Who Is This Man?

Who Is This Man?

Mark 4:35-41

February 13, 2013 (Ash Wednesday) • Portage First UMC

Have you ever been caught in a storm, a storm so bad that you literally couldn’t see anything around you? Several years ago, I was part of a group taking our church’s youth to a theme park near Louisville, Kentucky, and we were headed south on I-65 when, seemingly out of nowhere, a storm cut loose. It was raining so bad we had to slow down to where we were inching along. Finally, we came to a rest area and I pulled in, with the other cars following. We just needed to get off the road because we were afraid it was not going to go well if we stayed out there on the interstate. And so, at the rest area, we waited out the storm until it was safe to go on. Now, even though it got really dark, that was during the day. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to try to make that trip through the big storm at night, in the darkness. It gives me just a glimpse of what it might have felt like to be on the Sea of Galilee in our Gospel story this evening.

Jesus is at a point in his ministry where he’s becoming popular, well-known at least in Galilee. He’s a teller of stories, and people love to hear good stories. And he teaches the people how to live. There’s something about him that makes people want to listen to him, to respond to him. So the crowds were gathering, and on this day, Jesus has been teaching along the shore of the Sea of Galilee (4:1). The crowd had gotten so large that he had stepped into a boat and was teaching from the boat while the people sat on the shore. He told them several stories, and then after he finished, he told his disciples to sail to “the other side” (4:35), and so they did. They didn’t stop to get supplies or change clothes. They didn’t go back to the shore. They went, just as they were, toward the other side. And Jesus, exhausted from a day of teaching, finds the only cushion in the boat and puts it under his head as he falls asleep. Now, this would have been a small fishing boat, designed to hold maybe a dozen people, the kind of boat Jesus and the disciples used all along the shore of the Sea of Galilee (Hamilton, The Way, pg. 101). We know what those boats looked like because in 1986, during a drought, a first-century fishing boat was found in the mud of the lake when the water level was low. It’s been preserved and is on display today, and it doesn’t take much imagination to see how cramped this boat would have been with Jesus and the disciples all together in it. And it takes even less imagination to realize how a storm could threaten all of them.

I’ve been on the Sea of Galilee three times, sailed across and around it, and we’ve never had bad weather. But it’s a small lake, much smaller than Lake Michigan. It’s about thirteen miles long and eight miles wide, 150 feet deep, and it’s positioned in a basin. It’s seven hundred feet below sea level, and there are mountains that surround it. So it’s well known that, on this lake, storms can come up quickly as high winds from the southwest enter the lake’s basin and quickly change the weather pattern from calm to violent (Card, Mark: The Gospel of Passion, pg. 70; Lane, NICNT: The Gospel of Mark, pg. 175). And when it comes at night, as it does in Mark’s story, it can be particularly frightening.

But this storm is different and actually has little to do with meteorology. To understand what’s really happening here, we have to look ahead a bit and see where Jesus is heading. At the beginning of Mark 5, Jesus arrives in the region of the Gerasenes, the opposite side of the lake from Capernaum and the good Jewish towns. It’s a pagan region, a Gentile region, a place “good Jews” didn’t go, a place where demons were said to live (Card 74). Jesus goes there to heal a man who is possessed by a legion of demons. Jesus is going there to invade Satan’s territory. Keep that in mind as we talk about the storm. Mark says the storm was a “furious squall.” Matthew describes it as a seismos. You can hear, can’t you, the root of our word “seismic”? This is a shaking, an earthquake-type storm. It’s the sort of storm that, as the Gospel writers describe it, has demonic origins. It’s not entirely natural. Jesus is on his way to invade Satan’s territory, and so the evil one pushes back hard. As Michael Card writes, “It is a demonic attempt on their lives” (70; cf. Hamilton 101). Even the disciples, some of them seasoned fishermen, men who knew this lake like the back of their hands, who had seen storms before, know something is different this time. The water is pounding against the sides and over the sides into the boat. Mark says the boat was “nearly swamped” (4:37). And it’s dark. It’s night. There are no lights anywhere. The disciples were likely unsure even where they were on the lake.

