If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same:
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools;[i]

That is the first portion of a poem that British writer Rudyard Kipling wrote in 1895.  Kipling was praising those people who are able to persevere in the face of uncertainty, injustice, and ridicule.[ii]  Some folks have suggested that the opening of Kipling’s poem should be revised, to read:  “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs — then clearly you do not understand the situation.”  That was the sentiment of Jesus’ disciples on more than one occasion.  The men and women who traveled with Jesus frequently had serious doubts about whether this man Jesus had a good grasp of reality.  They wondered whether he had a proper appreciation for the difficulties of life and for the religious, political, and practical challenges that ordinary people face.  Yes, Jesus was reared within an ordinary family and had been a laborer who struggled to get by.  But, somewhere along the way, Jesus had managed to develop an all-too-rosy, completely unrealistic view of life.  He must not understand the basic realities of human life, or else he could not speak and behave as he did.

We hear some of the disciples voice this opinion at the end of what had been a long, busy day.  For several hours, Jesus had taught a large crowd of people, using parables.  Later, he pulled aside the men and women who traveled with him and taught them privately.  Now, the day is about over.  We read our Second Lesson:

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?”

“Why are you afraid?”  That is what Jesus asked the people in the boat with him.  A sudden storm had come up — a common occurrence on the Sea of Galilee — and the waves were so high that “the boat was already being swamped.”  The danger here was not hypothetical or remote.  The danger was real and present:  if the situation did not change, these folks were likely to drown.  And, not just the dozen or so folks who were in the boat with Jesus, but also the people in the other boats, the “other boats [that] were with him.”  How can Jesus ask, “Why are you afraid”?

We are at Week 3 in pondering a series of questions that Jesus posed.  We are moving through the Gospel of Mark, stopping to consider some of the challenging questions we hear Jesus ask along the way.  The first question we heard Jesus ask was, “Which is easier, to say to [a paralyzed man], ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Stand up and take your mat and walk’?”  The second question we heard Jesus ask was, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?”  These questions, and the circumstances in which they arose, called for the people around Jesus to focus upon just who Jesus was and what power and authority he might have.  Did he have the power and authority to forgive sin?  Did he have the power and authority to overrule or modify a commandment from God?  Even the people who were closest to Jesus — the men and women who were right there with him as he traveled the countryside preaching and healing and explaining the nature of God — even the people who were closest to Jesus found it impossible to answer these kinds of questions.  They could not fathom who Jesus was, what he was capable of doing, what his presence might mean for the world — or how they should respond.

And so, as the winds rose higher and the waves began to swamp their boat, Jesus’ companions went to where he was lying asleep and woke him up shouting, “Teacher, do you not care that we are about to die?”  What answer did Jesus’ followers expect?  What response did they hope to receive?  Notice that they called Jesus “teacher,” which showed respect, but also showed that they did not yet know all that Jesus was.  Notice, as well, that they did not ask Jesus to effect a rescue, to intervene somehow and change the course of events.  They asked only whether Jesus was at all concerned that their boat was about to go down, taking all of them down with it.  And Jesus answered their question of, “Teacher, do you not care?” with a question of his own:  “Why are you afraid?”

Fear, psychologists tell us, is what you and I experience when we believe that no one is in control, or when we suspect that whoever is in control either wants to do us harm or does not care what happens to us.  When you and I were infants, we depended upon the adults in our lives to provide us with warmth, protection, and food.  If they did give us what we needed, we grew to believe that they had control over the situation and that they would not let us come to harm.  We developed a sense of trust that allowed us to face life with confidence.  I remember a day when my youthful trust and confidence were put to the test.  Everyone in my family loved to swim, and they had me in water that was over my head before I could walk — or swim.  One of my favorite activities was when my father and two big brothers would take me into the swimming pool and throw me back and forth between them.  One day, they were tossing me one to another, and one of them failed to catch me.  One moment, I was flying through the air.  The next, I was plunging through a swirling mass of blue water and shining white bubbles, water just pouring into my nose and throat.  It was absolutely beautiful.  Yes, beautiful.  I felt no fear, but truly enjoyed my tumultuous ride through the water, secure in the knowledge that my daddy and big brothers had control over the situation and would not let me come to harm.

