Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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They still don't fish the Sea of Galilee in the afternoons.  The weather's the same today as it was then, when Jesus and his disciples made the margin of that lake their home, and crossed and re-crossed it many times.  Ferocious storms still arise, suddenly, in the heat of the afternoon, and sink even the sturdiest boat.  So they fish early in the morning and go home before lunch.
 

At least four of the disciples were professional fishermen.  That even they feared for their lives attests to the ferocity of this particular storm.  The sky suddenly blue-black,  great claps of thunder, lightning arcs that crackled in the air, giant waves tossing the boat like a toy, breaking over the gunwales, threatening to swamp it.  And Jesus sleeping through it all!  Panicked, the disciples wake him.  And as he rises to his feet, he asks, "Why are you afraid?  Have you still no faith?"  Peterson catches the disgust in Jesus' voice: "Why are you such cowards?  Don't you have any faith at all?"  And he calms the storm.

The disciples immediately learn the wrong lesson.  They say, "Wow!  This is some kind of a man!  When he says "jump," Mother Nature says, "how high?"  Miracles.  Magic.  We love 'em.  The disciples miss the main point (certainly the main point for us, today) which is: "Why are you such cowards?  Don't you have any faith at all?"  Only at one level is this a story about a boat in a storm.  It is a story for anyone who feels his or her boat rocking, and is afraid.  A pastor friend, many years ago, told me that he often read this story to the dying.  I always think of that.  It asks why, if we believe in God and know his amazing power … why are we afraid.  Even when life is slipping away.

The story, about the calming of the storm, introduces a section in Mark's Gospel which is devoted solely to miracles Jesus performed in Galilee.  He had already performed many, and in the next few days he would cast out a legion of demons from a mad man, heal a woman who had been ill for twelve years, and raise a young girl from the dead.  So, when he asks, "Have you still no faith?" he is asking, "What will it take?"  Will you be so awed by my power that you miss my point?  Miracles are to show the power of God in order to engender faith in you. If you see clearly what God can do, and understand his great compassion for those in trouble, surely you will conclude that there is nothing to fear.  Surely you will be brave and courageous.  Surely you will not be cowards, knowing what you know.  The early Christians, in Mark's day, found great comfort in this passage.  Mark wrote during the persecutions of Nero, the first serious persecution of the Church.  Peter and Paul were both dead, having been executed in Rome.  Other leaders of the church were being tortured and put to death.  The early Christians' boat was rocking, and they were afraid.  And as they read this, they would hear Jesus asking them, "Why are you afraid?  Have you no faith?"  The message for them was more than a long-ago miracle.  For them it meant Jesus had the power to save believers even in the worst of circumstances.  And that's what it means for us.

 When the storms of life are raging, stand by  me.
 When the world is tossing me like a ship upon the sea,
 Thou who rulest wind and water, stand by  me.

Fear is the Christian's worst enemy.  Not silly fears (fear of needles, fear of roller coasters -- which, by the way, is very sensible), not that -- but the much more debilitating kind of fear that dogs people's lives and won't go away, the kind of fear that Franklin Roosevelt said "paralyzes needed effort, and turns advance into retreat."  It is almost as if our minds cannot contain fear and faith at the same time.  Almost as if it is a choice for us.  You can have one but not both.  Fear is a poison to faith.  Maybe that's why Jesus spent so much time telling people not to be afraid.  Don't worry about food and clothing, he said.  Don't worry about tomorrow.  Don't worry about burying your father.  Don't worry about preserving your money.  (If you're going to worry, he said one day, worry about the right things -- for he knew their worry priorities were all wrong: worry that you might die and not be saved.  Worry so much about that that if your eye leads you astray, pluck it out.  Better blind in heaven than sighted in hell.)  But as for those other fears, fears about our welfare here on earth, Jesus knew that as long as people were stymied by that kind of fear, that kind of insecurity, that kind of anxiety, they would never be able to live courageous, faithful lives.  You have to get rid of your fear to make room for faith.

We Methodists have told the story for years of John Wesley's trip to America.  (He came here only once, you remember, as a young man and a missionary, landed in Georgia and returned home before long -- a complete failure.  And then, back in London, Wesley was truly converted at Aldersgate Street.)  But on that voyage Wesley had an unsettling experience, perhaps the beginning of his conversion.  In the midst of a terrible storm at sea, when Wesley and most of the other passengers were clinging to their cots and utterly terrified that they might die, a group of Moravians was calmly praying to God.  Wesley knew they had something which he had not.  They had replaced fear with faith.  They had the assurance that John Wesley later came to know.  They knew that nothing could ultimately undo them.  At his trial in Leipzig Martin Luther was asked by one of his inquisitors, "Where will you be, Brother Martin, when church, state, princes and people turn against you?"  "Why then, as always," Luther replied, "in the hands of Almighty God."  At some deep level of their being Wesley and Luther simply were not afraid.  They had read and understood the words of St. Paul, "If God be for us, who can be against us?"

So fear is poison to faith.  Fear also poisons decent behavior.  Listen carefully to those disciples in the boat.  They don't say, "Wake up Lord and save us."  They say, "We're dying and you don't care."  Ugly.  Shakespeare has Lady Macbeth say that "our fears do make us traitors."  And it is true.  Traitors to our family.  Traitors to friends.  Traitors to ourselves.  Traitors to God.  For when we are afraid, we behave just like animals with their backs to the wall.  Sometimes it is subtle, sometimes it is not.  It is always vicious.  We act out our fears in hostility towards others.  The next time you find yourself being unkind to someone, putting him down, making her feel small, ask yourself what you're afraid of.  The next time you decide to blame your troubles on someone else, or on some other race, or some other social class, or some other gender, find your fear.  And you will rid yourself of your anger.

It was Leonard Sweet who, looking at the story of the calming of the sea, said, "Jesus doesn't always still the storms in our lives, but he stills us in the storms."  It would be ludicrous to suggest that Christians don't have to endure storms.  Certainly they more than others.  We cannot, and must not, dry-dock our lives, or choose to sail only in shallow waters.  We cannot hide behind the tried and true.  Just the opposite.  Christians often walk into the storms of life.  But they are not shaken by rough seas, and their behavior remains untainted by fear.  The world ought to be able to say this about us: "They were truly men and women of God -- afraid of nothing.  And they continued to love others even in the worst of times."