And as the storm rages, someone looks to the back of the boat, to the stern, to the place where the one who was supposed to steer the boat would sit, and there is Jesus, sound asleep, head laying on the only pillow in the boat, perhaps gently snoring though they probably wouldn’t have been able to hear it over the noise of the storm. But catch this: the one who should be steering their boat is asleep in the stern (Card 71). Maybe that’s why they’re so rude to him when they wake him up (cf. Wessel, “Mark,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 8, pg. 655).

“Teacher,” they say, “don’t you care if we drown?” (4:38). Eugene Peterson catches a bit more of the bite of their words in his paraphrase: “Teacher, is it nothing to you that we’re going down?” (Message). Don’t you care, Jesus? Is your sleep more important than our lives? And so Jesus wakes up and he doesn’t even speak to the disciples first. Instead, he speaks to the storm—or, rather, he speaks to the power behind the storm. Literally, he says, “Be muzzled!” It’s the same word he uses to tell demons to be quiet. In Mark 1, there’s a demon who cries out, “Have you come to destroy us, Jesus of Nazareth?” And Jesus says the same thing to him: “Be muzzled!” (1:21-26). A muzzle, of course, is not something we put on ourselves. It’s something that is put on a pet and they have no choice over the matter. That’s the same thing that happening here. Jesus has authority over this storm just as he has authority over the powers of evil (cf. Card 71). With a simple command, he puts a muzzle on it and the storm is quiet. “Be muzzled!” Jesus says, and the winds and the waves and the powers that stirred them have to obey. Mark doesn’t say it just let up gradually. No, after Jesus’ command, Mark says it was “completely calm” (4:39).

So there’s a great storm, and then there is a great calm. And you’d think that’d be the end of story, wouldn’t you? I mean, the storm is over; what else is there to deal with? Well, now Jesus turns toward the disciples. “Why are you so afraid?” he asks them. “Do you still have no faith?” (4:40). During the storm, we only get the sense that they’re irritated with Jesus. But in verse 41, Mark indicates things have changed. He tells us the disciples “were terrified,” but that’s after the calm. It’s not the storm that terrifies them. The storm is over. The sea is completely calm. What terrifies them, what causes them to “fear a great fear,” is not the threat of drowning. What makes them most fearful is Jesus—the one who has power over the storm. That’s the question that comes out of their fear: “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!” (4:41).

But the reason they’re afraid, according to Jesus, is their lack of faith. So what is that? What is it they’re missing? We usually think of “faith” as belief, giving verbal or at least mental assent to a set of propositions. We agree with a group’s list of ideas or thoughts and so we say we “believe” in that group. And “faith” does contain an element of that. Faith involves belief, but it’s more than that. The disciples knew Jesus was someone extraordinary, someone worth following, or they never would have been in that boat with him in the first place. In that sense, they “believed” in him, but he still asks whether or not they have faith, because faith is more than mere belief. Faith involves action. Faith involves response. Faith includes trust. The New Testament constantly talks about putting our faith “into” Jesus, and I sort of picture it as placing all that we are into his hands, utterly trusting him for whatever comes. It’s letting go, giving up, allowing God to direct our lives and steer our boat. Faith is not a passive belief; faith is an active trust. I wonder what the disciples expected when they woke Jesus up. Maybe they thought he’d be an extra set of hands against the storm. Maybe they just wanted him to share in their suffering. But it seems they did not expect him to calm the storm. They weren’t ready to place their trust in him, to have faith that he could take care of them, could protect them. They believed, but they weren’t ready to act on that belief by placing their trust in him. They lacked faith.

There’s a reason we are called “children of God,” because children have that utter trust that is essential to faith. When my kids were little, they had absolutely no fear, like most kids. Christopher and Rachel would both jump off things into my arms, or trust me to toss them in air and catch them. No fear. Just trust. They had faith that their father would come through for them. It’s only as we grow that we learn that our earthly parents and others aren’t infallible. We have flaws. We make mistakes. We hurt each other. It becomes harder to trust. But there is one who is perfect, who will never let us down. There is one who can always be counted on. There is one who is Lord over all, including the wind and the wave. He is the one we’re called to trust, to place our faith “into.” Why do you think Jesus said that if we’re going to come to him we have to come as a child (Mark 10:14-15)? Because a child knows what it is to have faith, to not just believe but also to trust. That’s what the disciples are missing there in the boat, and that’s why Jesus, calming the storm, causes such great fear.  They thought they had it (and him) all figured out. But he’s more than they thought he was. He’s so much more. Even the wind and the waves obey him.

