Stilled

Scripture Text: Mark 4: 35-41 (Proper 7B)

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

So before we dive in, (that was a pun) I want to invite you to a little imagery. What in your life needs to be calmed? What is the thing that you feel like you just can’t control, just can’t get a handle on which way to go? What is the storm that scares you and turns you and sometimes feels like it has knocked you off your feet? We all have it, that thing that we’d just like someone to “fix”. And I want you to imagine that storm.

This Gospel passage is one of the most familiar and oft-quoted stories in the Gospels. Many of us can recall listening to this story as it was read to us from one of those children’s storybook bibles or seeing it depicted in paintings and pictures. We like this story. It tends to sometimes gives us a sense of composure about our lives, knowing that Christ can calm the storms, purge our fears, and make our lives into the way that we like them once again.

Here, Jesus stands on the edge of the boat with his arms outstretched over the whitecaps of a raging lake (it’s a like, rather than a sea). With that image in mind, the text may become for us a miracle story demonstrating the divine power of Jesus. This Jesus in whom we believe, this Jesus in whom we put our faith, can do anything—can pick up the pieces of our lives and put them back together, can calm the raging waters that frustrate our otherwise calm repose, and can turn our lives into what we cannot, calming the storms of disapproval, rejection, failure, meaningless, illness, and even death and providing us a veritable sanctuary to see all those things through.

But the problem is that if we stop there, if for us Jesus becomes the one who always “fixes” things, who calms the chaos and puts things back the way they were, then I think we have missed a large part of who Jesus is. Sometimes I think it’s good to be reminded that Jesus is not a superhero. The promise is NOT that he will put things back the way they were; the promise is that life is more, that there is more waiting for us beyond what we see, and that we will always, always, always have someone with us as we walk through these storms.

I remember when I was a young adult. I had moved to Denver with Apache Corporation and was facing my first winter beyond the (relatively) mild winters of South Texas. Now you have to understand that I was an only daughter as well as an only granddaughter. I was used to having things “fixed” for me. As I sat in my apartment on that coldest night that I had encountered so far in my new surroundings, the weatherman on the news, in an effort to insert some other facts of interest into an otherwise perilous situation, told us that oil in a car will congeal at 22 degrees below zero (Fahrenheit). He then followed this fun fact with the prediction that the temperature that night would fall to 27 degrees below zero. I thought of my brand new car sitting outside of the apartment building and I panicked. I did the only thing I knew to do. As the independent and assured young woman that I was, I called my dad. When I told him the dilemma (after waking him at 11:30 his time), his response completely threw me: “Shelli, I know that you think I have the answers to all of life’s questions, but, think about it—I have lived in Katy, TX my entire life. Why would I know the answer to this question? I think it was at that moment that my dad moved from being my “fixer” to being my father. I think it’s safe to assume that the disciples had fallen into the same boat, so to speak. Jesus was always there, always pulled them out of the murky water, always saving them usually from themselves.

So, think about the passage again. It was evening. It was beginning to be dark as the light of day began to tip beneath the horizon. And it was now that Jesus had suggested that they make their way to the other side of the lake, away from the familiar crowds, toward the unknown, perhaps the unfriendly and unwelcoming, with their small little entourage of boats. Why would they do this? Think about it. They did not have access to the “Severe Weather Center” on their local news broadcast or that neat little weather app on your phone. They had no navigation equipment or GPS. They had no idea what they were getting into. The darkness was always a symbol for the wilderness, for danger. And the other side of the lake? Completely unknown. So, Jesus suggests that they venture into the wilds of the unknown, to leave the safety of the harbor behind.

And as they get out into the middle of the lake, a great windstorm arises, so great that the waves crash against the boats carrying Jesus and the disciples. Now you have to remember that this was not a huge boat. First century fishing boats were probably about 20 feet long and had no cover over them. You couldn’t go down under deck. The hull would have been maybe only four feet deep. So before long, water begins to fill up the small boat. Not even the experienced fishermen in the bunch could do anything about this. So they turn to Jesus. Jesus will save them. Jesus will fix this. “Jesus, save us!”

