Peace! Be Still!
Mark 4:35 – 41
As most of you know, John Wesley is the founder of Methodism. John Wesley was a clergyman in the Anglican Church, the Church of England but he had one concern with the church; he didn’t believe that it was effectively reaching the regular people but rather was focused on the rich and powerful.
In 1735 John and his brother Charles leave England to fulfill what they believed was the mission of the church. They left on a missionary journey to the far-away English colony of Georgia where they would minister to other British citizen and the American natives.
While they were sailing across the Atlantic, on January 25, 1736, a Sunday interestingly enough, a terrible storm suddenly arose at about 7. In his own words from his journal Wesley said “that the sea broke over the deck, split the main sail in pieces, covered the ship, and poured in between the decks, as if the great deep had already swallowed us up. There was a terrible screaming began among the other English.”
But then John noticed that a group of German Moravians that were also on the trip calmly continued their worship service. Again, is his own words Wesley writes, “the Germans calmly sung on. I asked one of them, “were you not afraid?” He answered, “I thank God, no.” I asked, “But were not your women and children afraid?” He replied, mildly, “No; our women and children are not afraid to die.”
“From them I went to their crying, trembling English, and pointed out to them the difference in the hour of trial, between him that respect and have faith in God, and him that does not. Shortly thereafter the wind fell. This was the most glorious day which I have ever seen”. Our message today is about a similar situation and a similar response.
As our lesson opens Jesus has spent the day teaching a multitude of people that had come to hear him near Capernaum, at the northern edge of the Sea of Galilee. On this day He has spent the whole day on the edge of the sea teaching and healing the sick. Such a large crowd had gathered around him that he got into a boat on the sea while the whole crowd was beside the sea on the land.
As evening comes and the crowds begin to dissipate, Jesus turns to his disciples and says: “Let us go across to the other side”. Invariably when Jesus something like that, there is lesson to be learned during or at the end of the trip. As nighttime settles in exhausted Jesus and the disciples set sail across the Sea of Galilee in the same boat that he had used all day to speak to the people.
The Sea of Galilee is the lowest freshwater lake on the planet. It is 682 feet below sea level and is surrounded by mountains on all sides. When storms come in, especially at night, the winds can come out of the mountains and wreak great havoc on the region of Galilee, but the folks that were setting sail with Jesus that night were not inexperienced boatmen! In fact, seven of the twelve were in fact fishermen that had spent considerable time navigating the sea in all sorts of weather for most of their lives.
So here they are these guys in the boat and like the story about John Wesley, a great storm blows up and even with all their experience they are starting to panic. It is night, it is dark, and the winds and the waves are too much for them. The storm is starting to fill the boat with water. The exhausted Jesus, however, is in the same boat and the same storm as the disciples but he is peacefully asleep, resting at the front of the boat on a cushion.
He is surrounded by the same water as the disciples, blown by the same wind, beaten by the same waves yet He is undisturbed by it. While the disciples fret and worry, he sleeps. The disciples want busyness and activity. Jesus sleeps in calmness. His sleep reveals that the storm is of no real threat.
It is not the wind, waves, and water around them or the circumstances in which they find themselves but rather the storm that rages within their hearts and our souls. Friends, the real storm, the more threatening storm is always the one that churns and rages within.
Sometimes the sea of life is rough. The wind is strong. The waves are high. Our boat is taking on water and sinking. We all know what that is like. Each of us could tell a storm story. Some of our stories will begin with a phone call, a doctor’s visit, a job loss or other news we did not want to hear. Some of them will start with the choices we have made, our mistakes, and our choices.
Other stories will tell about the difficulty of relationships, hopes and plans that fell apart, or the struggle to grow and to find our way in the world. Some storms seem to arise out of nowhere and take us by surprise. Other storms build and brew as we watch them on the horizon.
Friends, storms happen! They are storms of loss and sorrow, storms of suffering, storms of confusion. They are storms of perceived failure, storms of loneliness, storms of disappointment and regret. They are storms of depression, storms of uncertainty and second guessing, and storms of thoughts and voices in our head.
Regardless of when or how they arise, these storms are about changing and unsettling conditions. Our life can be overwhelming and out of control. Things don’t go our way and circumstances seem too much for us to handle, order gives way to chaos and we feel as though we are sinking. The water is deep and the shore is a distant, unreachable port. Does that sound like what has happened to you? It has happened to me!
In our lesson the disciples are quick to make the storm about Jesus. “Do you not care that we are perishing?” they demand. We’ve probably all echoed those words in the storms of our lives. “Do something. Fix it. Make it better.” In the midst of our storm Jesus seems absent, passive, uncaring. How can he sleep at a time like this? An inattentive and seemingly unresponsive, sleeping Jesus is not what they wanted and is not we want when we are in crisis.
That day on that boat Jesus speaks “Peace, Be still!” to the wind and the sea and they do obey the co-creator of the universe, but what Jesus says isn’t about changing the weather as much as he is encouraging the disciples to change. He is encouraging us to change! He is speaking to the wind and the waves within them, within us. The disciples have been pointing to what is going on outside them. Jesus now points to what is going on inside them by saying “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”
You see the Jesus’ words are more about us than the circumstances of our lives, in the storms in which we find ourselves. Storms will happen! You see my friends, faith, more faith, better faith, stronger faith, the right kind of faith will not eliminate the storms from our lives. Faith does not change the storm, faith changes us. Faith does not take us around the storm but rather faith carries us through the storm. Faith allows us to see and know that Jesus is there with us. Faith is what allows us to be still, to be peaceful, in the midst of the storm.
Jesus had faith in His Father that the storm was NOT of eternal significance and so he slept. With Jesus leading us, it is possible to learn that the storms that we face in life are also of no eternal significance, in much the say way as Paul telling a couple weeks back that death is not eternally significant. The comforting Spirit of God blows through and within us more mightily than the winds of any storm. The power of God is stronger than any wave that beats against us. The love of Jesus is deeper than any water that threatens to drown us.
Hear the Good News my friends………..
In every storm Jesus is present and his response is always the same, “Peace! Be still!” Will we fear the life storms that will and do come? Will we fear the power of the storm, or will we embrace and rely in the power of God through the example of Christ to keep us safe from the storm? Jesus has power over the storms of life, experiences them with us, loves us, delivers us from them and wants us to trust him more than we do. Storms don’t worry Jesus. He’s right there with us during them, and he’s perfectly calm about them. We should to!
He isn’t terrified; he isn’t impatient; he isn’t worried. In fact, he’s so calm he is at peace! And we can have that same peace because we know that Jesus is in the boat with us, at all times and in all places. It may seem for the moment like Jesus is sleeping and that he does not care. In the moment, it may feel that way. But rest assured, when those waves come so hard and so close that you feel like there’s no hope, there is still hope because He is right there beside us giving us comfort through these words Peace, Be Still!