God’s grace, peace and
mercy be with you. My sermon title is Perish, Peace, Pistis (Faith),
and my focus is our Gospel (Mk 4:35-41). Let us pray. Heavenly Father, the
psalmist wrote, “I rejoiced when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house
of the Lord.’” Now that our feet are within your gates, we
rejoice to hear your Word. As we listen, may your Spirit enlighten our minds
and move our hearts to love deeply as Jesus loved. This we pray to you, Most
Holy Trinity. Amen.
The method of prayer I
prefer employs the imagination. When I read a passage from Scripture, I place
myself there. What do I see, hear, smell, taste and touch? What emotions do the
people in the passage feel? Do I experience pain, joy, doubt, disbelief, forgiveness,
hunger or satisfaction? When I read the passages of the feeding of the crowds,
what do the people look like? How are they dressed? How do they smell? Is there
a sense of desperation amidst the crowd? How do the disciples’ voices sound as
this miracle unfolds before them? How do the bread and fish taste? How do the
crowds and Jesus react?
When I read today’s
passage from Mark, I used that method of prayer to create a sermon based on
what I experienced in my prayer: perish, peace and pistis, the Greek
word for faith. And because prayer demands action, a question: Now what?
First, perish. If you
have not experienced a perfect storm, tornado, hurricane, earthquake, white
out, tsunami, flood, blizzard, heat wave or avalanche, you may have been
involved in a train crash, car crash, or felt the force of a linebacker
colliding with your body. In an instant, you felt like you were not going to
survive the moment. This is what I felt like on September 11, 2023, when a car
T-boned me and demolished my car. Providentially, I was not hurt.
To perish means to suffer death, typically in a violent, sudden or
untimely way. It also means to undergo complete ruin or destruction. Its origin
is from two Latin words: per meaning through and ire meaning
to go. To go through or perire eventually came to be known as
pass away.
At a certain point in the passage, the disciples woke Jesus
and asked, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” Prior
to this, Jesus was teaching the crowds in parables from a boat anchored
offshore. When he finished in the evening, he asked his disciples to cross to
the other side. The eastern side of the Sea of Galilee, across from Capernaum,
was a predominantly Gentile area. This voyage would be the first into Gentile
territory. The disciples accompanied Jesus in several boats, leaving the crowd
on the shore. They cast off with Jesus still seated in his floating pulpit
without first going ashore.
The Sea of Galilee is known for violent storms that can arise
without warning, as wind funnels through the steep valleys among the hills
surrounding the lake. In this instance the storm was so fierce that it
terrified even seasoned fishermen. Waves crashed over the boat, swamping it and
threatening to sink it. Yet in the midst of this fury, Jesus was in the stern,
asleep. Anyone who has ever been in a violently storm-tossed boat has reason to
think that this ability to sleep through the storm was the first miracle!
Jesus’ sleep exemplified perfect trust in God that is often signified in
Scripture by a peaceful and untroubled sleep. We read in Job, “If
you prepare your heart … you will feel secure, because there is hope; you will
look around and take your rest in security. You will lie down, and none will
make you afraid.” The Psalmist wrote, “In peace I will
both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.” Proverbs
3:24 reads, “If you lie down, you will not be afraid; when you lie
down, your sleep will be sweet.”
Jesus’ serenity is not shared by his disciples, who woke him
with a stinging reproach: “Teacher, do you not care that we are
perishing?” This is the first time in Mark that Jesus was called
Teacher, having just completed a day of teaching. This time, however, they
would learn a powerful lesson of faith, learned by experience. The tone of the
disciples’ question suggests that they had a vague idea that Jesus could do
something about the storm, but they think he is indifferent to their plight,
with no concern for survival. They are much like God’s people in Exodus. In
chapter 14, we read, “When Pharaoh drew near, the people of Israel
lifted up their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians were marching after them, and
they feared greatly. And the people of Israel cried out to the Lord. They said
to Moses, ‘Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us
away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us in bringing us out of
Egypt?’” On that day, at that very moment, God delivered his
people to safety from peril, from death to life, and Jesus would deliver them
too, not only from one side to the other, but in ways they could not fathom
until He rose. So, as Jesus and his disciples cross to the other side, let me
cross from my first point to my second, from perish to peace.
