Sometimes, I think
everyone's obsessed with the subject of “being,” of who they are, and
who everybody else is as well . . . our TV ads play to it all the time .
. . sometimes it's in your face – “be all that you can be” comes immediately to
mind – but most of the time it's more subtle, if only just a little bit. We see a model with a size 2 figure and
chiseled cheek-bones and the implication is clear, if you buy this car, you’ll
look just like her . . . if you eat this food, if you use this toothpaste, if
you go on this Slimfast diet, you'll be a new person, and your life will never
be the same. And somebody's always
telling us how to be – be strong! Be
silent! Be safe and wise and smart. Be all that you can be . . . but whatever you
do, just be yourself. And there was a
whole movement of neurotic baby boomers – m-m-m-my generation – who set out to
find themselves, to find out who they are.
These days, of course, identity, who you are, is even more in the news, what with the latest celebrity
transition—Caitlyn Jenner—and a woman who insists, all evidence to the contrary,
that she really is black. And while the two cases are only
superficially similar, one thing they have in common is the question of who they are.
And that’s what this passage is about, who Jesus is . . . the being
of Jesus, what it means to be him.
Of course, these days we say . . . That’s easy . . . we know what it is
to be Jesus, to be Jesus is to be . . . Son of God. Match point, end of story, let’s go to lunch. But not so fast . . . it may be easy for us
to say, but it wasn’t so obvious in Mark’s day. Such a thought – that a divine being took
human form – was radical in those days, it was considered blasphemous by Jews
and most Gentiles, but that was the claim of the early Christian community –
that Jesus was – somehow – the Son of God. Not just a child of God, like we all are
through adoption, but Son of God in big capital letters. And note that the question wasn’t “Was Jesus
the same as God?” The idea of the
Trinity wasn’t developed until more than a century later . . . but the question
was “Is Jesus somehow a divine child of God?”
It was an important question to Mark’s congregation, to members
of his Christian community who, after all, were living after the
ascension, after Jesus had left this earth, physically at least. If Jesus were just another rabbi, just
another teacher, just another wandering miracle worker, then where would they
be? Who Jesus was – the being of
Jesus – was important to their own identity as his followers. Who Jesus was affected – some would
say determined – who they were as his disciples. But more than that, it affected how they
lived out their lives, how they lived out their calling as God’s faithful
children . . . how they stepped out in faith, how they faced the hardships a
faithful life posed, the pain and the persecutions, all depended on who Jesus
was and is.
So this episode, for Mark, is more than just a gee-whiz,
look-at-what-he-could-do miracle report . . . it went to the heart of
Christian identity. And it happened on
the sea, the wild-and-wooly sea . . . the ocean had been a symbol of
uncertainty, of Chaos, long before the Christian era . . . long before
the Hebrew era, for that matter . . .
the sea signified instability, doubt, you couldn’t count on it,
it shifted and rolled, never the same, calm one minute, a raging holocaust the
next. It wasn’t firm . . . if you
stepped on it, it wouldn’t hold you up, you’d just sink down into the darkness,
and who knew what was down there . . . who knew what ghostly-green
terror scraped along in the depths? Some
of Jesus’ disciples – Peter and Andrew, James and John – were fishermen, and
they knew this deep in their bones. One
day the sea provides for them, feeds their families, keeps the wolves from the
door, and the next . . . it drowns you and washes you up in the sand.
And the sea lay there, waiting for them, but when Jesus called,
they went . . . he said let’s cross to the other side, and I wonder – did it
give them pause? Did they hesitate in
even the least little bit? Did Peter or
Andrew, James or John look at the sky and harbor secret doubts? There are other boats out there – fishing,
undoubtedly, nobody went onto the sea for a little pleasure cruise – but our
heroes no sooner get into the boat than things begin to go wrong. A great storm arises, so great that even the
fishermen – who thought they’d seen everything – even they
are terrified, and they look out at the wind, they see the waves cresting over
them, curling with foam along the top, and they look to the back of the boat,
and there’s Jesus asleep, for Pete’s sake – could he not stay awake for
just one hour? They’re terrified,
they’re distraught, they’re about to die, but Jesus is asleep, as
if he were in his garden at home . . .
And Mark’s readers, safely on dry land, remember a story from
the past, from the books of the prophets, they remember Jonah sleeping in the
hold of the ship to Tarshish, and a humongous storm slamming into them . . .
the crew coming to Jonah, saying “What are you doing, sound asleep?” And the sailors ask Jonah to pray to his God,
so that God would calm the sea, but that’s not what happens this time . . . this
time, Jesus himself rebukes the wind – rebukes it! – just like he
does the demons – and speaks words of power, words of command –
“Peace! Be still!” And the storm is
extinguished like a candle blown out, and suddenly there is a dead calm, as
great and profound as was the wind not seconds before.
