Sermon for Saturday, June 22, 2024

5th Sunday after Pentecost

“Great Fear”

Mark 4:35-41

Let us pray: Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen. (Psalm 19:14)

The text for our meditation tonight is the Gospel lesson from Mark 4:35-41. You are welcome to look at that reading with me, as found in your bulletin.

Jesus had already had a long day, as our text begins. We hear at the beginning of Mark, Chapter 4, (4:1-2), that Jesus “began to teach beside the sea (of Galilee). A very large crowd gathered about Him so that He got into a boat and sat in it on the sea, and the whole crowd was beside the sea on the land. And he was teaching them many things in parables.” This apparently went on all day.

As our text begins, we hear, “On that day, when evening had come, (Jesus) said to them (His disciples), 'Let us go across to the other side of the sea.' And leaving the crowd, they took Him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with Him.”

Jesus was a real human being just like us, and He had become very tired, as we sometimes do, too. (This is a good reminder to us that teaching, as Jesus was doing all day, is hard work. We think of Lydia Roland, teaching for 42 years in Lutheran schools, and many of them in our own school. It’s a call to appreciate and be grateful for her and all our teachers for the work they also do on our behalf.

Jesus was so tired that we hear He was soon asleep in the stern of the boat on a cushion. Some think that Jesus had something like a pillow, but it is more likely that it was a wooden railing on which he could rest His head. (All the Greek says is something “for the head.” It would be like trying to find a comfortable enough place in a car so that we could hopefully fall asleep.) Regardless, Jesus was still asleep even when a great windstorm arose and waves were starting to fill the boat with water.

The disciples woke Jesus up, crying out, “Teacher (Rabbi), do you not care that we are perishing?” Jesus immediately, then, rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. Clearly, this was a great miracle. Strong winds don’t just immediately stop blowing, and raging waves don’t suddenly stop so that the water is calm entirely.

You would think that the disciples would be overjoyed. They thought that they were perishing, being destroyed, in the storm, but now they were entirely safe. But instead, we hear that the disciples “were filled with great fear.” Literally, in the Greek, “They feared with a great fear.” Twice, fear is mentioned.

This is often what happened when people were directly confronted with the power of the Almighty God. In Luke 2:9, when angels appeared to the shepherds on the night of Jesus’ birth, exactly the same words are used: (the shepherds) “feared with a great fear.” And in Luke 5:4-10, when Jesus enabled Peter and others to catch a great number of fish, Peter fell down at the knees of Jesus and said, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man.” Peter and the others were astonished at the catch of fish and felt so unworthy of being in the presence of Jesus. Jesus had to say to Peter, “Do not be afraid.” And Jesus called Peter and the others to be His disciples and said, “From now on, you will be catching men” (catching people for the Christian faith).

Jesus loved those disciples and had very important work for them to do, but Jesus also knew that faith was a gift and a growing process, as He then humbled them and showed them their weaknesses and sins and their need for Him and His saving help, and then built them up and strengthened them further in faith in Him.

In our text, Jesus had to say very bluntly to those disciples in the boat, “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?” And the disciples showed their very weak faith by their great fear and then by their saying to one another as our text ends, “Who then is this, (this man Jesus), that even the wind and the sea obey Him?”

If these disciples had known the Scriptures better, they would have realized that Jesus was showing them that He really was God’s Son, as well as a true, tired man and that He had been sent into this world to rescue them and us from our sins and for a whole new life with Him.

Job is known as a great man of God, but in our Old Testament lesson for today, he also needed to be questioned by God and reminded that only God had control over “the sea” and its “proud waves” - and over Job and his life, even with its ups and downs for him and his family.

The Psalms often give us the picture image of God’s care as exactly what Jesus helped the disciples through in our text.

• Psalm 65:5-7 says, “The God of our salvation, the Help of all the ends of the earth... stills the roaring of the seas, the roaring of their waves, the tumult of the peoples.”
• Psalm 107:23-30 speaks of people "going down to the sea in ships... and seeing the stormy winds which lifted up the waves of the sea... Their courage melted away at their evil plight... They were at their wit's end. Then 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.” This is a prediction of what the Savior, the Messiah, Jesus, would do when He came into the world and what He did in our text and in other ways in the New Testament.

There is also a remarkable passage in Proverbs 30:1-5, where a man says, “I am weary, O God, and worn out… I have not learned wisdom, nor have I knowledge of the Holy One (as I should). Who has ascended to heaven and come down? Who has gathered the wind in His fists? Who wrapped up water in a garment? Who established all the ends of the earth? What is His Name, and what is His Son’s Name? Surely you know.” And the very next verse says, “Every Word of God proves true; He is a shield to those who take refuge in Him.”

It is through that Word of God, revealed in the Old Testament, and explained even more in the New Testament, that we know of God, our Heavenly Father, and of His Son, God the Son, named our Lord Jesus Christ, and His saving work for us in His life, death, and resurrection. In fact, it is not until after the saving work of Jesus is complete, as He had paid for all sins and made us acceptable to God through faith in Him, that God the Holy Spirit pulled everything together for the disciples and for us, in God’s saving plan.

Before that, as you read through the Gospel of Mark, you find Jesus having to say to His disciples again and again in Mark 7:18, “Are you also without understanding?” and in 8:17, “Do you not yet perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened?” and in 8:21, “Do you not yet understand?” and in 9:19, “O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you?”

Yet Jesus never gave up on His disciples and kept teaching them and doing everything necessary for their salvation and for ours. All this is very comforting for us, too. I help teach a Friday morning Bible study where 15 to as many as 20 men meet weekly for Bible study, and I help with other studies at times. We can usually understand things as we read and talk together about the most important teachings, but sometimes we struggle with some things, and I can imagine Jesus saying to us, “Do you still not understand?” But we keep meeting, and the Lord is patient with us, and the Holy Spirit keeps leading and guiding us through His Word.

This is some of what Martin Luther meant when he introduced the 10 Commandments with the words, “We should fear, love, and trust in God.” The Word of God shows us fear, fear of our sins and failings and our need for repentance and forgiveness, and then leads us to that repentance. But the Word of God also points us to the love of God in Christ, in spite of our struggles, and the Holy Spirit calls us to and enables us to trust in Christ’s mercy and forgiveness and eternal hope in Him because of what He perfectly accomplished for us.

And this text, and others like it, gave the early Christians a picture of the church. It is said that they often drew boats as symbols - reminding of the ark, through which Noah and family were saved. In our text, Jesus also used a boat from which to preach and teach and rescue His disciples - and  how important it is for us, too, to keep gathering and hearing and learning about Christ’s rescue mission for us, as we do in worship and Bible study. Here we also receive God’s gifts of forgiveness and the Lord’s Supper and remember the promises of our baptism. All these gifts of God help us through the storms and troubles we face in life, too, as we stay in the Lord’s boat for our strength.

The place where we sit together for worship is often called “the nave” - the Latin word for a ship or boat. (That’s why we also have a branch of our military called the Navy - people going out in boats to help and protect us.)

Of course, our Lord provides the greatest help and protection for us in Christ. Jesus promises never to leave us or forsake us, and one day He will say to us, “Peace! Be still!” Then all the storms and troubles of this life will be over for us, in the eternal life Christ has prepared for us.

Let us pray: Now may the peace of God which passes all understanding keep our hearts and minds safe, only where they can be safe, in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
(Philippians 4:7)