Maryneal Church of Christ- August 24, 2014

The Fear of the Sea

Introduction:

First of all, thank you all for having me back out here today. I really enjoyed being with y’all last time, so when Kipp asked me if I could fill in again today, I said absolutely!
Now you probably have noticed by now that Kylie isn’t able to be here today, and I apologize for that. She is much cooler than myself.
Her internship with Highland in Abilene ended the second week of August, and she has already had to go back to Searcy and start school there.
I tried to convince her to just stay in Abilene and transfer, but she said her parents wouldn’t be too happy about her doing that.
So, sadly, you are just stuck with me today- sorry.

I think I need to mention, though, that I was a little hesitant to jump at this opportunity to be with y’all and share a message today for one reason in particular: I was forced to write another sermon.
Now- I know, this is a good thing, and I should probably have more than one in my pocket.
But I figured I couldn’t simply use my one and only that I had used so far on Gideon again.
Maybe I should’ve tried it and just waited to see how long it took y’all to realize that I was preaching the same exact sermon from four weeks prior.
Instead, I wrote a new one- so this is fresh and you are the first audience to hear it.
Anyways, let me say again, it is good to be here with you all again- thank you for having me out.

Text:

So when I started thinking about what I wanted to talk about, I kept coming back to my favorite story of Jesus found in three of the four Gospels.
It is my favorite story because it is a demonstration of the ultimate power that Jesus has.
Not only that, but like I mentioned with the story of Gideon, I find the other humans in the story- the disciples- easy to relate to.
Yes, I believe Jesus was fully human, but I also believe that he was fully God.
So, in a way, this story shows the stark contrast between humanity and deity.
It shows how powerless humans are, and how powerful God is.
And, when I read this story, it is a reminder that God is in control- always.

Today we will be in Mark 4:35-41- the story of Jesus calming the storm.

And as I said before, this is found in Matthew and Luke as well, right?
So you may be wondering why I chose to Mark’s version.
Well, first and foremost, I like Mark’s gospel a lot.
It is the shortest of the three Synoptic Gospels, but it is also very ‘to-the-point.’
It is full of action, and Jesus is constantly moving and doing things in it.
Especially in the case of this story, though, I find it be most like how I would envision the scenario going down.
Take a moment and imagine it with me.
You are in a boat with Jesus. You are one of the disciples.
You believe in him, and you trust him- you have seen him do a lot of really cool things up to this point.
But you have also grown up in a society that fears the sea.
The sea is something that is uncontrollable and chaotic- right?
You may have had friends before that went fishing one day, and never returned.
Or maybe some of your family had set out on a family vacation, and they didn’t come home because the sea claimed their lives.
It is a dangerous thing.
So when you are in this boat with Jesus, and the storm arises and the waves begin to swell over the side and into the boat, you would probably become pretty scared as well, right?
I know I would!
Let’s read this story together.
Read Mark 4:35-41
On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.”
And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him.
A great wind-storm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped.
But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”
He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm.
He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”
And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

So the scene is set.
Jesus is in the boat with his disciples, and he decides that he wants to take a nap.
While he is sleeping, a storm swells up and it is beating into the boat and the waves are swamping the boat.
Jesus, however, is able to have supernatural rest abilities, and is sleeping through it all.
The disciples come to him and wake him up and say, “Jesus! Don’t you care if we die?? Save us!”
So Jesus gets up and calms the sea and the winds down just by speaking to them.
Then he turns to his disciples and says, “Don’t you guys trust me? Don’t you have faith in me? Haven’t you seen me perform miracles up to this point? I’ve tried to tell you who I am- aren’t you listening to me?”
The disciples are in awe and say, “Who is this?! He can command the wind and the sea.”

And this is a great feat.
As I mentioned a little before, the sea was thought of chaotic and uncontrollable in this time.
I think we could still consider it that today, right?
I cannot control the sea, or the weather.
I cannot save people or a boat from capsizing.
And neither could these disciples.
They had grown up, their whole lives, around the sea. Some of them were fishermen before Jesus called them to be disciples.
The sea was a huge part of how their society sustained itself for food.
The sea was also the major method of travel, besides walking or riding a horse.
Sea voyage was the cheapest and fastest way to travel during this time.
However, there was no guarantee that your trip would arrive at its destination on time, or ever.
Weather conditions were never predictable, so your ship could have to route to another location, or it could end up at the bottom of the sea.
Not only this, but the sea is described in the Old Testament as the home of the sea monsters and sea creatures.
We have mention throughout the Psalms and the prophets of the leviathan and the behemoth- both of which dwell in and around the sea.
Thus, the sea is not only chaotic because of the deadly and destructive form it assumes when stormy weather combines with it, but it is also the place of mysterious and powerful monsters.
And these are things that we cannot control.
We, as humans, have no control over the weather, over the sea, or over these massive creatures.
Now, you might be thinking, “Wes, we are able to control some things. Our advances in technology show us what the weather is doing currently, or what we can expect to happen from the weather. And, we can kill terrible creatures in the sea like sharks and other things with our guns and other weapons.”
Okay, you have a point.
But we aren’t actually controlling it, are we?
We try to predict the weather- but even then it is still wrong from time to time.
And these creatures are described as more powerful than what I think of when I think of a shark.
The fact is that we cannot control the sea. We cannot, and will never be able to. And neither could the disciples in this story.
Thus, they are filled with fear- which I think would be our response as well- or at least my response.

Fear:

If we take the order of Mark literally, the disciples had seen Jesus perform miracles up to this point.
In the sections prior to this story, Jesus casts out demons, and heals people with leprosy and withered hands.
So, from our perspective, the disciples have no reason to fear in this scenario of the boat, right?
I mean, they are with Jesus for crying out loud!
We know that he is fully human and fully God- and we know that he has this situation under control.
But they are out in the middle of the sea, this uncontrollable, chaotic thing, and when it starts to become even more scary and unpredictable, they are filled with fear.

Now, I’ve had this response before. I think I would be safe in saying that we all have.
As humans, we have a desire to be in control, don’t we?
And when things start going against that- when things start to become out of control or are beyond our control, we get afraid.
One instance that this happened in my own life was when I was just 5 years old.
I was visiting the Six Flags amusement park in St. Louis with my family, and we walked by this large wooden roller coaster called The Screamin’ Eagle.
Now, since it was wooden, there were no upside-down parts, or loop-de-loops.
However, it runs at 62 miles per hour, and has three different hills- one of which drops 92 feet.
Well, the brave and confident 5-year-old that I was looked up at this ride, and said to my dad, “I want to ride this one.”
He looked down at me and said, “Wes, are you sure?”
I said yes, and the next thing I knew, we were sitting in the train- he and I, with the rest of my family watching from the line.
As I sat there, ready to start the ride at any moment, the tracks and hills became much larger than they were from outside the gate, and I realized the mistake that I had made.
The Six Flags workers gave the thumbs up sign to each other, pressed the start button, and our train slowly left the safety of the loading stalls.
I turned to my dad and said, “Dad, I don’t want to ride this anymore. I want to get off.”
He looked at me and said, “Wes, I can’t stop this train. We have to ride it now.”
I spent the rest of my ride with my face buried my dad’s arm, hating every minute of the way I chose to spend those 2 and a half minutes of my life.
I was so afraid of that ride that I never rode another roller coaster for five years after that.
I was unable to control that experience, and thus I was deeply afraid.
I imagine it was somewhat of a similar experience for the disciples in this story.
Granted, it does not say that they never went out on a boat for five years after this experience, but it says they were afraid- and rightfully so!

However, my dad is not Jesus.
And in their situation, the uncontrollable sea and situation was able to be calmed.
Jesus wakes up, says to the wind and the waves, “Peace! Be still!,” and the winds and the waves obey him.
We see the contrast here between humanity and deity; between powerless and powerful; between created and creator.
The disciples have been around Jesus for awhile now and have seen miraculous things that he has done.
However, Jesus takes it up a notch here. He controls the uncontrollable.
And up to this point, the disciples have only heard of God controlling the sea.
God is the one that has that power and ability.

Read Job 38:1-41

In this passage, God is answering Job. And I love it because we see God being a little playful here right?
Job has said, leading up to this, that he could be a better god than God.
And here, God answers him.
But God says to Job, “You are just a human. I created you. You do not have power like I do. So stop pretending that you are as great as me.”
And he even says in this chapter here that he has control over the seas and over the weather.

Thus, Jesus demonstrates this power as well.
And the disciples have surely heard this growing up- they know the Old Testament if they are Jews.
So their question at the end of this section seems a little odd to us, right?
They say, “Who then is this, that even the wind and sea obey him?”
Well obviously he is God.
To them, he has been another human who has been able to perform some really cool magic tricks.
Yeah, he has talked to them and told them that he is the Son of God.
But I think this is a turning point for them in their faiths.
Unfortunately, the rest of the book is not full of the disciples fully believing in Jesus 100%.
In fact, they do not seem to get it until Jesus has been resurrected.
But Jesus calls them out and says, “Do you still not believe?”
And I think this is the message for us too.
Our lives can be chaotic. Our lives can sometime become uncontrollable. We may even be driven to the point of fear.
But God has it- God is in control, and can control whatever it is that we are facing.
What is our response?
To trust and to believe.

So church, as we leave here today, may we be filled with awe and wonder at the work and power of God. May we believe and have faith that God is active and in control. May we realize that God is working in each of our lives, calming the many different storms- and saying “Peace! Be still!” May we rest in this peace, trusting in God more and more every day.