“Do one thing every day that scares you” is wisdom, attributed to the late former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, that I adopted more than a decade ago. The wife of our 32nd president, Mrs. Roosevelt is remembered for the ways she changed the office of First Lady. She participated vocally and visibly in U.S. politics in the 1930s and 1940s. She spoke up on behalf of women and African-Americans and those living in poverty and spoke out against injustices that she witnessed.
Two years before her death, Mrs. Roosevelt wrote,
You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face... The danger lies in refusing to face the fear, in not daring to come to grips with it….You must do the thing you think you cannot do.In today’s gospel, Mark tells us that the disciples were afraid. They had clambered onto a boat and set out on the Sea of Galilee in the evening to “go to the other side.”
Now the Sea of Galilee is really a lake; it’s smaller and not as salty as the Mediterranean, but it’s still large enough that waves swell, whitecaps froth and winds howl. There weren’t any early warning systems, radar or weather alerts; more than a dozen centuries would pass before barometers that measure changes in air pressure were invented. So, the disciples found themselves caught in a surprise windstorm with waves beating the boat and swamping it.
The watery tempest recalls the chaos of creation and the storm that landed Jonah in the belly of a whale and it symbolizes the storms that surprise us and toss our lives into turmoil.
Facing the storm’s wrath, the disciples wake Jesus and ask,
“Do you not care that we are perishing?”
They are the same accusatory words that Martha speaks to Jesus when her brother Lazarus dies. And isn’t that the question on our lips when we feel betrayed and God appears to be silent?
“Jesus, don’t you care…?”
But Jesus doesn’t reassure the disciples with words; instead, his response is to rebuke the wind and silence the sea. Throughout Scripture, “rebuke is a prerogative of lordship.”[i] Yahweh rebukes the Red Sea to separate the waters so that the people of God may pass over, and Jesus rebukes both unclean spirits and Satan in Mark’s Gospel account. He also rebukes the disciples when they act hastily or contradict God’s commands.
As the Son of God, Jesus has authority over all of creation and overcomes all things that threaten our destruction,
even our own sinful natures.
Up until now in Mark, Jesus had taught the disciples and the crowds using parables – stories that used everyday objects and situations to illustrate who God is and how to understand the Kingdom of God; this is the first of the Markan miracle stories and the first of several stories that demonstrate Jesus’ own kingship or lordship.
And that is when Mark tells us the disciples are afraid. In v. 41 where this translation says, “They were filled with great awe” and another says, “They were terrified”, but the literal translation would be “They were afraid with great fear.”
Maybe the disciples are afraid of what they do not know and cannot control; or,
Maybe they are afraid because they recognize now that Jesus isn’t only a great teacher but now they see that he is, truly, the son of God;
and, maybe they are afraid because Jesus has called them and given them the authority to act on God’s behalf in the world.
The disciples certainly weren’t the first ones in Scripture who were afraid when they encountered God.
When God spoke to Abram and Sara and promised them that she would bear a son in her old age, Sara was afraid. (Genesis 18:15)
When Moses came down Mount Sinai and met Aaron and the Israelites, they were afraid. (Exodus 34:30)
Even King David was afraid of the Lord, when he was told to carry the ark of the Lord into Jerusalem. (2 Samuel 6:9)
Maybe you can relate to their fear, overwhelmed by God’s call upon your life, the uncertainty of what the next steps will look like, or the responsibility to lead with confidence.
Maybe you are afraid, as Pastor Dee named last week, of falling short of expectations of ourselves, others or God.
In baptism we promise to trust God,
proclaim Christ through word and deed,
care for others and the world God made,
and work for justice and peace among all people.
These are not vows we make lightly and, remembering martyrs of faith like John the Baptist, whose birthday is celebrated today, we may be fearful of consequences of even faithful actions.
And Jesus never says to his followers there isn’t anything to be afraid of.
What he does is rebuke them for letting their fears dictate their response. Instead of trusting what they know about who God is and the promises God has made to God’s people, they turned inward and relied on their own efforts, forgetting that God was accompanying them.
What he doesn’t do is leave them there to sink or drown. Instead, Jesus invites them to re-claim the power God has:
to defy the devil and all the forces that defy God,
the powers of this world that rebel against God
and the ways of sin that draw us away from God.
It is the very same power that we claim in baptism,when we are named God’s own sons and daughters. It is the “sweet swap” that we make when we profess faith in Jesus Christ — when we are made co-heirs to the Kingdom and we receive all that belongs to the Son of God, and He takes on all that is ours.
That is the power of faith that Martin Luther called “a living, daring confidence in God’s grace, so sure and certain that a [person] would stake his life on it a thousand times....”[ii]
“God calls each one of us in a particular way” and faith is the daring confidence that enlivens us to confront our fears and follow Jesus faithfully.[iii] Like the disciples who traveled with Jesus in the gospels, we are given authority to go out into the world around us and act on God’s behalf in the world, revealing who God is, how much God loves each one of us, and pointing to God’s presence among us even in the storms of life.
Let us pray…
Life-giving God,
Thank you for sending Your Son Jesus into the world to teach us and lead us.
Thank you for making us your sons and daughters and equipping us with the power of faith.
Embolden us by Your Spirit to conquer our fears and boldly bear witness to Your love, mercy and forgiveness in a world that is afraid with great fear.
Amen.
[i] Gerhard Kittle (ed.) Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. II:625.
[ii] Martin Luther, Commentary on Romans, Translation J. Theodore Mueller (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1954), xvii.
[iii] “Isaiah 49:1-6.” Pray As You Go. June 23, 2018.
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