The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost (Mother Marisa)

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

Time and time again, the men that Jesus chose to follow him, the men that Jesus commissioned as his own apostles, failed to recognize the One who stood before them. Jesus of Nazareth was so much more than simply their teacher, a wandering rabbi, the son of a carpenter. He was and is, indeed, the Son of God. 

Jesus spoke with authority. He interpreted Scripture as though he himself wrote it. Jesus cured the sick, freed the demon-possessed, told a paralyzed man to stand up and walk. He forgave sins. No one in the history of Israel had done such amazing things except Moses or maybe Elijah; but they were dead and gone and no one like them had been seen since. Until Jesus appeared in Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God’s kingdom come. 

“Who is this man?” Everyone was asking that question. The way he spoke, the way he acted, the look on his face when he saw someone suffering — it was almost as if Jesus had stepped out of the Scriptures themselves, but the role he was playing was God’s. 

Not that his disciples (or anyone else you might expect) made that connection. Caught up in their own conflicts and distracted by their own desires, Jesus’ followers missed what was right in front of them. They missed who Jesus really was even as they walked beside him along the dusty roads of Galilee and on toward the sea. 

Which is where the story in our Gospel text today begins.

Evening had fallen, and after teaching a crowd of thousands for the whole day, and after having been forced to stand in a boat offshore because of the sheer number of people, Jesus said to his disciples, “Let us go across to the other side.” 

The moon was bright, and the sea was calm. The journey should be straightforward, easy even; half of the disciples were fishermen. But almost as soon as their boat left the shallows for the deep, the wind changed. Clouds raced across the sky, and rain began to fall. 

The disciples knew what was coming. They knew how fierce sudden storms could be on the Sea of Galilee; but this was worse. The wind and the water had come alive, roused like some wild beast on the hunt, the kind of animal that plays with its prey before killing it. 

And the disciples panicked. Rushing to the stern of the boat where their master lay sleeping, the men shook Jesus awake. “Teacher,” they said, “do you not care that we are perishing?” 
And without saying a word, Jesus stood up, reached his hands toward the sea and said, “Be still. Be quiet.” And in an instant, it was. The sky cleared. The water calmed. All was at peace — except for the disciples who, as St. Mark tells us, were even more frightened. They “feared greatly.” 

“Who is this that even the wind and the waves obey him?” 

And on that note our story ends, with the disciples near-stupid with terror and exhaustion, asking themselves who this man could be. 

We know! The answer is clear. You’d think the disciples would get it. How could they not, when they had followed Jesus for long enough to see him cure the sick and feed the hungry and calm the storm. How could they not come to the conclusion that Jesus is in fact the Messiah, mortal and more than mortal, the Son of God not just in name or in character but in his very being. 

What a difference that realization would have made on the Sea of Galilee that night. If they had known, if they had believed that God himself was on board, would the disciples have been so scared? The storm would have raged. The boat would still have been swamped. But the disciples would have been safe, even while their lives were in danger. 

Which is where things start getting complicated, especially for us, who can smile at the irony of a story written down so many years ago; but who nevertheless can also recognize the fear and even imagine the terror those men experienced — because we’ve felt something like that and seen something like it before.

It could have been a tragedy. A friend dead before their time. A career ruined in an instant. A dream crushed by one careless comment. Or it could have been the slow build of sorrow over months or years, the bad news that creeps up until suddenly we’re drowning without ever having realized we were so far from the shore. Each one of us has been and each one of us will be those disciples at some point in our lives: helpless, hopeless, ready to shout at God, ready to shake him. “Don’t you care that we are perishing? Don’t you care that I am perishing?”


A statement to which Jesus did not actually respond. When his disciples woke him up, Jesus heard the fear in their voice, and he saw the desperation on their face — and he got to his feet and raised his hands to the sky and commanded the sea to calm and the wind to still. Then, turning to his disciples, he spoke to them for the first time since their voyage began: “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” 

It’s worth noting the difference in his voice, the tense in which he speaks. Jesus commands the wind and the waves; he questions us. That distinction is important and not just because grammar is important: God commands the forces of nature to obey him. In the beginning, he commanded all that is to appear. Except for humans. For humans, God speaks differently. He invites, he questions, he dialogues. God speaks to us and wants to hear our response — because he wants us to find that same calm and that same stillness with him and through him and in him — a state of mind and a posture of heart that begins when we believe what he says and what he does is true and thus recognize him when he comes.

Jesus said at the end of his earthly ministry that all power and authority had been given to him and that he would be with us always, even to the ages of ages. God is with us, behind us, before us, beneath us; above us and all around us. On the boat in the storm, in the car before work, when we laugh, when we cry, He abides – even when we miss him, even when we don’t believe he is there. God rests in this place where there never seems to be any rest that he might be ready to raise his hands and calm the turmoil within us when we ask him to do so. 

Tossed here and there by the waves, it takes a certain courage to leave the cabin or let go of the handrail. It takes a bravery of spirit to step away from the power of our fear and set down the easy comforts and the quick fixes and reach for the Lord, daring to take God at his word, to say, “Save me, O Christ, lest I perish.”

That movement, that prayer, is in itself a victory. Because he will save us. He will deliver us. Maybe not from our circumstances, but through them. Maybe not in the ways we expect or even want but in the way we need. For all that we experience, the good and the bad, is the domain of our salvation, an opportunity to exercise our faith in the steadfast love of the LORD, a love that never fails, not even in the face of death. God is with us, offering us peace, offering us rest, even amidst the storm. AMEN. 


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