A sermon on Mark 4:35-41 – Jesus stills the storm

Jesus, do you not care that we are perishing?

Many years ago, as I was preparing for ordination, I was assigned to do fieldwork at a church far, far away. This church was going through some stormy times, heavy weather. Hard and hurtful decisions were making waves, and I was close to feeling overwhelmed.

More than overwhelmed, on this particular Sunday morning I was feeling angry, and flailing. I knew that this was no way to approach my duties at the altar, so I stepped into the side chapel, knelt at the rail. I didn’t ask, “Do you not care that we are perishing?” No, my complaint was more personal: “So what, God? Do you want me to go down with the ship?”

And our compassionate, merciful, ever-loving God responded as clearly as I have ever heard them: “It’s not your ship.”

It’s not your ship. I believe that I might have been as astonished as the disciples in the fishing boat on the Sea of Galilee.

An encounter with the living God has a way of staying with a person. I have remembered and reflected on that moment from time to time. The directness of God’s address, humbling and awe-inspiring – I feel as though I recognize it in the no-nonsense approach of Jesus to the storm – Peace! Be still! Knock it off. Then he turns to the disciples and asks them, “What? What were you afraid of?”

It’s as though the storm which has become all-consuming to the disciples, for good reason, knowing the way that storms kick off, as though this storm were a little blip on Jesus’ radar, intent as he was on bringing the kingdom of heaven closer, closer to creation.

And they recognize, in this moment, that there is something way beyond what they thought was happening here. They knew that Jesus was powerful, faithful, a prophet the likes the world had not seen since biblical times. But here was something else: one who had the words to shape creation, to quell the wind and smooth the waters, the one who could speak, “Peace!” and make it happen, as the Word of God spoke light and life into being at the beginning of time.

How hard it is to hold on to that vision of eternity when we are caught up in the immediacy of the storm, sick from the motion of the waves, terrified by the torrent and the sheer noise of the wind. How natural to cry out to God, “Do you not care that we are perishing?” How astonishing to hear Christ reply, “Peace! Be still.”

It shouldn’t be astonishing, if we were of more than a little faith. If we had faith enough in the power of God over creation, over this, God’s world, and every element in it, over these, our lives that are but a breath on the wind of God’s word, “Let there be”; if we had faith enough, we could be the ones speaking peace to those suffering the storms of life all  around us. We could be the safe harbour, the becalming, the balm – and I have heard among the saints that you are, for many in your community. We have the words of life, we have the Word of God within us and beside us, before us and beneath us.

When I was very much younger, when I started going to church as a child back in Wales, I used to love looking up at the beamed ceiling that looked so much like the innards of a boat. I could make out the benches where the crew might sit, and where the curve of the prow came together above the altar. It wasn’t for years before I knew that the “nave” of a church is named, like naval, or navy, for its boat-like qualities, for being the ship in which the faithful and the foolish still gather around Jesus, wondering, “Who then is this?” Where we hear him saying, “Peace! Be still!”

It isn’t my ship, but it is our ship, and it is God’s vessel, grace for the world. That church where I heard God speaking in no uncertain terms understood that, and because of it they are not only still afloat, having ridden out the storm, but thriving in the knowledge that they are the vessel of God’s grace, providing safe passage for the good news of Jesus Christ, and a life raft for those still cast adrift, as I thought I was in that Sunday morning chapel, before the altar, before the word that cut through the noise and the chaos.

That is not to say that other storms won’t come – they will. But in the midst of them, remember that the answer to the question, “Jesus, do you not care that we are perishing” is always “Peace! Be still and know that I am with you. Be still and know that there is not a breath of wind that will not return you to me. Be still and know that in the storm and in the quiet, in the flood and in the desert, in the wind and in the whisper, God loves you.”