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“Come, let us go across to the other side,” said Jesus. And they did. With no apparent purpose. Even though it was evening, and a storm was afoot, Mark didn’t bother to report any objections from the disciples. As far as we know, they were eager to embark on a dangerous boat trip to the other side of the Sea of Galilee for the singular reason that Jesus told them to.
Of course, this was Jesus’ MO. He called fishermen from their nets and tax collectors from their coffers and women from their kitchens. Based on the biblical record, most of them followed him without objection. Nevertheless, the unquestioning willingness of the disciples to row their little boat right into the center of the storm defies credulity for me. I’ve spent the past week in southern California listening to the stories of people who crossed to the other side of the well-guarded Rio Grande. And while they too knew that the journey was risky, they always had very good reasons for making it.
I heard one story of going across to the other side from Nancy, a young Episcopal priest who is a DACA recipient. She had no choice but to cross the border because she was only five when her parents brought her to the US from Mexico. I heard from Alex, a young Honduran shopkeeper who had been threatened with execution by a criminal gang if he did not sell drugs for them. I heard from Olinda, who had suffered from domestic abuse at the hands of both her father and husband, and had to flee with her little daughter Idalia. Their reasons for crossing international boundaries were specific to their life circumstances and the politics of their countries of origin, but common in this respect. They all wanted to live.
And surely this is what the disciples wanted, too. It’s the only way this Gospel makes sense. They were seeking life, and they knew no of other way to get it except to follow Jesus. Even across dangerous waters after dark. “Lord, to whom can we go?” Peter asked rhetorically in John’s Gospel. “You have the words of eternal life.”
So how very awful it must have been for them to discover—just when things on that boat had gotten really scary—that Jesus had fallen asleep. They had entrusted their lives to him, and yet still had to ask “do you not care that we are perishing?” “Wake up,” I can imagine their anguished cry. “It’s getting really scary out there. Listen to us and wake up.”
We know that Jesus was a sleeper, as well as an eater and a drinker and a teacher and a pray-er. He was human. So the fact of his resting would hardly be noteworthy but for the context of the storm. Which Mark assumes his hearers to understand as people steeped in Hebrew scripture would. That is to say, the storm he described was both literal bad weather, and also as a metaphor for the danger of the great flood and the chaos of creation. And in the midst of all this real and metaphorical risk, Jesus—for whom the disciples had abandoned all caution—was sound asleep.
Can’t we all identify with the feeling of crying aloud to God in scary moments and encountering… nothing? Or at best a profound silence that suggests God is present but maybe not really paying attention? This is the reality of our human relationship with God; we don’t control when and how God wakes up and shows up. But lest I am tempted to wallow in despair over the perceived inertia of God, I think of Job, face to face with a whirlwind.
The story we heard this morning follows thirty-seven chapters of what could only be described as permissive torture; Job was a demonstrably good man who suffered both the maltreatment of Satan and the misunderstanding of his friends. And while Job and his friends debated the cause and meaning of his suffering for about thirty five chapters, God was utterly silent. Napping? Negotiating more tests with Satan? We don’t know. But we do know that, by this point in the story, the resolutely righteous Job was growing weary of theological debate.
It was not theology but the personal revelation of God—what theologians call theophany—that changed things for job. “Who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb?” God rhetorically challenged Job. Not an especially pastoral response, I’d venture to say. But when we have seen and heard from the living God, the fact that we can’t control wind and water is no longer determinative of our faith. The revelation of God calms the storms; both the outward and inward ones. Theophany is manifested in peace and perspective, and power to persevere even in the midst of apparent chaos.
Job’s theophany was not an abstract idea of God. The Hebrew name for the God who spoke to him in that was YHWH, the same one who told Moses “I am who I am.” The Bible has other ways of naming God, but at this moment in Job’s harrowing story, he hears from the God who came—and indeed still comes—to people with personality and power. This is the God of Jesus, who eats and drinks and sleeps and wakes and calms the storm.
I think that I met Jesus among the storytellers I heard from last week in Los Angeles. His name was Jose Luis, but I recognized him as Jesus because he had all but died and yet he lived. He stood before our group, solidly balanced on a prosthetic leg, with his remaining limbs and strong chest and shoulders a reminder of the athlete he once had been. He told us of the threat from violent gangs that forced him out of his native El Salvador. He told us of the harrowing train ride in which he lost his right leg and arm. He told us of his two years of surgery and rehab in Mexico, and his ultimately successful attempt to cross into the United States.
And then he told us of what he missed. He missed his family. He missed playing sports. While we who were hearing his story cried up a storm, Jose Luis was as calm as Jesus. Except… except that all the while he was speaking he was fumbling with a smartphone, using the few remaining fingers on the hand that had been mangled by the train when he attempted to retrieve his severed limbs. Eventually, he was able to manipulate the device into playing the instrumental accompaniment for a song he wanted to sing for us. A song of the love and faithfulness of God.
Jose Luis reminded me of what it is to follow Jesus. Who leads us not into safety, but into solidarity. Who himself crossed the seemingly impenetrable border from holy to human, and in the process stirred up enough of a political storm to get himself killed. But that storm didn’t have the final word, and more than the storm on the sea of Galilee.
My friends, there are no shortage of storms out there. Real storms—I bear witness as someone still adjusting to the ever-surprising Portland weather—political storms, psychological storms, spiritual storms. I know I’m not the only one at Trinity feeling a bit storm-tossed this morning. But the good news is that we’re in this boat together. Did you know that the architectural term “nave,” which describes the principal space in a church, comes from the Latin word for ship? And the truth that we remember and re-enact every Sunday morning is that Jesus really is here with us in the boat.
Jesus is here with us; in word and bread and wine and bodies. Jesus is here in us; we are the way he appears in person now. So let Job remind us that there is perspective when God shows up. Let Mark remind us that there is power when human beings wake up. We don’t have to be afraid when we hear the voices of people like Alex and Paulina and Jose Luis telling us that their people are perishing. We can listen, we can cry, we can love, we can change. We can gather at places like Sheridan Correctional Center—where Dean Nathan and many of our fellow parishioners are this morning—and pray for adequate pastoral care for refugee fathers separated from their families. We can insist on reasonable immigration policies. We can contribute to the reunification of families, and invest in fair and humane treatment of all children. We can wake up, and claim the power of God to calm the storm.
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