Receiving The Peace Of Christ, In The Midst Of Chaos
Mark 4:35-41
Pentecost 5 Lectionary 12 June 23, 2024
Epiphany Lutheran Church Richmond, Virginia
For me, it’s a time for being still. It’s a place for receiving peace, for me. Sitting out on the screened porch in the early morning, with my first mug of coffee, during my 15 minutes of sabbath time, I listen to the birds and watch the bluebird couple dart in and out of the box, tending to their newly-hatched young. I watch the sun first peek through the trees. (The yard is full of mature oak trees.) It’s such a time of receiving the peace of Christ.
Where is your place of peace, for stillness? When is your time of day for stillness, for receiving peace?
I wonder if Jesus and his disciples were at peace, as they pushed their fishing boat out onto the Sea of Galilee? On that day, when evening had come, [Jesus] 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.
* * *
This morning we read the last verses in chapter four of Mark. In this chapter, the gospel writer has put together a collection of Jesus’ parables about the Kingdom of God, and about our call to proclaim the Kingdom: the parable of the sower of seeds; the question: do you put a lamp under a bushel basket?; and two more agricultural parables that we read last week, about how God causes the seeds of the Kingdom to grow.
To speak these words, Jesus has been in a boat. Those listening have been on the shore. (There’s a place on the shoreline of the Sea of Galilee, near Jesus’ home village of Capernaum, where the shoreline curves around a little cove of water. It could be that that’s where this teaching takes place – with the listeners on the shore in a semi-circle around the boat in the water.)
And the boat isn’t just a row boat! The fishing boats used during Jesus’ time were about 26 feet long, and about eight feet wide, with a sail. They would hold 12 to 15 people who would be working together, fishing. So, as this morning’s story begins, there’s plenty of space in the boat for Jesus and his disciples. And it makes sense to think that Jesus is tired after hours of teaching and telling parables and stories. So, he falls asleep on a cushion in the stern of the boat. How peaceful!
Where is your place of peace, for stillness? When is your time of day for stillness, for receiving peace, the peace of Christ?
* * *
Have you heard that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is forecasting an unusually active hurricane season? In my peaceful back yard and around my house there are, perhaps, 20 mature, large, tall oak trees, lending their shade and beauty. In fact, our entire neighborhood is heavily wooded. The houses are old enough that the builders didn’t clear-cut the lots the way they do today. They cut down only the trees necessary to build the houses, and left many trees standing to surround the houses. We love it!
But we do watch NOAA’s hurricane forecasts, because there have been two times, during the 23 years we’ve lived in our neighborhood, that hurricanes have blown through – and they have created chaos! Enough of those beautiful, mature, tall, and extremely heavy trees have blown over in hurricane winds that power lines have been downed and houses have been damaged. Twice, we’ve been without electrical power for more than a week. One time, we were trapped in the neighborhood because trees had blown over the exit roads. What a lot of work it was, for Dominion Power, and tree workers, and construction crews, to restore a peaceful order to the chaos!
This morning’s gospel story begins as a peaceful scene. But, suddenly, there’s chaos! On that day, when evening had come, [Jesus] 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 windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. Chaos!
Have any of you been to the Sea of Galilee? A popular tourist thing is to ride a boat across the “sea” – which is really a big lake. And, if you look at the hills surrounding the Sea, you can see how sudden windstorms can arise: the wind funnels and forces itself through the narrow valleys between the hills, across the water.
A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But [Jesus] 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.
This is one of the most dramatic scenes in all of the gospels, isn’t it? “Does it not matter to you that we are about to drown??!!” The Greek word translated, “rebuke,” is extremely strong! It’s the same word Jesus has used twice before in the gospel of Mark: to send the unclean spirit cowering away in the synagogue healing,1 and when ordering the evil spirits to keep his identity a secret.2 Jesus has power, you see, over the powers of evil, and over the chaos of creation when the natural world is running amuck. Then the wind ceased and there was a dead calm. “A dead calm.” Wow.
Do you remember how the disciples reacted to this display of divine power? 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?” “They were filled with great awe.” One commentator remarks that the Greek is literally translated: “They feared a great fear.” David Bentley Hart translates the Greek with these words: “And they were afraid, enormously afraid.”
