From the Gospel of Mark:
On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”
(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Mark 4:35-41 (NRSV) – March 21, 2014.)
Mark, who is usually so taciturn and parsimonious with his descriptions, goes into rather great detail telling this story of Jesus calming the sea. A detail often overlooked is the second sentence of verse 36: “Other boats were with him.” (When Luke tells the same story in chapter 8 of his gospel, he leaves out this detail.)
One presumes that these other boats were being as tossed about, as beaten by the waves, as nearly swamped as that in which Jesus and disciples found themselves. One presumes that they also experienced the dead calm when Jesus rebuked the winds and commanded the say, “Peace! Be Still!” Unlike the passengers in Jesus boat, they would have had no idea what the cause of the sudden stillness might have been.
It’s interesting that this story is paired in the morning with Psalm 69, in which the rising waters of a swamp are used as a metaphor for an abundance of “lying foes” (v. 5) and “those who hate me” (v. 16), while in the evening the psalm appointed in Psalm 73, in which the source of one’s trouble is internal rather than external, arising from envy of “the wicked” who seem to have more than they deserve:
When my mind became embittered,
I was sorely wounded in my heart.
I was stupid and had no understanding;
I was like a brute beast in your presence.
(Ps. 73:21-22, BCP 1979, p. 688)
Are our lectionary editors suggesting that the raging storms in our life are as often caused by our own internal mechanisms as by the machinations of others? I think they are. Are they encouraging us to believe that Jesus can calm all chaos, both internal and external? I think they are.
And that little-noted half-verse in the gospel story reminds us that chaos and disruption, whether brought from outside or created from within, never affect only one person or one small group. Chaos and confusion are like the storm-tossed sea that disrupts everything around; the raging storm may have been centered on Jesus’ boat, but “other boats were with him” and just as certainly in danger of being swamped. And when it was stilled, the other boats also benefited. So it is when our lives (or those of others around us) are beset by chaos and trouble, external or internal, and when those troubles end and a calm settles unexpectedly on all about.
I’ve experienced those times when, all of a sudden, what had seemed a raging, chaotic mess simply resolved in a moment and settled into something manageable. It occurs to me now that it may have been because a storm, internal or external, in someone else’s life was calmed in ways and by means unknown to me. So this morning I give thanks for the stilling of the seas in others’ lives and for the undeserved calm it brings into mine.
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Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.
This is one of those times (there are, I admit, quite a few) when Paul loses me! I step back from his words and say, “Really? What?” Is Paul seriously equating sex with a prostitute with marriage? I know that Paul didn’t have too high an opinion of marriage. In the next chapter he will say that he thinks staying single is a much better idea: “I wish that all men were even as I myself am. . . . I say to the unmarried and to widows that it is good for them if they remain even as I.” (1 Cor. 7:7,8) But does he really hold it in such low regard so as to equate it with prostitution?
This may be the simplest, truest, most profound thing Paul ever wrote. No flowery language, no showing of his erudition and knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures or of Greek philosophy, no convoluted logic, no run-on sentences. Just a simple declaration: if you are in litigation, you’ve already lost.
Paul uses the metaphor of yeast in a negative way making it symbolize sin and corruption. In the letter to the Galatians, he uses it in a similar manner in an aside about the few who have “prevented you from obeying the truth,” saying, “A little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough.” (Gal. 5:7,9)
Is it just coincidence that we read in Genesis of a famine on St. Patrick’s Day? This day of international Irish pride, when “everyone is Irish,” would just be the feast of another insignificant local saint but for the Irish diaspora, especially the Irish emigration to the United States in the mid-19th Century. And that would not have happened then and in such large numbers but for an Gorta Mór, the “Great Hunger,” the Irish potato famine.
In the Education for Ministry (“EfM”)
Gregory of Nyssa, one of the Cappadocian Fathers, is supposed to have said, “Concepts create idols; only wonder comprehends anything. People kill one another over concepts. Wonder makes us fall to our knees.” I think that pretty much describes what is going on in today’s Gospel lesson, and pretty much describes what has become of conversation and discussion between groups in our society. The Pharisees and the Herodians, who disagreed with one another about nearly everything, could nonetheless come together and plot to kill Jesus because his words and actions threatened both of their conceptual frameworks. They had to defend their concepts against the wonder of healing, even if it meant killing.
I remember preaching on this text some years ago and doing a lot of research into the meaning of “new wine” as used in the Bible (tirowsh in Hebrew, oinon neon in Greek) — whether it meant fermented wine or yet-to-be-fermented newly-crushed grape juice. There is a lot of differing scholarship on the issue, both among Biblical scholars and oenologists. I came to the conclusion that all of that scholarship is an interesting waste of time. None of it matters to Jesus’ meaning in using this metaphor for the spiritual life.
It’s a familiar story. A paralyzed man on a pallet comes to Jesus carried by his friends. They can’t get by the crowd, so they cut a hole in the roof of the house where Jesus is staying. (The first verse of the chapter says “he was at home” in Capernaum. That’s an interesting thing to say of someone who “has nowhere to lay his head,” [Matt. 8:20] but I don’t want to be distracted by that this morning.) The man on his mat is lowered through the hole and Jesus heals him. A pretty straightforward story of a miracle healing.
I’m mentoring a study group in my parish, eight well-educated adults seeking to better understand their faith. We’re using some academic materials from a program well-known to Episcopalians. At our last meeting, nearly all of them commented on and complained about the “high falutin'” academic language used by some of our authors. I thought of that as I read Paul describing his missionary efforts as not proclaimed “in lofty words or wisdom.”
