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SURVEYING THE SITE—Mark 4:35-41
It’s been a long day at the academy. Jesus has been teaching
his disciples—those who have followed him down from the hills and those whom he
named in the hills. He has gathered at the seashore, and when the crowd grew,
he got into a boat and has been teaching ever since. Now evening has come;
Jesus is exhausted. He sends the crowd away and tells his disciples, “Go over
to the other side.”
READING THE BLUEPRINT
And [Jesus] says to them in that day when evening had begun,
“Let us go over to the other side.” And sending the crowd away, they took him
with themselves since he was in the boat, and other boats were with him. And a
great storm of wind came into being, and the waves threw themselves upon and into
the boat so that the boat was already filling. But Jesus, in the stern, was on
the cushion sleeping. [The disciples] waked him and said to him, “Teacher, do
you not care that we perish?”
Having been awoken, he rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Silence! Put a muzzle on it!” And the wind halted, and a great calm came into being. [Jesus] said to the [disciples], “Why are you such nervous Nellies? Have you no trust yet?”
And they feared, greatly feared; [the disciples] were saying to one another, “Who then is this that even the wind and the sea listen to him?”
ROUGHING IN THE HOUSE
The purpose of learning is to be able to act knowledgeably.
Jesus has been teaching his disciples and the crowd, and now it is time to put
what they have learned into action. In following passages, we will learn that
the Gerasene demoniac gets it. Jairus gets it. The woman with hemorrhages gets
it. Jairus’ daughter exemplifies it, but the disciples don’t get it yet.
When one is living in the world of life and safety, going to the other side puts one in the world of death and insecurity. When one travels from one parallel universe to another, there is bound to be a cosmic storm. In that place where the positives and the negatives get a chance to meet, lightning, thunder, maybe even explosions, will occur.
“Let us go over to the other side,” Jesus says. For the one who has already been there, this journey has an already known result—life. But for those who have not known the other side, death seems inevitable— “Do you not care that we are perishing?”
After hearing that this is the Good News of Jesus Christ, the son of God (1:1) and that we are to “repent and believe IN the Good News” (1:15), we discover that the disciples are not internalizing what they have learned. They are not hearing the Good News. Seed is cast upon the ground. The seed dies to itself in order that new life can be known. The seed grows into a plant that is harvested, that is, the plant is killed in order for the seed to give life again. The plant grows into a place of refuge and sanctuary for all of creation. “Let those who have ears see what they hear.”
I know that I have thrown all of the ingredients of the previous verses into one bowl and kneaded them to be a loaf of something that needs to rest and rise, but we are talking about the resurrection here. The bodily, resurrected, Good News-bearing Son of God is standing before the disciples, and we, the reader/hearers see it, but the disciples are still not there—"Who then is this that even the wind and the sea listen to him?”.
PUTTING UP THE WALLS
It is fun to laugh at the disciples in Mark. After all, we
know what they apparently don’t. Yet, when we go over to the other side, we
find ourselves in similar places of fear and concern. Let’s face it; we are
scared half-to-death.
In the safety of our boats—our churches, our denominations, our gatherings of like-minded people—we hear Jesus’ command to go to the other side and take Jesus with us since he is in the boat with us, but, when we realize that the other side might mean the neighborhood across our street, we begin to know self-doubt and fear. After all, we might have to deal with mental illness, poverty, anger, dissolution, chronic illness, and death. We may even encounter new ideas that threaten to capsize our boat requiring us to state in whom we trust—scary stuff.
When the great winds of change blow, stormy seas of discontent will throw themselves into our places of safety. We will wish for those places of refuge, but let us be perfectly clear about this, as frightening as the storm may be, great calm can be just as scary. Then, sailing is no longer possible. Then, it is time to row. Many a sailing vessel has lost all on board because of great calm. There is a reason it is known as a dead calm.
Stories like this, stories of Poseidon and Neptune, may have been known. These capricious gods caused storms to rise up against sailors and created superstitious behaviors of fear and panic. Yet, this story of storm upon the sea is not about capricious acts that inflict pain and fear. This story is told to imagine a world of confidence and trust. We are challenged, with the disciples, to trust God’s activity in our lives, to stand firm in the midst of change, and dare to go to the other side in order to know the wholeness of Christ’s presence among us.
HANGING THE TRIM
In this text we are told of great winds, great calm, and
great fear. What we are called to is everyday courage and trust.
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