Fourth Sunday after Pentecost Proper 7 Yr B June 20 2021

Fourth Sunday after Pentecost Proper 7 Yr B June 20 2021

1 Samuel 17:57-18:5, 10-16, Psalm 133, 2 Corinthians 6:1-13, Mark 4:35-41

 

Have you ever watched a storm come right at you? I was life guarding at a lake in Minneapolis. It was one of those hot as you know what late afternoons when you can just feel the storm brewing. There were tons of kids swimming, until we saw lightening. With that, we pulled the kids out of the water, and most of them went home. There were a few who stuck around, because they always do. We were sitting on the sand, watching the sky, and all of a sudden I saw across the lake a wall cloud coming at us. I could see some of the stuff it had picked up in its path. I grabbed the kids who were with me and hightailed it into the ditch on the other side of the road that rings the lake. I laid the kids down, and laid on top of them. We watched that wall cloud pass over us and heard the crashing of cars being picked up and thrown into the ditch. We heard the sound of the trees crashing around us, and the sound of that wind roaring over us. And then, silence, calm. Dead silence. Dead calm. Eventually we got up out of the ditch to look around us and see the destruction everywhere. It was only then that I felt fear. 

 

The tornado sirens went off after the storm had passed. I actually don’t know that I would have done anything differently had I heard them earlier. 

 

The disciples were experiencing a storm of some magnitude, their siren, Jesus, was asleep at the switch. Who could blame him? Teaching, healing, calling the disciples, eating, and all those people! He must have been exhausted; it seems the only explanation for sleeping through that storm. And it wasn’t even the storm that woke him up, the disciples had to shake him awake. But after the storm was silenced, there was dead calm. And Jesus’ question to the disciples is, why are you afraid? Not why were you afraid, suggesting that they didn’t trust Jesus to do anything about the storm. But why are you afraid? Amid the dead calm, what are the disciples afraid of, what could be making the disciples so afraid?

 

To answer that question, let’s remember what has happened and where we are. Mark gets his gospel off to a quick start. At the very beginning, and we’re only four chapters into it at this point, Mark introduces his purpose for writing, this is the Good News of Jesus Christ, the son of God. And by the 16^th verse, Jesus is calling the disciples. It feels like with the disciples we’re on the run. No wonder the disciples seemed a bit confused, no wonder they seem to not quite understand. That’s a lot of learning in a short period of time. Mark begins and ends this chapter 4 by the sea. Crowds are gathering to listen to Jesus teach. And leaving the crowd behind, Jesus takes them in a boat to the other side of the sea.

 

In the dead calm of that sea, what makes the disciples afraid? Here they are, really at the very beginning of a journey with a man whom they are just beginning to get to know, this leader whom they really don’t understand, telling them stories they really don’t understand, and he is taking them across the sea to a place they may well have never been. That dead calm may very well be a portent to the discomfort, the challenge, the difficulty they have in moving into an unknown land.

 

On the other side, they will encounter people who are as different from themselves as they could be. These are aliens, foreigners. These are people who live among the tombs, people who have unclean spirits, people who are not Jewish. Why are you afraid Jesus asks them? Wouldn’t you be afraid? Going to a place you’ve never been, with a man who the wind and sea obey. You better believe they’re afraid. And Jesus goes to this foreign land to heal, and sometimes when Jesus heals, he touches. He touches people who have been deemed unclean by the powers that be. He gets up close, he makes what was broken, whole.

 

God intends that those who are different, in this case those who are unclean and those who are Gentiles, become full participants in God’s expansive coming reign. Jesus was a Jew, those who followed him in the very beginning were Jewish, but the mission is changing, expanding, growing. The fear comes when Jesus answers the storm with his actions by crossing over into Gentile lands. This boundary breaking reality is where the calm carries them. Jesus’ actions tear down the wall of separation offering God’s love and grace to everyone. 

 

The truth here is that like the disciples, we are afraid of that which we do not know, and people who are different from ourselves. At the very same time we hear over and over again, do not be afraid. How do we do this? How do we set aside our fears and co-conspire with Jesus in breaking boundaries and erasing margins? 

 

First of all, step back from that question I just asked and look at where you stand. You and I stand in the center, don’t we? You and I stand in the place of power and privilege. This is where we begin, by acknowledging that for more than 2000 years, God’s dream of a world in which all creation is included in God’s kingdom has been thwarted by people like us. We must cross boundaries and reach out our hands and our hearts so that God’s dream of inclusion may grow and grow. 

 

Yesterday marked the first time in history that as a nation we acknowledged the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States. Dating back to 1865, it was on June 19th that the Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free. And yet, this was two and a half years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation – which had become official January 1, 1863. The Emancipation Proclamation had little impact on the Texans initially.

 

I wonder if the calm after the storm is a gift, and out of this calm we may give of ourselves that very basic truth that we believe, every person is created in God’s image. And that we will never look into the face of someone God does not love. 

 

I think this is what Jesus means with the question he asks, why are you afraid? Not that they don’t have faith in him, but that they don’t yet know the full extent of the amazing and abundant love that is available to every person God loves. It’s a question filled with hope. 

 

Be not afraid. Invite people into your life that don’t look like you or act like you. You might find they challenge your assumptions and make you grow. And remember, God loves you, God loves those who don’t look, or act, or love like you. Go into the world and change it, and we will come closer to God’s dream.