Sermons
January 28, 2024 (4th Sunday after Epiphany)
“Why are you sleeping when we’re about to drown?!”
Mark 4:35-41
One of Leonard Cohen’s early songs[1] includes this line: “Jesus was a sailor.” But after hearing this text from Mark, I have to wonder.
If Jesus was a sailor, wouldn’t he have known better than to send his disciples out into the middle of the Sea of Galilee at night? Anyone who spent much time sailing on the Sea of Galilee knew that violent storms could blow up unexpectedly, and you wanted to sail around the lake, close to the shore, not across it, in case a storm presented itself and you needed to get off the lake in a hurry.
But Jesus’ disciples, at least some of them, were sailors, and they didn’t utter so much as a peep when Jesus said to go across the lake. Why didn’t they even argue? “Jesus, we spend a lot of time on this lake, and going across it really isn’t a good idea, especially at this time of day.” They just put him on the boat, just as he was, not a sailor at all, and took out across the lake.
But sure enough, along came a storm. It was a terrible storm, and the boat was getting swamped. And Jesus was in the stern of the boat, on a cushion, sound asleep—just like that earlier prophet, Jonah.
The disciples were terrified—the ones who were fishermen, at least, knew the power of these storms. It’s one of the hazards of any occupation that involves sailing: there is always the danger of a storm, an accident, a shipwreck.
The fishermen among Jesus’ disciples probably knew people who had been lost in storms like this; and now they must have wondered if their names would be called out, followed by a tolling bell, at the next memorial service for lost sailors.
So they went and woke Jesus up. I wonder why.
Perhaps they simply thought one more pair of hands with a bucket in them, bailing out the boat, might help. Or did they just want him to be terrified along with them? Maybe it didn’t seem fair that he could be sleeping away, completely oblivious to the danger they were in—especially since it was his fault they were in that predicament, sending them across the lake like he had done, when everybody knows you just don’t do that, for precisely this reason.
Did they have any idea he could do anything about the storm?
He woke up—I don’t know how he could have slept through such a storm, to be honest; any time there’s even a little bit of lightning at night I’m wide awake, at least momentarily. And as soon as he’s awake he does an amazing thing: he rebukes the wind and the waves.
Our translations, beginning with King James, tend to make this sound pretty pious—or maybe it’s been softened by familiarity.
“Peace! Be still!”
The New Revised Standard Version at least puts in exclamation points, so it doesn’t sound quite so calm and pretty. Because these are not calm, pretty words, even though we have for a long time found “peace, be still,” pretty comforting and calming. They even show up in one of our favorite hymns:
“There’s within my heart a melody—
Jesus whispers sweet and low,
‘Fear not, I am with thee—peace, be still,’
in all of life’s ebb and flow.”
But this is not a gentle command, whispered sweet and low. It’s a rebuke, actually a fairly strongly worded one.
The second word, the one we have translated as “be still,” is the same word with which Jesus casts out demons back in Mark chapter 1. It’s a word for muzzling an ox, silencing an opponent.
Eugene Peterson in The Message renders this verse, Jesus rebuking the wind and the waves, as “Quiet! Settle down!” That’s more like it.
The story is told of the Persian King Xerxes, setting out to avenge his father’s defeat by Greek forces at Marathon.
Xerxes’ father had merely outnumbered the Greek army; now the son raised an army that was absolutely overwhelming. They built a pontoon bridge across the Bosporus; but the weather changed and the bridge was washed out.
King Xerxes (this is the same king mentioned in the book of Esther, by the way) was absolutely furious. How dare the god of the sea defy him like this! So he ordered the waves to be whipped, then chained and sunk beneath the surface of the sea.
Ridiculous. What mortal human being has power to stop the waves, to control the chaotic forces of wind and weather?
What mortal human being, indeed!
This text is another one where knowing the Old Testament greatly enriches our understanding of the New. Many, many places in the Hebrew Scriptures, from Genesis chapter 1 on, including the story of Noah and the story of the parting of the Red Sea so the Israelites could cross it on dry land and escape the pursuing Egyptian army, portray God’s power over the waters and the weather. To the people of the Ancient Near East, including the Israelite/Jewish people, the waters of the sea, and the weather, represented elemental forces of chaos, always looking for a way to overwhelm creation.
At the moment of creation, God seized control over these chaotic forces, forcing them back and holding them at bay. It’s one of the reasons for awe and praise throughout the Psalms, and it’s part of God’s response to Job’s complaints—not to mention a major part of the storyline of the parable we have as the book of Jonah.
The Hebrew Scriptures, with which Jesus’ first disciples and Mark’s earliest readers would have been familiar, are clear that God and God alone has power over the waters and the weather.
So here are Jesus and the disciples out in a boat, about to meet a tragic end, and Jesus rebukes the waters and the weather: “Quiet! Settle down!”
And unlike Xerxes’ attempts to whip and chain the waves into submission, Jesus’ words have immediate effect.
This is when the disciples—portrayed throughout Mark as thoroughly oblivious to who Jesus is and why he’s among them—suddenly get a glimpse of something awesome. They can’t quite articulate it, beyond asking the question, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”
Perhaps later they’ll understand more fully, but there’s a flash of insight here, the sudden realization that all is not as it seems, that Jesus is not exactly who he seems to be, that somehow he has power they thought belonged only to God…that maybe he’s not just a mere mortal.
[1] “Suzanne,” which also contains a reference to Constant Comment tea (“tea and oranges that come all the way from China”).