* * *
“Why are you afraid?” Jesus asks his followers. “Have you no faith?”
Well fear is an emotion! We feel it! Something causes us to be afraid, right? We don’t choose to be afraid!
And “faith” doesn’t mean some required intellectual assent to a checklist of beliefs. “Faith” means trust. It’s trusting in the peace of Christ that Jesus proclaims across the stormy sea. It’s trusting in the power of the peace of Christ that we extended to each other at the beginning of our worship service.
“Peace! Be still!” Jesus says – to the whole cosmos, when engulfed in chaos!
That makes me think of pivotal verses in Psalm 46, which was the basis for Luther’s prayer as he wrote the hymn, “A Mighty Fortress.” First, there is the struggle to trust in God during chaos:
The Lord of hosts is with us;
the God of Jacob is our refuge….
[God] makes wars cease to the end of the earth;
[God] breaks the bow, and shatters the spear;
[God] burns the shields with fire.
And then this, in the Psalm:
Be still, and know that I am God!3
* * *
Be still, and know that I am God.
Where is your place of peace, for stillness? When is your time of day for stillness, for receiving peace – which is the peace of Christ?
There is an awful lot swirling around us that makes it extremely hard for you and me to be still, and to trust in the peace of Christ. There’s an awful lot that provokes fear.
“Why are you afraid?” Because that’s what we feel, Jesus, when we’re engulfed in chaos!
Chaos and fear (and anger!) is in the political conflicts that we are living through in our culture.
Chaos and fear is in a storm at sea, and in oak trees demolishing houses and power lines and blocking streets.
Chaos is in the cells in our bodies, when they respond to error messages and mutate, turning into malignancies. Many of you have journeyed with loved ones through the chaos and fear of cancer treatment – or have endured that yourselves.
Chaos and fear is in loving someone who is addicted to alcohol, or to drugs.
I talked with a woman this past week working through the chaos that followed her daughter’s death, from that fake fentanyl that’s out on the streets. Her daughter wasn’t an addict. She simply ingested that one pill and immediately collapsed and died.
Chaos and fear is in loving someone who is bipolar, or suffering another mental illness.
* * *
“Peace! Be still!” Jesus says to the entire cosmos!
Where is your place of peace, for stillness, when you’re engulfed in chaos? When is your time of day for stillness, for receiving the peace of Christ? After the diagnosis. After a sudden death. After the unexpected job termination. After the fall, and the banged-up head which lands you in the trauma unit, and the broken elbow which makes physical therapy so difficult.
One image is from the gospel passage: that we’re in a boat, floating above the chaos. (And in the ancient cultures that produced the library of books in the Bible, water represents chaos and evil. It’s there in the first creation story in Genesis, in the Psalms, all over the place. The danger of evil would have been so ominous for those first hearing this gospel story of a boat on the water!)
But here’s what’s more helpful to me: another metaphor; that of being grounded and surrounded. It’s thinking of our grounding in God’s presence, and in our experience of God’s love. We receive the peace of Christ in our awareness that, even when we are engulfed in chaos, we are surrounded by God’s love.
Where is your place, when is your time of day, for stillness; for receiving the peace of Christ? When you are attentive to God. When you remember that all we have is gift from God. This moment, this day of life. Our mobility and mental awareness – on this day of life.
It’s hard to do, when we’re engulfed in chaos: to remember our practices that ground us in the peace of Christ. But in our daily practice of sabbath time, we remember. We return to God. We receive the peace of Christ.
Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “In a world where faith is often construed as a way of thinking, bodily practices remind the willing that faith is a way of life.”4
And Wendell Berry ends one of his poems: “And we pray...to be quiet in heart, and in eye clear. What we need is here.”5
Breathe. Quiet in heart, and in eye clear. Open to the movement of the Spirit. Receiving the peace of Christ – grounding us, surrounding us, even when we find ourselves engulfed by chaos.
In the name of God, who is Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Pastor Andy Ballentine
1Mark 1:25
2Mark 3:12
3 Psalm 46:7, 9-10
4Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World (HarperOne, 2009), page xvi.
5Wendell Berry, “The Wild Geese” in New Collected Poems (Berkely, CA: Counterpoint, 2012), page 180.
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