The Feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, 06/24/2018

Sermon on Mark 4:35-41, by Paula Murray

³⁵On that day, when evening had come, Jesus said to the apostles, “Let us go across to the other side.” ³⁶And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him. ³⁷And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. ³⁸But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” ³⁹And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. ⁴⁰He said to them, “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?” ⁴¹And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” Mark 4:35-41 ESV

The first job of the Christian preacher is to preach Christ crucified and raised from the dead for the forgiveness of our sin and for our salvation. That’s the first job and it’s also the last, for face it, we can’t hear those words often enough. But a whole lot can go on in a sermon, and many another biblical theme can be broached between those two most important goalposts. We have spent some time prayerfully reflecting on what it means to abide in Jesus Christ, meaning to remain in him or continue with him.

Much of that talk of abiding in Christ has had to do with those practices or disciplines of faith that concentrate our attention on the life of Jesus Christ and his benefits precisely because we are surrounded by earthly blessings or pursuits that would otherwise lead us to neglect or even reject our Lord. As St. Paul put it last week, we tend much to our earthly tents and not to the immortal house God has built for us with his own hands. We are, like the original Adam, creatures of the red dust and easily entranced by its charms. The godly path laid out by our Savior seems, in contrast, too much like hard work marked by sacrifice for it to charm us. So, during these Sundays after Pentecost Day, as we droop and drip a bit in the warmth of hot, summer days, our readings from the Scriptures recall the importance of the disciplines, the practices of faith so we do not unwittingly stop abiding in Jesus Christ.

That recall began with God’s invitation to observe the Sabbath and to keep it holy. I think most of us here this morning willingly admit that with the exception of worship on Sunday mornings we have turned the day into a second Saturday as full of errands and household chores as the first. Even those who claim they need the day to catch up on their sleep and who might worship at the Church of the Mattress, as our son would confess when asked, then fill the day buying groceries, changing the oil in the car, mowing the grass, cleaning the garage. All worthwhile tasks, but life draining not life giving. We deny ourselves the day of rest we not only need but crave, and lose that chance to abide in Christ that resting in him allows.

We have also been reminded, that to do the will of God is to be one of the family of Jesus Christ. To keep the commandments is to abide in Christ. “Who are my mother and my brothers?” Jesus asks in last week’s readings. “³⁴And looking about at those who sat around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! ³⁵For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.’” (Mark 3:33-34) In fact, the Gospel writers routinely remind us if we love Jesus we will keep his commandments, meaning the Ten Commandments and the summary of the Law that Jesus gives us, “Love God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength and…your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:27) What is love but the best of all possible ways to abide with or in one another?

So to date, we have been exhorted to practice the disciplines of our faith that we may continue to abide in Christ. Luther would remind us, though, that however we abide in Christ, we cannot do so without God choosing first to abide with us. “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith.” Luther, of course, is only working from Scripture himself. St. Paul’s laundry list of afflictions suffered on behalf of the Gospel reads as a long complaint of abuse of clergy by the Corinthians, but is really a reminder that the grace of God is given to all; we do not achieve our salvation, we receive it. The Corinthians’ pride has closed their hearts to God’s presence, not just St. Paul’s epistolary homilies. We can none of us move from self to God. The movement of our salvation has always been from God to humanity.

So while the disciplines of faith are important for our growth in the spirit, it is God himself who chooses to abide with us and who makes it possible for us to abide in and with him. God himself makes that abundantly clear to Job, reminding Job that he, Job, had nothing at all to do with setting the foundations of the earth or prescribing the limits of the sea. Justice, likewise, is God’s domain, and humanity, having neither the capacity nor the understanding to achieve it, is to trust in God to see us through all that is unfair and even destructive.

God’s willingness to abide with us throughout the storms of life, including those we create for ourselves, is literal, not merely figurative. In this morning’s Gospel lesson, Jesus suddenly announces, after a day spent teaching the crowds in parables and then explaining the meaning of those parables to his disciples, that they should take to a boat and sail across the Sea of Galilee. The timing of the voyage is problematic, especially for the fishermen with Jesus, for they know the waves of the little sea are more problematic at night than during the day. Also, it has been a full day of ministry, and the men with Jesus are tired, implying that sailing the boat across the small sea is likely much less safe than it would otherwise be. The destination also creates potential social problems for the disciples as the far side of the Sea of Galilee is inhabited by Greek speaking inhabitants, not Hebrew, and their lifestyles are not just different but unclean to the Jews’ understanding of life. Jesus is asking the men to undertake a difficult journey, for reasons he keeps to himself, one filled with an uncomfortable number of unknowns.

And it seems that everything that could go wrong with this nighttime voyage does go wrong. A storm rises up, and the waves crash into the boat. The men cry out for fear, and eventually one of them rushes to waken Jesus who has slept straight through all the commotion of the storm and the men’s anxiety and on a pillow across the front of the boat. “Aren’t you afraid that we are perishing,” the disciples holler at their Lord. And Jesus, annoyed at the disciples for their lack of faith, tells the wind to “stop,” and the waves to be at peace. And while the sea is suddenly calm the men in the boat are now aware of a wholly different fear. Who is this man who, like God, commands the seas themselves?

We know the answer to that question, but then, so did those original disciples. A man who can command the waves as God separated the waters in the beginning or during the time of the Exodus is Messiah, the Blessed One of the Lord, sent to save his people from their sins. God himself has chosen to save his people, even to abide with them in the midst of the great storms of life. He will never get out of the boat. We may be so swamped by our fears, our insecurities, the events of life to be unware of God’s presence. Never the less, God is with us, abides with us daily, and is our neverending source of strength. He will abide with us for love’s sake, and for pity’s sake, because we are lost without him and cannot go to him. So he will come to us, and though we do not understand why things happen as they do, still we will trust him who is our life, Jesus Christ, the Lord.

Pr. Paula Murray

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