24 June 2012

12th Sunday in Ordinary Time year B
Mark 4:35-41 / 2 Corinthians 6:1-13
24 June 2012


It’s the cry and the call, so common, so often heard these days … “Oh, when things get back to normal … then, then it will be OK, then I’ll be able to get on with my life, then I’ll be able to get things done, get settled,” and so on.
“Normal” is what we all are seeking, hoping, longing for … whether it’s a return to a normalcy of health or wealth, job or family life … although … although, if you push someone who says that line … you’ll likely not get a straightforward answer as to what “normal” is. Perhaps they … or we, ourselves, if we are the ones seeking “normal” … will express it in some sort of a vague “feeling” way … something to do with “stability” or “security” … and, most likely, a sense of independence, self-reliance, knowing that we’re going to be OK and that we’ll be able to do it and make it on our own once again, like it used to be before whatever happened … illness, accident, economic hardship, lightning bolt from the sky … whatever happened, that turned our world upside down.

What had turned the disciples’ world upside down was … simply enough … Jesus’ coming among them … and that’s what we’ve been reading and hearing about, getting ourselves reacquainted with the opening stories of Mark’s Gospel in these post-Pentecost days of Ordinary Time. Mark’s the Gospel which prefaces nearly every turn and twist with “immediately,” to emphasize the bold, decisive moves which is Jesus’ story in this Gospel story … and thus far … as today we close out reading the fourth chapter of Mark … thus far it’s been a whirlwind, hard-pressing the reader … and most certainly, those who were there, living these events … hard-pressing them, and us, to find any “normal” which to cling.
Jesus casting out demons. Jesus healing lepers and the paralyzed. Jesus uttering new teachings. Jesus arguing with the religious leaders who question and challenge his authority.
And always, always, there were crowds. Pressing crowds. So many people around Jesus that his disciples feared the crowd would crush him.
And so, when Jesus said to his disciples, “Let us go across to the other side of the lake,” they surely jumped at the chance. Here would be a time, a place, where they could finally be away from the crowds and the controversy, a time, a place where they could just be, just them and Jesus, together. Finding “normal” again … perhaps, for the first time.
But then up came the storm. It’s one of those classic Sunday School Bible story moments … because almost everyone has seen a thunder and wind storm before, many of us have seen them on a lake or a large body of water … how fast they can come up, how strong they can blow, and we “get” the awesome fury of nature and what it can do. The Sea of Galilee isn’t huge … 13 miles long, 8 miles wide, 33 miles around. But to be in a little boat, halfway across, with four miles still ahead of you, in the midst of a lot of wind and waves … it would have been a frightening experience.
And it must have been a BIG storm … remember, many of the disciples were fishermen, so they would have seen … and been in … storms on this lake before. For them to show this much fear shows how big and bad the storm really was.
Just as fast, though, Jesus takes care of it. Again, it’s the Sunday School lesson moment, the one immortalized in that old 60s song about “putting your hand in the hand of the man who stilled the water, the man who calmed the sea.” It’s the teachable time, the great and wondrous miracle, Jesus has rescued the faithless disciples with just a word … “Peace! Be still!”
But … wait just a minute with our rushing the disciples to be rescued.
For there is one five word sentence here, in this short story from Mark’s Gospel, which ought, this morning, ought to give us some pause.
I don’t know if you heard it or not when it was read a few minutes ago.
So here it is again.

On that day, when evening had come, Jesus said to them, “Let us go across to the other side (of the lake).” And leaving the crowd behind, the disciples took Jesus with them in the boat, just as he was.
Other boats were with him.

OTHER BOATS WERE WITH HIM.

How many of you, how many of us, when you’ve heard this story, have pictured just ONE boat out there on the Sea of Galilee, getting bounced around on the waves? Come on, admit it. Most if not all of you have. I have.
The most famous art rendition, Rembrandt’s “Storm on the Sea of Galilee,” pictured on our bulletin cover this morning, reinforces this.
Yet, that’s not what the text says. Other boats were with him.
Well, no wonder we’ve missed this point. The disciples have, too.
Actually, the disciples have missed a lot of what’s been going on around them.
Haven’t they been paying attention to all that Jesus has been saying and doing, what Mark has conveyed in the past four chapters? The healings, the teachings? Obviously not.
No wonder they miss the fact that, out there on that stormy sea, they are not alone.
They’ve got tunnel vision … in the moment of crisis, they can’t see anything around them … just themselves.

TEACHER, DO YOU NOT CARE THAT WE ARE PERISHING???!!!

