It’s kind of interesting thinking about going out sailing on the sea of Galilee. From my understanding of archaeological evidence, fishing boats in the time of Jesus and the disciples were about thirty feet long and had a pretty simple single mast. And the Sea of Galilee is 8.078 miles wide at its widest point, so if you were to stand up, in clear conditions, you would never be out of sight of land. The problem is that this small sea sits well below sea level with mountains around it which fuels the creation of quickly developing violent storms. You can check out some footage of a Galilee storm on Youtube, and I can tell you that it’s pretty impressive and scary to think of being even a hundred yards off shore in the middle of it. But that’s where Jesus and the disciples find themselves in this week’s Gospel reading. This reading raises a lot of questions for me. It’s a great childhood Sunday School story on its face, but I can’t let it go at that because it presents so many questions that have very real and important implications in our day to day lives, and these questions and implications are very important. If we just walk away with a superficial reading, I think we journey into theological waters that are more perilous than a stormy Galilee. Thing one, in a whole lot of art we see Jesus standing up in the front of the boat. My problem with that is, is that is not what Mark tells us. Mark tells us specifically that Jesus was asleep in the stern, and I checked my boat lingo to make sure, the stern is the back of the boat. The stern is where the skipper and the helmsman are, that is the one that gives the orders and the one that actually drives the boat. Now they may not have been that formal, but it is still the only place for the tiller, the thing that steers the boat. So the carpenter, from Nazareth, a dry place that’s 16 miles as the crow flies from the sea, is back there with a storm approaching. Most of these guys were fishermen and the Sea of Galilee was their home field. As often and as quickly as storms hit this area, this was not something that was strange and unexpected for these guys. I get the feeling that they were making the mistake that I have seen and made many times. They have been around Jesus and witnessed the miracles and acts of power and I wonder if they have gone on a responsibility vacation. Have they ceased to row, sail and bail because they are sort of treating Jesus as a magic lucky coin or get out of jail free card? There’s something very complicated here. They accuse Jesus of not caring, but Jesus is on board with them and to think that Jesus can’t drown and could just walk away on the waves is denying Jesus’ humanity. That was not how Jesus rolled. Remember, he told Satan that he would not test God. Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us, was on that boat and the subsequent calming of the storm was something much more than controlling the weather. Jesus is asleep because he is exhausted, not because he doesn’t care and he is there. The danger that can come from this story is walking away with the idea that we are supposed to just take our hands off the wheel or let go and let God and that it is that faith that does the trick and we will be saved from that icy road, churning waters, bad decisions, big storm or risky behaviour. Jesus is calm because he is assured of God’s presence and overall control, Emmanuel, not “If I have enough faith, God will keep me from dying”. Bad things happen to very faithful people every day, but that does not mean that God does not care? We hear this Gospel on the week of commemoration for the Emmanuel 9, the members of a church Bible study, two being graduates of one of our Lutheran Seminaries, who were murdered because they were black, in an effort to ignite a race war. But the name of the church points to a truth, God was there in the midst of the bullets standing with the innocent who had hospitably opened their doors to a stranger. No, faith does not equal not suffering or not dying. We must remember that this is Jesus, the Christ of the cross that suffered and died. Do we think that Jesus was alone and that God did not care? So Jesus gets it. It’s not about magic or invulnerability but the fact that God is with us and loves us and that ultimately that is where we will remain, with God. St Paul points out, “Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? (As the Scriptures say, “For your sake we are killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep.”) No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us. And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.” That’s the reality that Jesus was committed to there in the boat, that’s the reality, the faith that keeps us sailing, rowing and bailing. This is the faith that quiets the voices of doubt that preach messages into our ears questioning our worth, God’s presence or our destiny, it’s the faith that I remember Mordecai proclaiming to Esther in the midst of her struggles, fear and doubt, Maybe, just maybe, you were born for such a time as this.” So that time on the boat is important and Mark, by his wording, has a message much deeper than having little faith or Jesus stopping a storm. Mark in his wording recalls the story of Jonah, for me, not a Biblical hero but cautionary tale. Jonah carried a lot of hatred, so much so that he fled from God’s presence, in order to keep from proclaiming a message from God to the Ninevites. I don’t think Jonah was actually afraid of going to Nineveh, but just didn’t want to. The Ninevites were a different people, a group that had harmed Israel in the past. God sends Jonah to deliver a message that repentance, turning from evil is required or else it will lead to their destruction. Jonah says no. He is more than OK with their destruction and actually wishes for it. So he runs and ends up on the boat in a storm and wishes to be thrown overboard and die than the alternative. But he doesn’t get off that easy. He ends up relenting in the fish’s belly and gets to deliver the message, but don’t think that his heart has been changed toward his enemies. He has been driven by his own self preservation and the story ends with the Ninevites repentance and living, Jonah really angry about it and the shade bush God had sent him dying and God raising the question, “But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?” And he said, “Yes, angry enough to die.” Then the Lord said, “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?” The end. It’s an open question for us. So we see Jonah and Jesus. Jonah was willing to flee the presence of the Lord and die so that others would perish and Jesus? Emmanuel, by our side. God, right there in the boat, right there in that blood stained church, right there in the cancer ward, the battlefield, the prison cell, in the midst of suffering, pain and heartache, at the cross. Christ is there for us, for all people, willing to die in the place of Ninevites instead of trying to seal their fate. So God is with us on the boat and we may be fretting or panicking thinking that God isn’t paying attention or is asleep because we are getting tossed around and we are terrified. But Jesus, Emmanuel, God is with us, is. We are not left alone by the one that suffered the cross. We are called to be strengthened by that Good News to sail on. To row, to bale, to navigate the wind and wave, to confront the storms of this world remembering the spirit and words drafted by Martin Luther, our brother in Christ, when he penned, “God’s Word forever shall abide, no thanks to foes, who fear it; for God himself fights by our side with weapons of the Spirit. Were they to take our house, goods, honor, child, or spouse, though life be wrenched away, they cannot win the day. The kingdom’s ours forever!” Boats will sink. Evil will lash out. The faithful will fall beneath the storms and violence of this life, but as we confront the gales, the hunger, the racism, the Jonah’s, the misogyny, the hatred, the homophobia, the apathy and the injustice let us rest assured that we are not forsaken, Jesus showed us how much he cared and how deeply he was invested in us on the cross and let us abide in that inspiring hope that maybe, just maybe, we were born for such a time as this.
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