Sermon by Reverend Dr. John W. Mann | June 23, 2024

Mark 4:35-41

As we make our way through life, we live with history that serves as a reference point; a reference point to where we’ve been, where we are, and where we may be heading. We can’t always predict these reference points. If we could, we might avoid them. They happen, and we live with them, or through them, or we succumb to them. We know them by different names. Some are occurrences such as the pandemic or 9/11. Some are references to the wars during our lifetimes or in living memory. The list could go on and some refence points are personal to us; the experience we live through and survive that becomes our before and after points of reference.

We have not yet gained enough distance from “The Pandemic” to fully understand its lasting impact. It disrupted our lives in many ways. Covid is still with us. We’re trying to understand its long-term effects, in terms of health and the divisions in our society.

One of my historical reference points is having lived in Scotland for 15 years. I try not to wear it out, but in terms of one lifetime, 15 years is a significant amount of time. Living there gave me a different perspective on time, because everywhere one goes, there are things that are old; really old.

We traveled throughout the country while we were there, by car, by bus or train and on foot. The second oldest building in Glasgow, the Crookston Castle was in my parish. It was built around the year 1400 on the foundation of an earlier building from around the year 1100. Between Glasgow and Edinburgh are the remnants of the Antonine Wall, built by the Romans starting in the year 142. Up north in Orkney there are the remains of a pre-historic, stone-age settlement.

One of the most fascinating historical reference points, for me at least, is a village called Fortingall. We went there once to look at a tree, a Yew tree. Yew trees live a long time. The one in Fortingall is estimated to be around 5000 years old. What’s amazing is that it survived through all the trials and tribulations of human activity in that time.

But the Yew tree wasn’t the only historical reference point in Fortingall. In a field in the village there is a small hill; a burial mound called “Càrn na Marbh,” which is Scots Gaelic for “mound of the dead.’ It was used as a burial place going back thousands of years. There is a tablet attached to a standing stone that tells of when the mound was last used. It reads, “Here lie the victims of the Great Plague of the 14th Century, taken here on a sledge drawn by a white horse led by an old woman.”

The great plague was the Bubonic Plague which began in Europe in the year 1347 and over the next few years killed at least 25 million people in Europe and by some estimates 50 million people. When we think of plagues and pandemics, nothing has even come close to that.

Why didn’t God do something about it? Many people believed God sent the plague as punishment. People reacted as people do in times of crisis. In medieval times, people went, as we say, medieval. The Jews were scapegoated and persecuted throughout Europe. There were groups of people called “flagellants” who would travel from town to town whipping themselves with spiked whips, causing chaos and riots. In addition to the plague, there was the hundred years war (closer to 116 years, but 100 sounds better) and volcanic eruptions that cooled the climate and caused mass starvation. It was a tough time to live through, if one was able to survive at all. What does God do, if anything at all? If such events are possible, what is the point or the benefit of believing in God?

That’s the question, really. What’s the point, the point of belief, the point of life itself? Last week I talked about the futility of trying to fix someone, to try and change people. Our story today from the Gospel of Mark follows on that God does not try to fix us. Rather, God empowers us to live with the chaos.

There are plenty of theories about the end of the world, which is really the end of the world “as we know it.” Some folks believe that the book of Revelation holds the secret code of our demise. There are multiple theories claiming to have cracked the code. These usually involve the righteous being saved and the wicked being destroyed.

The idea of God trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored has strong appeal for folks who prefer to ignore concepts such as love, mercy and grace. Some will say the reason Jesus died was to satisfy God’s requirement that someone pay, and God is angry and just waiting to pour out his wrath on a bunch of ingrates who deserving nothing better than to be fried to a crisp.

If someone tells me they are waiting for the “rapture,” this event where true believers are whisked away to meet Jesus, while the rest remain to suffer, I say if that happens, I hope then I’m standing close to a righteous person so that I might get caught in the updraft.