And there is Jesus, sound asleep on the boat cushion at the rear of the boat. You can imagine what the disciples thought. “Are you kidding me? Here we are, dying, and you are asleep! What are you thinking? Get up and save us! Get up now!” Now, odd as this may be to us, you can’t really blame Jesus. He had to be tired. He had been teaching in the hot sun and the crowds just wouldn’t leave him alone. So, he lay down and he rested. Everything would be alright. And then he is jolted awake by these overly-dramatic disciples who can’t seem to take care of themselves or each other. “Good grief,” he thought, “have you learned nothing from me?” So he got up and with a few simple words, “Peace! Be still!”, the storm subsided. And they floated for a few moments, not saying a word to each other, as the boat glided through the water as if on glass. Then Jesus turned to them. “Have you no faith? Have you learned nothing from me?”

So, as I mentioned before, we’re all familiar with this story. It’s reading has been sort of drilled into us from an early age. What if we’re reading it wrong? What if Jesus didn’t really calm the waves but rather calmed the disciples’ stress and anxiety about them? What if Jesus, with calming wisdom, simply guided the boat into a calm place, into a still cove that was sheltered from the winds and waves? What if Jesus with a peace-filled repose took the helm and steered the boat away from the waves and then in the quietness, looked at the disciples and said peacefully, “Shhh….calm…everything is going to be OK.” What if Jesus wisely gave the disciples room to breathe?

At the risk of destroying your perceptions about the story, the notion that Jesus somehow fixes our lives by taking the storms away doesn’t really jive with the rest of the scriptures. God doesn’t fix things; The Bible is not the story of a magician. God re-creates them. And sometimes it means just looking at something differently or perhaps from a different place. But all of us are often trying to escape the storm. So, we look for something that will get us out of it. But even when God steers us into the quiet, into the stillness, that doesn’t mean that it will always be that way or that we should stay there. That is not the final plan.

When I was little, we used to swim in rice wells (because, you know…Katy). It was fun and a little scary. You had to crawl up onto this huge pipe and walk out on it over the water. As the water gushed out of the pipe, it created these swirling typhoon-like waves of water. And you jumped off and were forced down into it by the waters barreling out. And then you swam a little and got out and did it again. But you know what? We never went into the still waters around the edge of the pond. You know why? It was dangerous. It was rancid. That’s where the snakes were. The safest place was the constantly-swirling water.

13^th century mystic Mechtild of Magdeburg said that “the day of my spiritual awakening was the day I saw—and knew I saw—all things in God and God in all things.” You know, when we read this passage, we see God on the shore, amidst safety and predictability. And we see God in the calming of the storm. But we may miss the God in the darkness as our little boat sails away from the disappearing light. We may miss God in the storms themselves that we encounter that make us realize that God has given us enough faith to get us through. And we miss God in the unfamiliarity of the far shore, in the unknown lands toward which we sail. We also miss the way God guides us into a place where we can sort of regroup and ready ourselves for the rest of the journey. For us, fear is something we are supposed to overcome. And yet, Jesus didn’t rebuke the disciples because they were afraid; his frustration was that they didn’t have faith to know that God was there with them, with them no matter what life brings. That is why in the midst of all these storms and all this noise, in the midst of everything that goes on in our lives, we hear Jesus saying, “Peace! Be still…Come and follow me—not the noise, not the ones that tell you that life can be fixed. Untie your boats from the harbor and follow me.” And, in the meantime, God may steer you into a cove until you’re ready for the rest of the journey. God is not going to fix it; God is going to show you a new thing. All you have to do is follow, no matter what the journey holds, because we’re on our way to Life.

Suppose your whole world seems to rock on its foundation. Hold on steadily and let it rock, and when the rocking is over, the picture will have reassembled itself into something much nearer to your heart’s desire. (Emmett Fox)