Perhaps I shouldn’t be so hard on the disciples, this early in Mark’s Gospel story. After all, there will be plenty of opportunity for that later on (!) but as for right now, they haven’t been with Jesus that long, they are still immature in the faith.
Jesus sees this. After he calms the storm, he asks the disciples, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”
The sense of the word Jesus uses that’s translated as “afraid,” the sense is that Jesus sees the disciples lacking something in their inner being. They are “afraid” because they don’t have faith … literally, what Jesus asks them is “DO YOU NOT HAVE FAITH?” And he answers the question for himself, in the way he asks it … Well, No, They Don’t Have Faith.
Otherwise, they would have known that they were safe with Jesus. Otherwise, at the very least, they would have realized that the other boats could, would have come to their rescue, banded together to make it across the stormy lake without loss of life.
The disciples’ fear is causing them to have tunnel vision … they can’t see anything beyond themselves … in the moment of crisis, self-preservation kicks in to rule their day, “it’s all about me … it’s all up to me … up to me, to rouse Jesus, to get this storm to end, TO GET THINGS BACK TO NORMAL AGAIN.”
Once again, this week, just like last week, in the parable Jesus was telling about the Mustard Seed, It’s All About Faith. Even a little bit of faith would have seen the other boats, would have realized that Jesus was Someone Different, that they were on their way to a New Normal together, together with Jesus, together with the others who were following Jesus … on their way across the sea to the land of the Gentiles (how could they have EVER thought that things were going to be regular old NORMAL now???)
And that’s what I believe is so vitally important in not missing those five little words we’ve skimmed over in this story. Other boats were with him emphasizes the together-nature of life with Jesus … life to be lived, not alone and independent, self-reliant in times of the great storms of life … no, life in Christ is life meant to be lived in the body … the body of Christ in the world … the body of other believers who make up the body of Christ in the world.

This is what Paul is talking about in our reading from 2nd Corinthians. For what is Paul laying out here to those members of the Corinthian church … but a list, a litany of all the storms he’s been through in his life since Jesus entered in and created his … Paul’s … new “normal” …

As servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots … by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness … in honor and dishonor … and so on.

In and through all these things … bad, and good … the Body of Christ …
… the believers Paul was finding …
… the Word about Jesus was creating in, among, around him …
… the Body of Christ was carrying Paul through all of them … these, in a way, you could say, life-storms.
In community … in and among, with and through the body of his fellow-believers, even though he and they were separated by much time and space … still, in and through that community, the Body of Christ, Paul was assured and carried through his life-storms. That’s how he could say in that last portion of his letter to them, in all honesty, truth, and encouragement for them to remain strong in the Body of Christ, together …

We have spoken frankly to you Corinthians; our heart is wide open to you … open wide your hearts also.

Other boats were with him. Later, for the disciples themselves, after Jesus, his in-the-flesh presence had gone away from them … after he was crucified and raised, ascended to his Father and our Father in heaven … after those times, it would be the Body of Christ … those other boats, those other believers, who would remind them of Jesus … who would encourage, support, help, guide, bring them through, keep on carrying forth the message of Jesus into the world. It would not be totally up to them … they were not alone. The Spirit of Christ was with them, and in and through those other believers, they saw and felt the Body of Christ at work, in the world.
And so it’s been for two thousand years, as the message of Jesus keeps on creating the Body of Christ in the world … the creative, healing, teaching, renewing, forgiving word of Jesus moving through … people … other boats, other believers.
We are not alone on the stormy seas we encounter in life. Christ is with us. Sometimes he shows himself to us in big, astounding ways, like calming the storm. But most of the time, it’s those other boats who are with him, with us … Jesus’ body, in the body of other believers, surrounding us, encouraging us, close to us, reminding us of Christ’s love and peace and care … reminding us through Paul’s words to another congregation, those in Galatia, that “the Law of Christ” is that we “bear one another’s burdens.” Total independence and self-sufficiency are good … very good … in some things, but when it comes to life in the Body of Christ, they are of no use … to Jesus, or anyone else.
We belong together. We serve together. We rejoice together. We hurt together. We are the body, together, the other boats out there on the stormy sea, and together, we will reach the other side, because the body we bear and the body we are, is Jesus.
Good words for any day, but particularly good words for us, Nativity, today, embarking on our annual meeting soon, sending forth a new pastor a little later on. This faith, this life, it’s not a solo affair, and it’s not all up to me … me, or you, by ourselves.
Other boats are with us. We are in this together, this faith, this life, the Body of Christ, called, gathered, fed and nourished, and sent into the world to be as Christ to and for the world.
Thanks be to God. Amen.