“He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?” St. Mark 4:40

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

This morning’s Gospel lesson is not one into which I can easily imagine myself.  I’ve always been a landlubber, the world of boats and sails and sea storms a foreign and strange world.  I get stern and bow and starboard and larboard confused, and I never got that merit badge for knot-tying in the scouts.  I like to fish, but nearly all of my fishing has been from a pond bank or while wading out into a stream.

            But there was this one time.  Alex and James Rogers were two brothers from Queen Anne’s County who attended Saint James.  I taught them both and came to really like them, served as their academic advisor and tried to watch out for them around the place.  They were what the headmaster calls “adorable rascals,” which means that they didn’t often do all their homework and they said stupid things, and tended to get themselves into trouble about twice a month; but if you had the patience to get to know them, they were really pretty good kids.  They were also country kids and passable acolytes, so we had a good bit in common.  I had managed to somehow herd the two of them through another year without either of them failing anything or getting expelled, and so their parents invited me down to spend a few days with them at their beautiful old farmhouse near the Corsica River. 

            And one Saturday afternoon, the boys were going to take me out sailing.  Now they really knew sailing quite well.  James had competed in regattas up and down the Eastern Shore and they had both taken a turn teaching lessons at the local yacht club, which was not nearly as grand as it sounds-it was Queen Anne’s County after all-but still had plenty of seaworthy vessels docked outside it.  Another Saint James student, Gideon Dodge had driven up from Dorchester County to join us, and he also knew his way around a sailboat very well.  The idea was that we would sail out to Queenstown, get ourselves some lunch, take a little spin out by the Bay Bridge and then return back in time for me to get on the road, as I had to get back to serve at a wedding at Saint James.

            Well, the first part of the trip went very well.  We breezed over to Queenstown for a crabcake and made our way out toward the bay.  But the wind started picking up, and there was a little thunder and the waves started getting choppy.  James and Alex were acting perfectly confident.  They knew which ropes to pull and they were shifting the sails this way and that, flipping that tiller back and forth like nobody’s business.  But I wasn’t so sure about all of this.  I could remember those really lousy essays and those irresponsible tricks they played on their roommates.  Was I really sure that these two boys could steer us safely home, or would I soon be ending my days in a watery grave?  Well, the little squall soon calmed down, there were only a few sprinkles of rain, and sure enough, with a little bit of shifting and pulling and swearing, the Rogers boys did perfectly well.  I doubt that they even remember tha t there was a storm-surely they’ve been through worse.  The issue really was not that the storm was so dangerous-it was whether I was prepared to trust the ones who would see me through it.

            The story told in our Gospel lesson, Jesus stilling the storm on the Sea of Galilee is one of the most familiar ones of his life, repeated by all four of the Gospel writers.  Apparently, storms of this kind were pretty common on the Sea of Galilee, where strong winds and a shallow lakebed can produce quite a tempest very quickly.  The disciples are panicked and they turn to Jesus for help, only to find Him, we might say, asleep at the wheel.  It’s always struck me as odd that they expected that He would know what to do.  At least four of the apostles were well-seasoned Galilean fishermen and Jesus was from Nazareth, many miles from any major body of water-a landlubber to be sure.

            There’s something deeper going on here.  Jesus doesn’t take the tiller, of course.  He speaks to the sea-he “rebukes” it, Saint Mark tells us.  He rebukes it like the demons that he encounters so often in this Gospel.  He identifies the raging sea as a hostile force, a threat, but one over which He holds uncontested power. 

In that moment, Jesus is calling up many layers of symbols and stories planted deep within the history of God’s people.  The sea is viewed with fear by the Israelites throughout the Old Testament, as an alien force that seeks to undermine God’s work.  In part, this was geographical.  The Israelites were an inland people, living in the hills while their old enemies the Philistines held the coastal plain.  The sea brought invaders and an Israelite was nervous onboard a ship with its foreign rigging and tricky sails-a bit like me with those Rogers boys out in the Corsica River.  But the raging sea also reminded the Israelites of their creation story, where God brought order to the dark chaos that covered all things before the beginning.  That’s the story being recalled in our lesson from Job, as God sets the bounds for the proud sea, saying “Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed.”

The force of the sea reminded the Israelites of the great flood, where all life except what preserved in the ark, had been blotted out by the powerful waves.   The greatest miracle in Israel’s history was also a water miracle, the parting of the Red Sea, where the perilous waters stood up like a wall for the chosen people and then streamed in to drown their enemies.  The miracle showed that God had totally mastery of the sea, this perplexing and threatening force that terrified his people.  The theme turns up often in the Psalms, most notably in the passage chosen today, where a merchant ship finds itself in peril, and the sailors’ hearts melt with fear.  They cry out to the Lord in their distress, and he hears them.  “He stilled the storm to a whisper and quieted the waves of the sea.”

When Jesus stands up and stills the sea, he is doing more than just a bit of helpful weather control.  He is showing himself to be the true and only Son of God, the one who holds in His hands God’s own power over the hostile force of the sea.  As Saint John Chrysostom explained it, “His sleeping showed that he was a man. His calming of the seas declared him to be God.”  Some commentators have noticed that Saint Mark only mentions the apostles’ fear after Jesus has calmed the sea-maybe His power over the sea frightens them even more than the storm.  If He has this power, then all power belongs to Him.  There is no need for fear if Jesus is truly God, only faith, which is just as He puts it.  The real point of the encounter has very little to do with the sea.  It’s all about the sea’s master, and the question is, will you trust Him?  Will you have fear or will you have faith in the One who will see you through the things you fear?

Life is full of things that make us afraid.  Even when we try to keep ourselves safe and surround ourselves with all the protection we can find, it is still a hazardous, fragile thing, existence.  You may not fear the sea, but perhaps you do fear illness or losing your job.  Maybe you fear trouble in your family or uncertainty in our nation’s future, or death.  Many of you are afraid of what will happen here after I leave.  I’ve heard you say it in so many words many times over the past few months.  “I don’t know how we’ll be able to keep doing all these activities;” or “I’m afraid we will lose our young families without a permanent pastor;” or “what will happen if the big givers go away;” or “it’s so hard to find a good pastor, and what if no one wants to come here.”  Fears like these are inevitable to some extent, but they are also very destructive.  They can lead to conflict, and the loss of morale among those who are called to guide you through this time of transition.  Some people try to get away from them by swimming for another boat, thinking there will be more security there.  Fears like these may be inevitable, but they are also faithless.

Jesus calls us to trust Him, to trust that He has the power over the storm, that He will see us through our current doubts and problems to the future that He has prepared for us.  I was visiting with Bud and Donna Miner this week, and Donna said it beautifully, “we just have to hang on and trust that God will call somebody to us.  It might take awhile, but we know that He will take care of us.”  Sometimes it seems like Jesus is asleep during the storms that rage around us.  Your Search Committee has experienced quite a few bursts of optimism that just seemed to fizzle out-as if God was standing by and letting them fail without any good reason for it.  But maybe that’s part of the plan as well.  Maybe Jesus slept so the disciples would know that they couldn’t solve all their problems by themselves.  Maybe He waited to show them that in all things, they must rely on His protection and guidance. 

Jesus has chosen already the twenty seventh rector of Saint Paul’s.  He has steered you through many difficult storms in the past, and in His time, as Donna said, He will show you what do to next.  In the meantime, you need to hang on and trust Him.  Cry out to Him in prayer, show Him that you need His help.  He will not disappoint you, for He is the master of the sea, and he will bring the peace you desire.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.