have just heard the account of the disciples and Jesus pushing off from one side of the shore of the Sea of Galilee to cross over to the other side. In the midst of their journey a terrible wind begins to blow, the waves swell and threaten to swamp the boat. The disciples are terrified, but Jesus is asleep. They wake him up, and ask him, “Do you not care that we perish?” But don’t think this is a studied, indignant kind of asking. The disciples are panic stricken, and when they ask Jesus if he cares, they ask because they believe, and here the Greek is helpful, that they are being utterly destroyed, being made void, going out of existence. The world is ending, don’t you care?
Jesus is not panicked, or stricken, he is asleep. He wakes up, lifting his head from the cushion at the back of the boat. He looks at the disciples. He must have felt the tossing of the boat, yet he slept, entirely unmoved by the moving sea. The storm brought no panic, no fear, no sense of wrongness to him at all. Jesus is at home in the world… the disciples had thought the world was ending. Don’t you care, they ask?
There was probably no sense in trying to explain things to them in the midst of such a din, and in their present state of fear, so Jesus performs a miracle of nature, commanding the wind and the waves to be still. When peace is restored, Jesus asks his disciples a question. “Why are you afraid?”
If I may venture an answer to that question, I’ll tell you why we are afraid. It is because the sea heaves, the earth moves, our lives are short, and they always seem shorter than we think or hope they ought to be. Sometimes, bad things happen to us along the way, even evil things, and one need only attend to the news of the day to know the truth of this. We get hurt, sometimes by strangers, often by those closest to us. We’re sometimes uncertain that we are loved. We feel lonely, and isolated, even in the midst of our families and friends. We get anxious about our daily bread, our wherewithal, and our homes; the permanence of our human relationships. Our friends die, our parents die, our children die, and we die. The world, to us, always seems on the brink of ending. We do not feel at home in the world.
Of course that’s not all that life is, because there are days, even seasons of calm, solidity to our lives. There is the wonder of living, and the beauty. We have a great capacity for love and we receive love. Danger and death are distant rumblings, something that happens to other folks far off. We are capable of feeling at home in the world. And, is it any wonder; we were made to live in it after all. But the question is: why are you afraid, and it is a good question, because in spite of the good and glory of living, sometimes we are afraid.
But Jesus also asks, have you no faith? And that seems less a question and more an exhortation to have faith. But it’s even more than that. It is a call to exercise the faith that God has already gifted you with. “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.” Eph 2.8 The calming of the storm, the miracle, as we see in the disciples’ last question, “What manner of man is this,” is not just a demonstration of what Jesus can do, but who Jesus is, and Jesus calls us to exercise the faith that is already in us and believe on him. And that faith is well grounded because…
Well, take our reading from the Old Testament. God explains to Job that he, God “laid the foundation of the earth, determined its measurements, shut in the sea with doors setting limits for it and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed.” God teaches us that he made the heavens and the earth, and the sea, and he is master over them. Job 38.1-11 What Jesus does is to demonstrate that same mastery. Which again, I say, is not so much a demonstration of Jesus’ power, but rather his identity: Jesus and God are one in the same. Have you no faith that I am who I am? Do you not believe that I am God incarnate?
And if I can calm the storm on the sea, don’t you think I have the power, and the care, to calm the storm in your hearts? The one who doubts that “is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.” James 1.6 But the one who has faith is set on a sure foundation, is more than a conqueror, and can endure a litany of trial and tribulation, such that even in the midst of storms they may rejoice.
Saint Paul said that we are justified by that kind of faith, and by our faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, so that we can rejoice, even in the midst of storms, even in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, (we must endure) and endurance produces character, (we are called to grow up into the full stature of Christ) and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, (faith is not our weakness in the face of trouble, it is our strength) because God’s love, his care for us, has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
Sometimes we might wish we could be masters of the world and sea and all the trials and joys within in them. But we are creatures who were made by God to live at home in this world. But sometimes our fear gets the best of us. We might wish that Jesus would say, OK then, I’m going to be on hand to calm every storm that may come your way. But he doesn’t. He once shows that he is master of all that we can survey and even those things we cannot see. And he coaxes us to have faith in him. Which enables us to be at home in the world, to live in the world with hope and courage, not anxious over what we are to eat or what we are to wear, not anxious for our lives, except they be hid in Christ.
And I, like Saint Paul, seek to encourage you that God is for you. And if God is for you, who can stand against you? Christ, who is at the right hand of the father, intercedes for you. So then, who can separate you from his love? Shall any storm? Any trial, and tribulation, or distress? No. NO! In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who first loved us. And nothing in all creation, can separate us from that love.
Does Jesus care? Yes, he does. Do you have faith? Yes, you do. God has given it to you by the indwelling of his Holy Spirit. Exercise it, and be at peace in God’s world.
