Proper 7 -- Job 38: 1 - 11; Psalm 133; II
Corinthians 6: 1 - 13; Mark 4: 35 -
41
A
homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given
at St. John’s Church in Huntingdon,
Pennsylvania, on Sunday, June 21, 2015.
“LORD,
DO YOU NOT CARE……?”
(Homily text:
Mark 4: 35-41)
“Lord, do you not care that we are
perishing?” the frightened disciples say to the Lord as the waters of the Sea
of Galilee begin to wash over the gunwales of their boat.
“Lord, do you not care that we are
perishing under the heavy hand of Roman oppression?” the early Christians to
whom Mark was writing his gospel account may have asked.
“Lord, do you not care that we are
perishing at the hands of a mass shooter?” the members of Emanuel African Methodist
Episcopal (AME) Church may have asked this past week in Charleston, South
Carolina.
In each of these circumstances, the
Lord’s power and presence are known in the dire, threatening and difficult
events which came into the lives of the original disciples, into the lives of
the early Christians to whom Mark was writing, and into the lives of the
members of Emanuel Church this past week.
All of these events have something
in common: The Lord of all life reveals
Himself in troubling circumstances, causing each believer to come into a close,
enduring and personal relationship with God through Christ. Arising out this foundation for a faithful
Christian life, is the power to change the world.
Before we look at the implications
of our relationship with God and the things that flow from that relationship,
let’s look at today’s gospel reading in some detail.
With today’s reading, we enter a new
section of Mark’s gospel account, as Jesus begins to reveal more and more of
His identity to His disciples. In
today’s reading, Jesus reveals His power over nature and over the forces of
chaos. In the coming weeks, we will
explore Jesus’ power over death, over illness and disease, and over the powers
of evil.
There is much more to this reading
than meets the eye. So let’s do some
exploring into the background of this incident.
The setting for this incident is the
Sea of Galilee, a beautiful lake which is located in the northern part of the
Holy Land. This body of water is
roughly triangular in shape, and is about thirteen miles long, north-to-south,
and is about seven miles wide at its widest point. At first glance, it looks like a mountain
lake, for it is surrounded on the west and on the east by hills and
mountains. But, in fact, it is about 600
feet below sea level. (It is a very
beautiful place. No wonder our Lord
loved it so much.)
Since it is surrounded by hills and
mountains, it is quite common for sudden and severe windstorms to descend upon
the lake, stirring up the waters with high waves. If the Lord and His disciples were traveling
from the west side of the lake (where He had been teaching) to the east side in
a typical first-century boat of the time, it might well have been a sailboat
which was about 27 feet long, with a beam of about seven feet or so. (Such a boat was found about 30 years ago and
has been preserved in a museum on the northwest side of the Sea of Galilee,
containing about a dozen different types of wood in its hull.) Such a boat might have been a dangerous place
to be as the waves mounted higher and higher.
And, add to the fact that the group was traveling at night, the fears of
the disciples would have been even greater.
But there are other factors at work
in this miracle: The ancient world view
regarded raging waters with suspicion and fear.
The chaos of raging waters had the power to destroy life. Such a place
was a place in which evil dwelt. In
ancient times, Jews thought that sea monsters inhabited the deep waters. In addition, raging waters represented a sort
of chaos. This view of the power of
water persists in our contemporary world view.
(Consider the power of raging waters in the accounts of the flooding in
Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma, as an example.)
Such a world view is preserved in
the creation account which is found at the beginning of the book of
Genesis. There, in Genesis 1: 1, we read
that “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and waters
covered the deep. And the Spirit of God
was hovering over the waters.” After
creating light, and after separating the light from darkness, we read that God
separated the waters that are above the firmament from the waters that are
beneath it. Then, in Genesis 1: 9 – 10,
we read that God caused the dry land to appear from the waters, making possible
plant life, animal life, and finally, human life.
So Jesus’ power over the chaos of
the waters demonstrates that He has the power that only God has to control chaos
and its destructive power.
The full meaning of Jesus’ miracles
does not rest on the immediate facts of the miracle itself. We do not read Holy Scripture in the same way
we might read the newspaper or a textbook.
Each account which arises from Jesus’ earthly ministry is meant to
convey something about Jesus’ nature and the powers of God that are at work in
Him. Put another way, the biblical
accounts each convey a theological truth, theology being the study of the
nature of God and God’s means of interacting with us.
So, the bottom line of the miracle
we are considering today contains the truth that Jesus is the only Son of God,
the One who fully possesses God’s power over the forces of chaos and over evil,
the One who has the power to preserve life.
