The very first verse in the Gospel of Saint Mark - chapter 1, verse 1 - is this: “the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, Son of God.” Mark is not wasting any time. This is the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Mark is an apocalyptic evangelist in the classical sense. We remember that the word “apocalypse” does not mean “standing on the street corner with signs proclaiming the end times.” It simply means “revelation.” The final book of the bible, the Revelation to St. John, is named the “apocalypsis” in Greek.
And so St. Mark, all throughout his good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is concerned with revealing things. He is writing to illuminate this strange and magnificent reality of the inbreaking of God’s kingdom. He writes with urgency and momentum: what the other evangelists in their Gospels take several chapters to reach or explore, Mark lays out for us with deliberateness and haste. The proclamation of John the Baptist: prepare the way of the Lord! The baptism of Jesus, the temptation in the desert, the calling of the disciples, the healing of a man possessed by demons, the healing of Peter’s mother in law, preaching in Galilee, the healing of lepers – all of this, for Saint Mark, is in chapter one. This is an apocalyptic gospel, each piece of the text steadily revealing that Jesus is the Son of God.
Today we meet Jesus in this fourth chapter of Mark’s gospel inviting his disciples into a boat to cross the expanse of the Sea of Galilee. Now, if you’ve been to the Sea of Galilee, or if you take a look at it on a map, you’ll find that this “sea” is not so much an ocean as it is a rather decently sized lake. It’s difficult to imagine this lake whipping up anything like the tempest we read about today, but the trick is in the land. The Sea of Galilee is the lowest freshwater lake on earth. It is nestled into the ground like a bowl, surrounded by high hills. The Jordan River flows into it from the north and out again from the south. As the winds move from Syria in the north downward toward Israel and Jordan, they sometimes gather in the narrow cliffs and spill out upon the water without warning, churning up storms that are dangerous to watercraft in the twenty-first century, not to mention any sort of boat that would’ve been around two-thousand years ago. Even this small sea could suddenly stir up great peril.
And so it does here as Jesus and his disciples make their crossing. The waves crash up onto the boat, Jesus - beyond all reason - is found sleeping soundly on a cushion at the back of the boat. We can only sympathize with the disciples as they cry out, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” Jesus rises from his rest and St. Mark tells us that he rebukes the wind, shouting, “peace! Be still!” Peace. Be still. What we might miss here is that this language used to describe Jesus’ calming of the storm on the Sea of Galilee is the same language that describes Jesus freeing people who have been possessed by demons. These words are the words of exorcism. We perhaps cannot be sure whether or not something evil was using the sea to inhibit the mission of Jesus and his disciples, but what we see here is St. Mark revealing to us who Jesus is. Jesus’ authority is not merely a teaching authority, but a divine power over nature itself, over evil itself.
Who is the only one with authority over nature and over evil? Well….scripture tells us that the only one with this authority is God.
The Bible is always so stunning. It’s so rich and generous and revelatory and exciting. Mark the evangelist is weaving a tapestry here - he’s painting a masterpiece. Each one of Jesus’ disciples knew the stories of the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible. Each one of them knew that only God has authority over the sea and over every evil thing. All throughout the tradition of Jewish history and theology, the sea is the sign of chaos, turmoil, mess, confusion, disarray, and unbridled power. The sea is that which consumes in the story of Noah and the flood. The sea is the path to liberation for Israel as they escape slavery in Egypt, but in that escape to freedom, the sea is the symbol of all of the upheaval that the Israelites must encounter and move through on their journey. In the Book of Job, in the psalms, and in the prophet Isaiah, the sea is the dominion of evil powers - the place where madness reigns unchecked. Only God has authority over this dominion. Only God can part the waters and stop the floods.
Here in the Gospel, Saint Mark reveals something about Jesus Christ. Jesus does not call upon God to calm the storm. He silences the sea himself. He reveals himself to have authority over the elements, over the whole of creation. Jesus reveals his mastery of a power that can only belong to God.
The disciples were filled with great awe. Literally, the text says that they “feared a great fear.” The other time in the Bible when this expression is used is when the angels appear to the shepherds on the hillside, announcing the birth of Jesus the Messiah at Christmas. This is an awe - a great fear - that is not a sign of terror, but rather the state of the human heart when it is overcome by the majesty of an encounter with the true and living God.
If you recall from last week, the Gospel of Mark has been leading us through a series of Jesus’ teaching in parables. Last week we heard about the mustard seed, the smallest of all seeds that grows into the most robust of shrubs. Today’s text follows immediately afterward, with Jesus wrapping up his lessons in parables and ostensibly moving on, across the sea, to something else. But in these events on the Sea of Galilee, we encounter one more lesson. In this calming of the storm, we come upon a living parable.
Jesus did not only come among us in the Incarnation to calm the storms of nature one afternoon on a sailing ship. He came among us to calm the storms of sin and death forever. Into a world of chaos and turmoil, Jesus comes, bidding stillness and peace. In his rebuke of the winds, Jesus mastered the destruction of the waters on the Sea of Galilee, but soon - and very soon, for Saint Mark, in his urgent, revelatory Gospel - Jesus’ crucifixion, his passion, his death, and his resurrection will rebuke the forces of evil and death unto eternity.
In the boat, as Jesus slept, the disciples feared for their lives, astounded that their teacher seemed to have abandoned them. “Do you not care that we are perishing?” Everything, absolutely everything around them promised death.
At Calvary, as Jesus died in humiliation upon the Cross, the disciples feared for their lives, astounded that their teacher seemed to have abandoned them. Everything, absolutely everything around them promised death.
The disciples on the boat did not know that their teacher would wake and not merely cry out to God – but in fact reveal that he himself is God. The disciples at the foot of the Cross did not know that their teacher would not only not be dead forever, but that in this death and Resurrection, humanity itself would be forever delivered from the crushing inevitability of death.
Each one of us, at some point in our lives, has cried out to God - or will cry out to God - “Do you not care that we are perishing?” Are you sleeping, God? Do you see me? Have you abandoned me to the waters of destruction? Perhaps this is the cry of your heart on this very morning. “Teacher, do you not care?”
But our Gospel today reveals to us what is true. There is no evil, no sin, no despair, no fear, no chaos, no winds, no demons, no agony that cannot be quieted by those words that ripened on the lips of Jesus and spilled forth to soothe all of creation until the end of time: “peace. Be still.”
We have never been abandoned. We are accompanied by a compassionate friend whose heart is the font of all tenderness, all mercy. We are held close by the One who is consolation himself. And he is a God of peace.
Preached by Mtr. Brit Frazier
20 June 2021
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia