Peace! Be Still! -- Father's Day

 

Mark 4:35-41

June 20, 2021

 

            In May of 2013, an EF5 tornado ripped through Moore, Oklahoma. It closely followed the same devastating path of a tornado that hit Moore in the 1990’s. The tornado was over a mile wide and at its worst the winds hit 210 miles per hour. Even with the advanced weather technology and storm chasers that Oklahoma takes full advantage of, there was just a little over a minute of warning that this storm had reached such a deadly momentum and was about to hit.

Moore is just north of Norman and just south of Oklahoma City, and about 35 minutes away from where we lived in Shawnee. 24 lives were lost in that storm. School had not yet been dismissed for the summer, and the tornado hit an elementary school, where both teachers and children were killed. A journalist from one of the Oklahoma City stations was trying to report what was happening, but he lived in Moore and was so emotional he could barely speak. Through the power of modern television, we watched it happen in real time. It was shattering to know this was happening and yet there was nothing we could except pray.

We watched the television that day already on edge because the day before a tornado had hit the western part of Shawnee. It had ripped its way down I40, taking out trees and hitting houses and a trailer park on the west side of the city. Businesses along I40, including the Shawnee Mall, were evacuated. Later that summer, I was in a meeting with the City Manager and he showed us a picture on his phone from that afternoon. It showed the familiar anchor stores of the mall and just behind it was an enormous funnel cloud just bearing down.

I remember that afternoon vividly. It was Sunday. I had come home from church and turned on the tv to see what the weather was going to do. Just as the weatherman urged people in our area to start seeking shelter, the sirens went off. I had two kids and a cat, and we didn’t have a basement. I was herding everyone into the bathroom when my music director texted me.

“Where are you taking shelter?”

She urged me to come to OBU – Oklahoma Baptist University, where her husband was a professor – and shelter with them. So, I got the kids, one of them crying and demanding to know why I had moved them to this state of tornadoes, into the car and we started toward OBU. About two minutes into the drive, we heard a train only we weren’t near the railroad. I saw that people were gathering at the fire station. I made the most illegal U-turn of my driving career, parked across the street, and ran with the kids to the shelter of the fire station. There we waited.

Thankfully for us, but not for the people that suffered damage, the storm shifted toward the south and dissipated. When the sirens sounded the all-clear, the kids and I made our way back to the car. We got into the car, but I couldn’t drive yet. My hands were shaking too much to turn the key. I asked the kids to just give me a minute and put my head in my hands and tried to breathe normally. We were safe, at least for the moment, and we did not yet know what would happen the next day. We had survived this storm.

When I read this familiar parable now, I can’t help but remember that day back in 2013. I realize that the circumstances of their storm and ours were different. We were not in a boat being battered by the sea. We were not being swamped by waves that threatened to sink our boat. But I understand what I think must have been a rising sense of panic. The disciples were trying to do everything they possibly could to save themselves. However flawed the disciples were, however clueless they could be, especially in Mark’s gospel, about who Jesus truly was, they were seasoned fishermen. They knew and understood the Sea of Galilee. They knew how quickly violent, life-threatening storms could form. They weren’t newbies when it came to storms at sea, which means this storm must have been pretty bad. I can imagine their panic was quite real. They needed all hands on deck as it were to keep the boat from capsizing. So, Jesus needed to wake up. How could he sleep through something like this anyway? Did they wake him because they thought he could save them? I’m not convinced that’s what they thought. I think they wanted him up and going to help them, but I’m not sure they believed he could save them.

I definitely don’t think they could have predicted what came next. Not only did Jesus wake up, he woke up and rebuked the storm. He rebuked it the way he rebuked demons and unclean spirits. He told the wind, “Peace! Be still!”

And the wind obeyed. The wind settled down. The sea stilled. Where only seconds before, the storm was so great they could have all been thrown into the tumult, now there was dead calm.

And this is the moment where the disciples grow truly afraid. The New Revised Standard Version translates what they felt as awe, but a better translation would have been terror.

They were filled with terror because this man, their Teacher, their Rabbi, was no ordinary teacher or rabbi. He may have cast out a demon or two, healed some folks, sure, but he had just commanded the wind to be still and the wind obeyed him. The. Wind. Obeyed. Him.

Yes, I’m sure they were filled with terror and awe and amazement and astonishment and overwhelming incredulity, because this man they were following, this man they took on the boat just as he was, had the power to command the wind and calm the sea. It was too much for them to fully grasp, and they would continue to misunderstand Jesus’ full identity. They would continue to fail to get it and to get him through the rest of his earthly life. But in this moment, they had a glimpse of who Jesus was, of who Jesus is.

Who is this guy who stills the storm, who calms the seas, and even the wind obeys him?

Who is this?

Jesus was and is the Holy One of God, the Son of God, the One both fully divine and human. They took Jesus on the boat just as he was, and this is who he was. So, what did the disciples want him to do for them when they woke him up in a panic? Was it just to help bail water? Did they think he could perform some healing miracle like the ones they’d seen him do before? Did they even know what they wanted or what they thought he could accomplish? Probably not. But whatever it was that they were thinking Jesus could do or not do, what they received in that moment was so much more than what they expected.

And it terrified them. It terrified them, and I suspect it terrified them because they realized that this invitation to follow they had accepted was sending them down a path that would demand more from them than they had possibly imagined. It would demand change from them. It would demand trust from them. Did they have it in them to trust Jesus this much? Did they have faith enough to go where he would lead them? Did they trust him enough?

It seems to me that trust is at the heart of this passage. The disciples begged Jesus to wake up, see what was happening to them, care about what was happening to them. And his response was not only to care for them, but to take care of them by stilling the storm. Then he asked them, and I think it was in a gentle voice, why were still so afraid? Why did they not have faith? In other words, haven’t you figured out yet that you can trust me?

Do we? Do we trust him? In the good moments in life, I don’t expect Jesus to still the storms for me. I don’t expect Jesus to make everything better and all right and okey dokey. I even make it a point to teach that the purpose of faith is not to make everything better. And that is just fine … until the next storm hits. Then, in a panic, I accuse Jesus, I accuse God, of not caring, of abandoning me, of walking away when I need God most.

Because when it comes right down to it, my trust is always a little shaky. I think I know better. I think it is all up to me. To trust Jesus with everything I have, with everything I am means that I have to let go of my need to control. I have to trust, and sometimes trust just isn’t that easy.

And yet the storms keep coming, and I keep weathering them. I haven’t drowned yet. My boat has not capsized yet. Looking back at past storms, I can see so clearly that Jesus was in the boat with me, fully himself. So, if I know he was with me then, why do I have such a hard time believing that he is with me now and will be with me tomorrow?

He was with me when I raced my kids to shelter in the face of a tornado. He is with you in whatever storms – literal or figurative you have faced. He is with us, this congregation in all of the storms that we weather together. He is with us, and yes, his presence may require us to change. Yes, his presence may fill us with both awe and terror. But he is with us, and he calls us to have faith, to let go of our fear, to trust. He calls us to trust him. Can we do that? Will we do trust that he is with us and with his presence we can survive any storm?

Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia.” Amen.