So Afraid

Matthew 8:23-27

February 12, 2023 • Mount Pleasant UMC

Every time I take a group to the Holy Land, one of the highlights is the boat ride on the Sea of Galilee. It’s usually something we do on the very first day, and I like to remind everyone of something Bishop Woodie White told us the first time I went way back in 1995. In a lot of places in Israel, we don’t know exactly where this or that happened, but when it comes to the Sea of Galilee, we know Jesus was there. He spent a great deal of his time in that area. He sailed that lake and he walked on that water. Other places might be guesses, but we know that the Sea of Galilee is 100% authentic. And we usually take some time to turn off the boat motors, and float along as we reflect in quiet. Without fail, time spent on the Sea of Galilee ranks high in most people’s Holy Land experience.

I have never been on the Sea of Galilee when there is a storm, but from the description we get in this morning’s Scripture passage, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want to be. The voyage these disciples undertook with Jesus on that particular evening was anything but peaceful. And you have to remember that several of these disciples were experienced fishermen. They had spent a good part of their lives sailing on the Sea of Galilee, going back and forth across it, catching fish and working mostly in the dark, at night. So they thought nothing of it when Jesus suggested they all get in the boat and take their time going across. They probably thought nothing of it when Jesus went to the back of the boat and laid down. It had been a busy, draining day. As a result of Jesus healing Peter’s mother-in-law, many people had come to him, asking for and expecting healing. After driving out demons and healing the sick, Jesus is undoubtedly tired. Let him rest. It would be a quiet trip across the lake. What could possibly happen out on this sea that they wouldn’t be ready for?

As we know well, and as we have been exploring the last several weeks, chaos shows up when we are least expecting it, seemingly when we are least prepared for it. And so here at the beginning of the year, we’ve been talking about some spiritual strategies for pushing back the chaos, or at least to deal with the chaos that is inevitable in our lives. Chaos comes to us in many different forms, but when people go to describe it, they often revert to one particular image. Chaos feels like a storm.

This is a familiar story, so you might remember that while the disciples are crossing, a sudden storm comes up on the Sea. And while it is true that this sea sits in a geological bowl, surrounded on all sides by mountains, and that winds can rush down upon it quickly, causing storms, it is also true that these disciples have spent their lives in this area and would have known what the weather was like around the Sea. But they have never seen a storm like this. The word Matthew uses to describe it is seismos, from which we get our word “seismic.” Then and now, that word is used to describe something more than your average everyday thunderstorm. It describes a violent shaking, an earthquake-like situation, a “tempest.” Sudden storms on the lake may be normal, but this particular storm is not. So where did it come from? I think the answer might be found in looking at where Jesus is headed. In the passage right after this one, Jesus lands in the region of the Gadarenes, Gentile territory, and there he meets two men who are demon-possessed. In conversation and confrontation with them, he casts out the demons. His destination in this boat ride is a confrontation with the powers of darkness, which is why I think this storm is an attempt on Jesus’ life. It’s an attempt by Satan to take him out before he has a chance to disrupt Satan’s kingdom on the other side of the lake. This seismic storm is demonic in origin, and that’s why it unsettles these seasoned disciples (cf. Card, Matthew: The Gospel of Identity, pg. 82).

But it doesn’t faze Jesus. While the storm is raging, Jesus is sleeping. Soundly sleeping, apparently, because this was not an enclosed boat. As he lays in the back of the boat, Jesus is being beaten by the rain and surrounded by the wind, and he is quietly snoring. The boat is rocking from the waves, but what threatens the disciples only rocks Jesus to sleep (cf. LaGrone, Out of Chaos, pg. 123). And at some point, the disciples notice. And it kind of makes them angry. They quickly jump to the conclusion that Jesus doesn’t care because they “mistook his slumber for apathy, his calm for callousness” (LaGrone 112), and they don’t mind telling him that. “Lord, save us!” they cry out. “We’re going to drown!” (8:26). In Mark’s Gospel, they say, “Don’t you care?” (Mark 4:38).

I’ve cried out like that, and I bet you have, too. No, not those words, though as a person who can’t swim, I can understand the fear expressed by the disciples. But I’ve been in situations where it has felt like Jesus isn’t doing anything about the bad things going on, or he’s at least not doing what I think he ought to do, what I want him to do, and I’ve cried out. I know I’ve asked the “don’t you care” question. The storm is raging, the boat appears to be sinking, and Jesus is asleep. “Don’t you care if I drown, Jesus?” Don’t you care if everything falls apart? This pandemic, this social stress, this denominational and local church drama—I can’t handle these storms, Jesus. They seem overwhelming. I’m afraid, and it seems like you’re asleep. Why aren’t you fixing it right now? I’m reminded of the way C. S. Lewis described such times. Lewis was writing in the context of a storm called cancer, a chaos that claimed his wife’s life. He describes it this way: “When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be – or so it feels – welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away” (A Grief Observed). That’s the way it feels when Jesus is asleep in the back of the boat. And because of that, sometimes, let’s be honest, sometimes—we get stuck in the midst of the storm and the fear.