Jesus is Lord of the storms, even those that aren’t made up of wind and water but have dark origins nonetheless. Maybe your storm is called “Cancer,” and the waves of chemotherapy and uncertainty are crashing against your boat. Maybe your storm is called “Death,” and the ones you love are no longer here; there are times when the world seems very dark. Maybe your storm is called “Stress,” and the wind of details are swirling around you. Maybe your storm is called “Job Loss,” and you’re trapped between financial stress and the need for more training. Maybe your storm is called “Divorce,” and the winds of angry words and hurtful actions continue to batter against you and those you love. Maybe your storm is called “Doubt,” and you wonder if there really even is a God out there who knows you, who cares about you. Maybe your storm is called “Empty Nest,” and the loneliness threatens to overwhelm you. Maybe your storm is called “Betrayal,” and you’re wondering if you can ever trust anyone again. Storms come into our lives, and they often come suddenly and with such ferocity that we wonder if we can possibly survive. And more than that, we wonder if Jesus even cares. Is he asleep somewhere? Shouldn’t he be steering the boat? Where is he, anyway? Lord, don’t you care if I drown? Over the sound of the wind and the crash of the waves, hear his voice tonight: “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?”

You see, the good news is that Jesus is there in the boat, in the storm with us. Even if we don’t think he’s not paying attention, even if we think he’s forgotten us, he has not. He is there in the storm with us. It’s a crazy question the disciples ask, really, because of course he cares if they drown. If their boat goes down, so does he, because he’s in the boat with them. Mark’s little community that he was writing this Gospel to knew the storm of persecution (cf. Lane 12-17), and they needed this story so they could remember that Jesus, the one they had put their trust in, is Lord of the storms. Even the winds and the waves obey him. And so, in early Christian art, one of the symbols for the church was a boat, tossed on the waves, because that reminded the people that Jesus was in the boat with them (Lane 178). In fact, the word for the place where you sit each week in this sanctuary is the “nave,” which is a word that comes from the Latin, navis, meaning “ship.” We hear that in our word “Navy.” So we’re in the boat, even when we’re here in worship. And Jesus, Lord of the storms, is present with us. And when he is here, there is ultimately no reason to fear.

Sometimes, though, the storms in our lives make it difficult to see him, and so for the next few weeks, as we journey through this Lenten season, we’re going to look again at Jesus. The early believers in him were said to be people of “The Way;” it wasn’t until later, at Antioch, that they were called “Christians” (Acts 11:26). Originally, this faith was known as the way—the way to live, the way to find hope and salvation. John Wesley, the founder of the Methodism, said he wanted to know one thing: “the way to heaven.” And so, for the next six weeks, we’re going to look at “The Way,” and focus on the life and ministry of Jesus. We want to understand his message better. We want to see him more clearly. We want to learn how better to follow him, to trust him, to place our lives in his hands. We want to answer for our own lives the question the disciples asked: “Who is this man?” 

Even as we’re seeking to know more who he is, we’ll also learn more who we are, and our first step on this journey tonight is to realize that he is Lord and we are not. One way we symbolize that, each year as we begin the Lenten season, is to place ashes on our forehead. Ashes are a symbol of mortality, of suffering—tonight, we might say they are a symbol of the storms in our lives. And when we place them on our foreheads in the shape of a cross, we’re declaring who is Lord over our mortality, our suffering, our storms. We’re proclaiming who it is we want to trust. That’s why we begin this season with ashes, because this season, which begins in death, is ultimately headed toward the celebration of Easter and resurrection, the time when the ultimate answer to the question, “Who is this man?”, is given. He is the one whom the wind and the waves, and even death itself, obey.

Tonight, as you come forward to receive the ashes, there is a small card that I invite you to pick up. On it is a prayer you can use tonight and throughout the Lenten season, and on the back side are some reminders of why we use ashes on this night. As we prepare our hearts for this time of reflection, we’re going to sing an affirmation of faith, for the heart of who we are and what we are about is Jesus. It’s only in Christ alone that we can really do anything. That’s what the disciples learned on a stormy sea in the middle of the night, and that’s what we also will discover along the way. Let’s sing, shall we?