Peace is defined as a
state of tranquility or freedom from disquieting or oppressive thoughts or
emotions. It also means harmony in personal relations or mutual concord
between governments. It also means to ask for silence or calm or as a
greeting or farewell. The Greek word for peace and the Hebrew word, shalom,
mean safety, welfare and prosperity.
Apparently,
the disciples were not experiencing any sort of peace, but rather, panic.
Jesus, however, did not leave his disciples in their panic. He immediately woke
and rebuked the raging sea. He did not pray that God would calm the storm but
commanded it himself with sovereign authority: Peace! Be still!
Rebuked
is the same word used to describe his casting out unclean spirits. In chapter
one, he rebuked the unclean spirit of the man who enter the synagogue in
Capernaum. We read, “Jesus rebuked him, saying, ‘Be silent, and come
out of him!’ And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying out with a loud
voice, came out of him.’”
This
suggests that demonic powers somehow instigated the squall that threatened to
deflect him and his disciples from their mission. We know that in the Old
Testament, the sea is often a symbol of chaos and the home of evil powers. Job
stated, “By his power he stilled the sea.” The Psalmist
wrote, “You divided the sea by your might; you broke the heads of
the sea monsters on the waters. You crushed the heads of Leviathan; you gave
him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.” And Isaiah
prophesied, “In that day the Lord with his hard and great and strong
sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting
serpent, and he will slay the dragon that is in the sea.” Jesus
exorcised these forces of nature with the same authority that freed human
beings from demonic possession. Instantly the howling wind subsided and the
choppy waves became calm. The wording parallels Psalm 107: “They
cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress.
He made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed.”
Finally,
pistis, faith. In Greek mythology, pistis was the personification of
good faith, trust and reliability. In Christianity and in the New Testament, pistis
is the word for faith. Pistis’ Roman equivalent was Fides, a personified
concept significant in Roman culture.
The Latin word for
faith means trust, confidence, reliance, credence or belief. In the early 14th-century
it meant assent of the mind to the truth of a statement for which there is
incomplete evidence, especially belief in religious matters. Faith is neither
the submission of reason, nor is it the acceptance, simply and absolutely upon
testimony, of what reason cannot reach. Faith is the ability to cleave to a
power of goodness appealing to our higher and real self, not to our lower and
apparent self.
Returning to our
Gospel passage, at the moment the danger passed, Jesus chided his disciples for
their feeble faith. “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no
faith?” Certainly, they turned to him in their moment of terror
and dismay; but they did not yet grasp who he really was: sovereign lord over
all creation. Jesus was forming a band of followers who were to be confident in
their mission on earth: to bring the peace and authority of the kingdom into al
the troubles of humanity. He called them to complete a task on the other side
of the sea: would he have done so only to let them perish in the waves?
The disciples
knew that God alone possessed power to subdue the seas. From Exodus on, God’s
control of the sea signified his tender care for his people. Again, the
Psalmist wrote, “O Lord God of hosts, who is mighty as you are, O Lord,
with your faithfulness all around you? You rule the raging of the sea; when its
waves rise, you still them.” It is no wonder that after Jesus
calmed the storm, they were filled with great awe. Their terror of the forces
of nature was replaced by reverent fear of the presence of God in Jesus. His
subduing of the sea was a sign of his divine authority. “Who then is
this?” is a question that not only Jesus’ contemporaries but all the
readers of the Gospel are meant to ask. Echoing his question to the disciples:
Who do you say that He is?