And when we get stuck, we become our storms. In other words, our identity gets tied up in the chaos of our lives. We become defined by our illnesses, our addictions, our tragedies, our storms, our chaos. And when you become defined by those things, the hope of ever escaping the storm disappears quickly. If all you can focus on is the wind and the waves, those things begin to seem overwhelming, and it’s easy to believe they will never go away. I had a friend once who got “stuck” in the chaotic storm of grief. Grief is a journey, and this friend did well as the journey began, but somewhere along the way my friend became defined by grief. My friend made some somewhat destructive choices that allowed the grief to consume my friend. Grief shaped every moment of every day. You’ve known others who became defined by their addiction, whether that addiction was a substance abuse or something else. They were stuck and life became one endless seeking after the next high, the next hit. The storm rages and when we get stuck, we forget that Jesus is even in the boat. When we become defined by our storm, we have given up all hope of healing.

There’s an example of this in John 5, where an invalid had been laying for a long, long time. We don’t know how he got in this condition, but he had suffered for 38 years. Now, as we learned when we were in Israel last month, so many things are so close together and the Pool of Bethesda is just next door to the Temple, to the place where God’s presence was believed to be. Why did he not go to the Temple and ask for healing prayer? Instead, this man spent years upon years laying by this pool, believing in a superstition said the waters could heal him if he was the first one in when the waters  were stirred (Beck, The Holy Land Devotional, pg. 128). By the time Jesus meets him, though, he has pretty much given up. Everyone else gets in before him. He has become defined by his illness, defined by his storm, so much so that when Jesus asks him, “Do you want to get well?” all he has to give back to Jesus are excuses. He never answers Jesus’ question because he is defined by his disability (cf. John 5:1-9).

To him, Jesus gives this command: “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk” (John 5:8). To the storm that threatens the disciples and causes them to be so afraid, Jesus says, “Quiet! Be still!” (Mark 4:39). The word he uses there actually means “to be muzzled.” You put a muzzle on an animal not just to quiet them down but also to remove the threat of being bitten. So Jesus is not only quieting the noise of the storm, he’s removing the threat. Matthew says that when Jesus spoke, the sea became “completely calm” (8:26). And Jesus, wiping sleep from his eyes, says, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” (8:26; Mark 4:40). Do you notice that the disciples do not respond directly to Jesus? They don’t have an answer to his question. A few moments ago, fear seemed logical. Now—well, not so much. All they can do is be amazed and whisper among themselves, “What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!” (8:27).

Now here’s something to notice that I don’t think I had ever seen before. Matthew does not tell us directly that the disciples are afraid of the storm; the only indication we get of their fear is what they say when they wake Jesus up and he calls them on it. But even then they are not saying they are afraid of the storm; they are mad at Jesus that he hasn’t done anything to prevent them from drowning. Jesus names their feelings as “afraid,” or in the original text, “timid, full of dread.” But Matthew, who was there, never says they are afraid of the storm. He does say they are “amazed” after Jesus calms the storm. Literally, he says they are “agitated” because Jesus has upset their neatly ordered world. Jesus, in calming the storm, has changed the way things are supposed to work. Now, I don’t know exactly what they expected him to do when they woke him up, maybe help them row against the winds and the waves, but whatever they expected, calming the storm was not it. That action makes them “agitated,” enough to ask the question, “What kind of man is this?”

Like I said earlier, the storms they knew. The storms on the Sea of Galilee they were familiar with. The storms they understood, even if it threatened their lives. They had been threatened before. What they had not encountered before was a man, a teacher with the power to stop the storms. What Matthew is suggesting in his telling of the tale is that the disciples were “more scared of the calm than of the storm” (Davis, Come Alive: Matthew, pg. 62). When the storm was raging, they could focus on it. The storm served as a “distraction from their relationship with Jesus.” But when the storm calmed, when the wind and the waves quieted down, then they had to deal with a bigger question: who is Jesus? Who is this man we’ve entrusted our lives to? I think, again, this is part of why and how we get “stuck” in our storms. When the storm is raging, we can “distract ourselves from Jesus and dwell on our own problems.” We can even blame Jesus and therefore not have to actually deal with him. You see, we understand storms. We may say we don’t like the chaos, but we understand it. It’s familiar. But when the calm comes, we find ourselves face to face with Jesus, the one who has calmed the storm. And we have to answer the same question the disciples asked: “What kind of man is this?”