In scientific terms, the earth is about halfway through its life cycle of approximately 12 billion years. Six billion years ago the earth was a cloud of dust floating around the sun, being pulled into a mass by gravitational forces. In astronomical terms, if we translated the earth’s life span from beginning to end into the span of one year, then all recorded human history as we know it would be 2/3 of a second around the middle of June.

There’s an old joke about an astronomer is giving a lecture on the timeline of the universe when a student raises his hand and rather worriedly asks, “How long did you say it was before the sun expands and burns the earth to a crisp?”

         “Six billion years,” said the professor.

         “Oh, that’s a relief. I thought you said, ‘six million years.’”

Of the many possibilities of how life as we know it might end, we may wonder why God doesn’t do something about it. Like those stories from the Bible in which God had an active role in human affairs. In reality though, God has intervened. God sent Jesus to show us the way, to reveal to us the truth, and to lead us in the life God intends. If some human condition requires God’s intervention, it’s as if God responds by saying, “I have, I am. You follow. You love. You make peace.

Mark is the earliest gospel. It was probably written in the late 60’s of the first century, between the time when Rome burned in the year 64 and the Christians were blamed and persecuted, and the Jewish rebellion against Rome which resulted in the destruction of Jerusalem in 70. It was an apocalyptic time when Christians were looking for the second coming of Christ when he would establish his earthly kingdom. They expected a divine rescue operation.

I think one of the reasons why the gospels were written had to do with the Apostle Paul. He was actively spreading the Christian religion that was based on a kind of “cosmic Christ.” The gospels are a way of saying, “Let’s remember that our story is based upon Jesus of Nazareth.”

In Mark’s gospel the sea is a metaphor. It represents the demonic powers that seek to destroy. Leading up to the storm, Jesus walks beside it. He teaches from a boat at the edge of it. But when he tries to cross it, to take his message to the rest of the world on the other side of it, it tries to destroy him. But it has no power over him. He has the power. He makes the sea, ‘dead calm.’

It had been a long day. Jesus had been around crowds all day. People always wanted something from him. He and his friends were on the lake shore and the crowds became so large that Jesus got into a boat and talked to people from there. At the end of the day he was worn out. They decided to sail over to the other side of the lake. There were other villages over there and they could start out fresh.

Jesus fell asleep in the boat. A storm arose. The boat was tossed and turned. While Jesus slept his friends grew fearful of the storm. Finally they woke him up. They cried out, “Don’t you care that we’re perishing?” He woke up, shouted at the storm, and it went away. He asked them, “Why are you afraid? Where’s your faith?”

Weather storms have a life span based on meteorological circumstances. Praying doesn’t make them go away or in a different direction. So too the storms of life. God doesn’t make them go away or take us out of the maelstrom. Which draws us back to the question, does God even care?

“Don’t you care that we’re perishing?” is a loaded question if there ever was one. A loaded question is one that assumes agreement with a basic premise, in that instance, “We are perishing.” But they weren’t perishing. Those guys had been out on that lake hundreds of times. They had seen every kind of weather. They were experienced sailors.

Perhaps their question stemmed not so much from fear, but from anger. Here they were, frantically making their way through the storm, bailing water, trying to steer a course, and Jesus was sleeping. He seemed indifferent to their plight. But not everything is at it seems.

Stories are told of how Jesus would perform miracles. He healed people. He restored people. He set them aright. Many times in these miracle stories people thank Jesus. What he often tells them is, “It’s your faith that has done this for you.” His question to his friends who were frantic in the storm, “Have you no faith,” was like asking them, “Will your anchor hold through the storms of life?” Did you forget that you had faith?

If his mission was to save us from our sins, then a large part of that was to save us from ourselves. To save us from not seeing ourselves as God’s beloved children; to save us from not receiving what God has on offer. Not through some miraculous stilling of the storm, but through enabling us to see that we have the faith within us; through reminding us that within us is all the faith we will ever need. Our heart and soul become the quiet center in the eye of the storm.

I wonder if at the end of this story about Jesus in the boat, Jesus might have said, “Now if you fellows don’t mind, I’ll get back to my nap.” Amen.