Well, there you have
it. I made my three points, and ask, “Now, what?” Returning to my first point,
perish, I searched the internet for the phrase, “I thought I was going to die.”
I found these stories: a young woman who a dog attack in Los Angeles; a shopper
who survived a shooting in an Ohio Kroger store; a resident of Temple, Texas
who hid in the bathroom as a tornado destroyed her home; and a Portland, Oregon
woman who survived the stabbing of her boyfriend.
Personally, I never
survived an attack by a dog, a shooting, a tornado or a stabbing. However, when
a tornado came through our area in Oklahoma, I thought “This is Armageddon!” I
have suffered other ways: the death of my parents and my younger brother,
friends and relatives. I suffered from job losses and bad investments. I lost
teeth, broke bones, tore my meniscus and rotator cuff, which required surgery,
and suffer from arthritis. Like you, I have lived to talk about it.
When we talk about our
losses, most people understand and some gain insight. Life is short. Our bodies
are fragile. Accidents happen. Senseless violence from man and beast occurs.
Everyone dies. When storms strike, we are in the same boat thinking we are
going to perish.
Still, survivors who
tell their stories inspire hope into others because of what our Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ, His Father and the Holy Spirit have done for us. Therefore, allow
me to close with the story of one survivor.
Horatio Gates Spafford
and his wife, Anna, were well known 19th century Chicagoans. As
a prominent lawyer and a senior partner in a large and thriving law firm, he
was also able to invest heavily in real estate in an expanding Chicago during
the 1860s. He was an elder in the Presbyterian Church and a close friends of
evangelist Dwight Moody.
In 1871, the Great
Fire of Chicago reduced Spafford’s real estate investments to ashes and scarlet
fever took the life of his son. In 1873, Spafford decided his family should
take a holiday in England knowing that his friend Dwight Moody would be preaching
there. He was delayed because of business, so he sent his family ahead: his
wife and their four children, daughters eleven-year-old Annie, nine-year-old
Maggie, five-year-old Elizabeth Bessie, and two-year-old Tanetta. On November
22, 1873, while crossing the Atlantic on the steamship Ville du Havre, their
ship was struck by an iron sailing vessel and 226 people lost their lives,
including all four of Spafford's daughters. Only his wife survived the tragedy.
Upon arriving in England, she sent a telegram to Spafford beginning "Saved
alone." Spafford then sailed to England, going over the location of his
daughters' deaths. According to Bertha Spafford Vester, a daughter born after
the tragedy, Spafford wrote “It Is Well with My Soul” on this journey. Spafford
wrote these words in the second verse and the refrain.
Though Satan should
buffet, though trials should come,
let this blest
assurance control:
that Christ has
regarded my helpless estate,
and has shed his own
blood for my soul.
It is well with my soul;
it is well, it is well
with my soul.
My friends, the Church
today, like the boat bearing the disciples and the sleeping Jesus, is no
different than the small, struggling early Church, storm-tossed on the seas of
the vast Roman empire. They must have wondered why their Lord seemed to be asleep
in the stern – absent, unaware, or unconcerned about the mortal perils that
threatened them. Through the ages, how often did his disciples feel that way in
the midst of storms of persecution, natural disasters or personal troubles? But
Jesus’ authority is without limit, and though he allows trials, in the end
nothing can truly harm those who trust in him. As He gave disciples the
authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the
enemy, He promised them that nothing would hurt them.
His reproach of not to
be afraid is an invitation for all Christians to awaken their faith in his
presence and in his absolute authority over creation. The true antidote to fear
of earthly dangers is the faith that comes from fear of the Lord. We read in
Job, “Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to turn away
from evil is understanding” The most repeated command, do not
fear, is an instruction not to succumb to the enemy’s strategy, which is to
dismantle Jesus’ followers from their mission. When we have no fear, the enemy
trembles in fear. At these times, repeat Spafford’s words, “It is well
with my soul.” And when you do, may the peace of God that surpasses
all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
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