If we’re going to face down the chaos of our world or even of our own personal lives, we ultimately have to deal with Jesus—who he is and what he means in our lives. So the first question we have to answer is this: who is Jesus to me? It’s all well and good to recognize that Jesus was an historical figure, that he really lived and existed and walked the highways and byways of first-century Palestine. We can even come to church and sing songs about him, or call him “Lord” or “Son of God” in personal devotions and prayer. But I also remember that Jesus, in describing the final day, says that many will come on that day and call him, “Lord,” but their lives haven’t reflected what their words claim (cf. Matthew 7:21-23). They will say, “But, Lord, I went to church and I worked in the nursery and I read the Bible once in a while and I wrote a check to a charity and I watched every episode of The Chosen.” And Jesus will say to them, “I never knew you.” Never. That’s a hard word, but it should remind us that just saying the words is not enough. Who is Jesus to you? Who is this man in your life? “Do we actually treat him as if he’s got authority over every aspect of our lives and our world?” (Wright, Matthew for Everyone, Part One, pg. 91).

Let me go from preaching to meddling and ask some rather intrusive questions; luckily, you only have to answer them between you and God and not to me! Does Jesus have authority over your family life, over your entertainment choices, over your moral choices? Does Jesus have authority over your political life; does he get a say in who you vote for? Does Jesus have authority over your wallet, over your financial life? Do you put him first over the things that are most important to you? There is an ancient story (it may be a legend, but it’s a good preacher story) that comes from the time when the Roman emperor Constantine became a Christian and made Christianity the official religion of the whole empire. What that meant in practical terms is that everyone was forced to convert to the Christian faith, including the Roman army. There was a problem, though. Jesus was a big proponent of not killing, and killing was a large part of a Roman soldier’s job. They came up with what was seen as an elegant solution. When they were baptized, the soldiers would hold their sword arm up out of the water. Their sword arm was not baptized and therefore, not given over Jesus. I got bad news for them: it doesn’t work that way. We can’t give Jesus just “part” of us. As the Wesley Covenant Prayer puts it: “Christ will be all in all, or he will be nothing” (UM Book of Worship, pg. 292). Does Jesus have authority over every aspect of our lives and our world?

The second question that comes out of this passage is this: once we know who Jesus is, once we have settled that basic issue, do others understand us to be acting and living in his name? In other words, as his followers, are we living in such a way that we confront the evil in this world and proclaim, “Quiet! Be still!” Do our lives cause others to ask, “What kind of people are they? What makes the difference in their lives?” Sometimes, maybe often, it takes a storm to make us into those sorts of people. A little over a week ago, Jim Brown stopped in the office and was sharing a little bit about all he and Linda have been through in the last few weeks—or, really, the last year or so. Many of you know they have had various health challenges, most of which have come upon them suddenly like a storm on the Sea of Galilee. It’s been hard, but Jim said that it’s in those times when what you say you believe is put to the test. Storms prove the difference between mere “belief” in Jesus and having a relationship with Jesus. Then he smiled and said, “You know, God and me are talking a lot more now.” We should desire to be the kind of people that, when others watch us going through a storm, they wonder, “Where do they find such peace?” What kind of people are we? Can others tell we live and act in his name?

Dr. Jessica LaGrone tells of being on a large cruise ship for her honeymoon, a ship large enough that they often forgot they weren’t on land because you couldn’t really feel the boat moving. One night, though, she awoke to a sound of clinking metal, which turned out to be the metal clothes hangers in the closet, rocking back and forth against each other. The ship had sailed into a storm, but they couldn’t really feel it in their cabin so she went back to sleep. The next morning, though, she asked one of the staff about the storm. “It was a doozy,” he said, “but the ship’s too large for you to feel much except the biggest waves. Besides, the closer you are to the center of the ship, the less the storm will toss you about” (121-122). What a great image! In the storms of our lives, we might put it this way: the closer you are to the center of our faith, to Jesus, the less the storm will toss you about. The storm will still come; chaos will still happen. But if Jesus is in the boat, the storm doesn’t stand a chance.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve discovered some practices that can enable us to push back the chaos of the world, that allow the God of order to restore said order to our world. We’ve talked about the practice of sabbath, about wholehearted devotion, about holy communion, and now we’ve come back to where we began: hearing Jesus speak to the storms and the chaos: “Peace, be still!” The common thread in all of these messages or practices has really been the same: if Jesus is in the boat, then the chaos is no real threat. There is no reason to be afraid. So hold onto him. Put your trust in him because “Jesus is undisturbed by the things that disturb us” (LaGrone 123). He is Lord over it all, and “even the wind and the waves obey him!” (8:27). Thanks be to God! Let’s pray.