Jesus reveals Himself to those
original disciples, in order that these twelve will come into a close, enduring
and personal relationship with Him. That
close, enduring and personal relationship is the essential foundation for all
the good work that they will do in spreading the Good News of what God had done
in the sending of Jesus Christ to take on our humanity.
To this truth, the truth that a
close, enduring and personal relationship with Christ is absolutely essential
if the Christian life is to be lived correctly and faithfully, the early
Christians in and around Rome bore witness.
Following the disciples-now-become-apostles’ practice, they gathered
each week to hear Holy Scripture, to pray, to take part in the sacramental life
of the Church, and to promise to love and support one another in their walk
with Christ.
Their faithfulness gave them the
power to tell the pagan world around them that there is a better way to
live. Theirs was a quiet witness to
God’s power to change their hearts, and then to change the world. They did so, even though they lacked
political power or military might.
In time, their faithfulness and the
faithfulness of the Christians who would come to know the Lord through their
witness allowed the Christian faith to conquer the Roman Empire itself. Their weapons in this conquest were the
benefits of Baptism, faithful, regular worship, studying and hearing Holy
Scripture, regular participation in the Sacraments, and promising to uphold
each other in their Christian walk.
This past week, we have witnessed
the power of faithful Christians as the members of Emanuel AME Church have
lived out the Christian life. Instead of
breathing judgment and recrimination against the young man who stands accused
of the shooting that took nine lives, instead of vowing to get revenge, they
have offered forgiveness and their prayers for the young man, his family and
the community itself.
In the midst of all this, perhaps
the question, “Lord, do you not care about what has happened to us?” has come
to the minds of Emanuel’s members. If it
has, perhaps the answer has also arisen in this form: “The Lord says, ‘I do care, I am present with
you, and your faithfulness to the Good News will bear good fruit for the
advancement of the kingdom of God in the world.’”
At a troubling time like this, it is
well for us to consider just what makes the Christian life work. In the event which is recorded in today’s
gospel, in the lives of the early Christians to whom Mark was writing, and in
the lives of Emanuel AME Church, a consistent pattern emerges. All three bear witness to these essentials of
faith:
A
close and enduring relationship with God through Christ: We enter this relationship through the waters
of baptism. In Baptism, Christ claims us
as His very own, forever. Baptism
creates a permanent mark on the individual’s soul. We come to Christ through these waters
one-by-one, becoming a part of the Body of Christ here on earth, that is, the
Church. So there is an individual component
to God’s act of saving us through Baptism, and there is a corporate aspect to
our salvation, as well. Both are
essential and must be held in a creative tension.
Nurturing
our life in Christ: We must nourish our bodies in a number of ways if we
are to be healthy. For example, we must
eat wisely, we must exercise regularly, we must get enough sleep, and we must
do other things that advance our health and wellbeing. The same truths apply to our Christian
life….we must nourish our spiritual life by maintaining an active prayer life,
through the study and the hearing of God’s Word, and by receiving the
Sacraments (particularly the Eucharist) regularly. The social aspects of our daily living are
important to our wellbeing. So the
social aspects of gathering for worship and for fellowship are essential parts
of the Christian life, as well.
All of these things allow us, as
Christians, to work to better the societies in which we live. They allow us to bear witness to Christ as
the better way to live. The early
Christians living in and around Rome to whom Mark was writing, along with the
apostles, bore a quiet-but-effective witness to the pagan world that Jesus’
ways were superior in every respect to the ways of the world. As such, they refused to take part in the
pagan rituals of the Roman Empire, refusing to burn incense to the emperor, and
refusing to countenance the violence that was so much a part of Roman life. They refused to participate in the debauchery
of daily life, the drunkenness, the promiscuity and the freewheeling aspects of
life in the Roman Empire.
We would do well to follow these
early Christians’ example, by refusing to countenance and accept the violence
that permeates so much of what we see in the movies and on television. We would do well to simply refuse to watch
such things, and to refuse to buy tickets to movies that glorify violence. We would do well to closely monitor what our
young people and children are doing on the internet, where an abundance of
degrading and tantalizing information can be obtained in the privacy of one’s
own room. We would do well to tell the
world by what we say and by how we live that Jesus’ way is the best way to
live, the way God intended for us to live.
The power to do all these things arises
from the foundation of a close, personal and ongoing relationship with God
through Christ. Such a life is nurtured
by immersion in the waters of Baptism, and it is sustained by a life of prayer,
by ongoing study and hearing of God’s Word, and by regular reception of the
benefits of the Sacraments that God has left to us as means of His grace.
May we, empowered by this
relationship and guided by the Holy Spirit, be enabled to change the world,
transforming it into God’s design, one heart and one mind at a time.
AMEN.