And Mark’s readers – safely on dry land – have ancient stories,
ancient myths tumbling around in their heads . . . pre-Israelite gods – Ba’al,
Marduk, Tiamet – all battled and triumphed over watery confusion, over the dark
and primeval sea – and at creation itself, at the beginning of Genesis, did not
the Hebrew God blow across the waters, and form the earth from the formless
void, creating order from the order-less, structure from the structure-less and
everybody knows that only gods can do that, only those imbued with the
power of creation can rebuke creation itself, and so Jesus – prophet
like Jonah though he might be – is surely much more than that, is surely a
divine Son of God like they proclaimed.
But the disciples in the boat, wet and miserable and scared out
of their wits, they don’t get it – and who can blame them . . .
it’s hard to think when you’ve been thrown around against the gunwales of a
boat, with bruised and battered bodies and limbs . . . but Jesus calls them on
it anyway, and asks them “Why are you afraid?
After all you’ve seen, the healings and the exorcisms, and now the
greatest thing of all, do you still have no faith?” And the Greek word translated here as faith
covers a lot of territory . . . ranging from intellectual agreement with a set
of facts to Christian belief and dedication to Christ, but here it means
“dependence, trust” . . . trust in Jesus to take care of them, to get them out
of their sticky wicket, their dire straights . . . and the last line of the
story, the last thing the disciples say to themselves tells the tale . . . Mark
says they’re filled with great awe – literally, they “feared a great fear” –
and they say – “Who then is this?” After
watching Jesus tame creation, after seeing the wind slink off before him
like a cur with its tail between its legs, they still don’t know who he
is. They still don’t know he is the
eternal one, the divine Son of the God of Creation, even though they should –
after all, bossing creation around runs in the family.
And my question is . . . who did they think Jesus is,
if not the Son of God? Did they think he
was just another roaming teacher? That is
what they called him, teacher . . . but they’d seen him do signs, they’d seen
him heal and cast out demons – he rebuked demons just like he did the
winds – surely he wasn’t just some run-of-the-mill itinerant rabbi. Was he a prophet like Isaiah or – more to the
point – Jonah? Was he sent to pronounce
God’s judgment, did he speak as God’s mouthpiece? He did he speak of the coming kingdom
of God . . . but they’d seen him calm the waters, they’d seen him
tame chaos and bring order to disorder . . . who then did they think he was?
And Mark’s hearers – at a safe distance – would ask themselves
that, and the question wasn’t by any means academic, because their whole ministry
depended on the answer . . . if Jesus was just some dead teacher, just some
half-crazed, wandering rabbi with delusions of grandeur, well . . . how
could they boldly go out and proclaim the Good News? And remember: they were hearing this at the
time of a failed revolution, the time of the destruction of Jerusalem and its
razing to the ground, how could they have the courage and the
fearlessness to preach the Gospel to an increasingly hostile world?
And of course . . . that’s exactly why the question is
so important for us today, as our society – and the entire Western world –
becomes increasingly post-Christian, as our culture becomes increasingly
hostile once again to Christ. It’s
becoming increasingly apparent, especially where I just came from, in the great
unwashed Pacific Northwest . . . a friend of mine, the pastor of a church in
Eugene Oregon, tells the story of police eavesdropping in a confessional, and
the judge thought it was OK, and the city thought it was OK, and my friend was
asked to take part in a forum to defend the Christian position, the hitherto
unquestionable right of privileged communication between a pastor and
parishioner, and no one but he supported this, except one other person at the
meeting – the local A.C.L.U. rep, God love him . . . talk about strange
bed-fellows . . . but even in the sunny South, where that ol’ Bible-belt-Buckle
still shines, shines, shines, Christendom is eroding . . . a few years before I
went to Seminary, some of the kids in our Starkville, Mississippi church had to
go to a soccer tournament in Mobile on Easter Sunday . . .
And since then, it’s only gotten worse – in the wake of
September 11, laws that protect our rights have been relaxed. The “USA Patriot Act,” in particular, has
eroded our rights of free speech and assembly.
Police were given broad new powers to wiretap and infiltrate meetings –
such as this one – without getting a warrant or otherwise showing cause to a
judge. And remember: many of the laws
overturned were put in place in 1972, to protect churches from
government spying that was rampant in the ‛60s . . . the F.B.I. – on the
pretext of protecting against domestic terrorism –does that sound
familiar? – spied without benefit of search warrant on Southern churches, and
in particular, churches where Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. – a champion of
non-violent resistance, mind you – was preaching. And I won’t even go into the latest revelations about the NSA . . .
And so the question of faith in the saving power of Jesus –
saving from storms both spiritual and concrete – is becoming increasingly
important, increasingly real . . . And that gets us back to the person of
Jesus, who he is and was, it gets us to the being of Jesus. Because if Jesus were just some schmo like
me, some guy with a certain amount of skill at preaching – I know, I know,
that’s a debatable point, but go with me on this – if he were just a
beloved teacher or crafty healer, then where would we be, when the winds of
apathy, when the gusts of disdain and animosity threaten to capsize us? Where would we be when dissension and
sickness and gossip and innuendo threaten to swamp our ministries, to poison
our hearts and minds and souls, so that we are no longer able to
function as human beings, much less proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ?
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