a Homily for Proper 7B  –   Text: Mark 4: 35-41

Getting to the boat

Andrew and Simon were fishing in the Sea of Galilee. They were casting nets into the water. As fishermen, this was their work. A stranger approaches them and says:

“Follow me and I will make you fish for people.”

This strange statement elicited a stranger response in them. They did it. They dropped the net in the water and left everything behind.

From that moment on the sea, Jesus has been pulling people from where they are to then go where He is going.

When the crowd gets too big to travel by land, Jesus and the disciples travel by boat. The crowd still follows. When they get to Jesus’s hometown, they surround them and demand more. Then Jesus and the disciples file back into the boat and Jesus teaches the crowd about faith and the Kingdom of God from the boat. Then setting off on their own, Jesus gives the disciples special instructions.

It all builds to this moment in the boat.

Faith and Fear

We know that Jesus is talking about faith and this gospel pericope is clearly about faith, but we have trouble with why. Why is Jesus sleeping? Why isn’t He jumping up and helping them? Why does He condemn the disciples for waking Him?

We ask these questions because we know what it’s like to be afraid. Those waves beating against the side of the boat, the storm threatening to sink the boat and drown its passengers, the chaotic moment and the sheer terror of what they see as the likeliest scenario.

We know what it’s like to be afraid.

We fear for our safety, our health, our church’s health. We fear for our children and our friends. And we hear these statements about faith in the midst of the storm and we want to shout back “What do you know?” when we really want to cry “Why aren’t you helping me?”

In our lives, today, we’re afraid Jesus is sleeping in the back of the boat; not up here where we are. As the storm around us rages, He is sleeping.

Living Faith

That special instruction the disciples received was about faith in the midst of fear. I’m sure of it. It was everything they needed to overcome adversity – intellectually. They still needed to experience it. To try it.

They learned about faith, they understood it, and they committed to it. Now, they need to do it. So they set out for the other shore, facing great adversity. But the adversity was much more than they expected. And they thought the faith itself would overcome it. That faith as an abstract and intellectual thing would save them. When that doesn’t work, they rouse Jesus, for He must have some answer. And in this truly defining moment, Jesus is transformed from teacher to savior, bringing even greater fear from His disciples than the storm does.

The confusing chastisement: calling his disciples cowards: is not about volume of faith, as in not enough faith (remember the mustard seed last week?) but the placement of their faith. It is about the response to fear, not the fear or faith in abstract. It is not the teaching or the belief system or sense of certainty that Jesus is looking for. It is faith in a powerful Kingdom born only from us.

Overcoming our Fear

Our greatest fears today aren’t the ones we speak about like the church, our children, and society. And it isn’t even death, though we definitely fear that. Our fear is that this thing we do on Sunday, this gathering as the community in the name of St. Paul, that this means something more than ritual or symbol. That it is something powerful and that Jesus invites us to cross the sea in that boat from our safe, intellectual place to the other side, where faith and action are integrated. That our love for God and neighbor are one. Where no one is left out ever in our midst and every person is made healthy and whole by being in community. Where there is no me and you, only we.

Where we are already the Kingdom of God.

[NOTE: The sermon ended here at the 8:00 service. At the later service, I invited us to move straight into the Prayers of the People, holding hands, and collecting our prayers together. This is captured in the audio above. The audio, beginning shortly before minute 9, has the prayers, the creed, and the blessing (though quiet).]