The first biblical account of creation is a tale about a swirling mass of water.  It describes God’s work in creation as bringing order to what had begun as chaos.  “The earth,” we read, “was a formless void, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.”  God brought order to that formless void by gathering the waters into oceans and allowing the continents to appear.[iii]  Over and again, scripture illustrates the majesty and power of God by showing that he is master of the waters, that he can control what appears to us to be complete chaos and beyond all control.  In the story of Noah we find God bringing the waters into flood, then causing them to subside.  In a story of massive redemption, we find God turning an area of sea into dry land and thereby delivering the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt.  The writer of Psalm 107 tells us that God is able to make the storm be still and hush the waves of the sea.  God, scripture assures us, is able to control what appears to us to be complete chaos and beyond all control.  Why, then are we still afraid?

That is what Jesus asked the disciples who were out on the Sea of Galilee with him that day, and those disciples provided our first answer to Jesus’ question when they asked him, “Do you not care?”  The first reason that even those of us who follow Christ continue to be afraid is that we do not trust God to care.  Not completely.  You and I are not fully certain that God does indeed care when our boat is about to go down — when we lose our income, when we hear the doctor say “cancer,” when a loved one is mired in addiction, when the phone startles us awake in the middle of the night, when a relationship we have relied upon begins to fall apart.  How can it be that after all of the times we have looked to God — that we have sought God’s help, that we have known and experienced God’s love — how can it be that sometimes when we need God the most, we cannot seem to wake him up, that we strain our senses but are unable to hear his voice or feel his touch?  Such moments leave us uncertain, doubtful that God does indeed care.[iv]

The second reason that even those of us who follow Christ continue to be afraid is that we do not trust that God has control over the situation and will not let us down.  Not completely.  When Jesus asked the other people in the boat, “Why are you afraid?” he followed that question with another one:  “Have you still no faith?”  That brings us to ask, “Faith in what?”  What sort of faith did Jesus mean?  Did Jesus want his followers to have faith that he would always quell whatever storm might suddenly arise?  That he would always intervene to halt the wind and make the waves subside?  Is that the sort of promise that Christ offers to you and me — that our finances will always be secure, our broken bodies will always mend, that our loved ones will always come home to us, that no catastrophe will ever startle us awake in the night?  No, that is not what Jesus offered his disciples, and not what Christ offers us.

Our First Lesson told us some of what the followers of Christ can expect.  The apostle Paul wrote that he and his fellow evangelists had undergone “afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger.”  Not only did faith in Christ did not spare Paul and his friends from such things, their decision to follow Christ and do his work was the very reason for much of what they had to endure.  That pattern started early.  In fact, it explains why Jesus’ followers were caught out in a storm in the first place.  Jesus was the one who told them to cross the sea that night, to cross over to the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee.  He directed his followers to leave their home territory and go into the country of the Gerasenes, into a territory of pagan Gentiles.  And, even after Jesus did quell the storm and make the waves subside, he and his disciples had to contend with “a dead calm.”  The sails on their boats became useless; the disciples would have to row hard to reach the shore.

Jesus did not promise his followers a life without storms or hardship.  Christ does not promise you and me a life without challenge or pain.  What Christ does offer us is his presence, his love, and his peace.  Christ offers to go with us through every storm we encounter, to uphold and sustain us as we search for the order he would have us find within the chaotic events that threaten to engulf us.  You and I do not have to earn the presence of Christ; we do not have to earn his love or merit his peace.  Jesus gave all of these things to his disciples out there on the sea that night, even though they thought he did not care, even though they had no faith.  Jesus gave them his presence, his love, and his peace even though they did not have any understanding of who it was who stood among them, the one whom “even the wind and the sea” obeyed.  Christ now offers his presence, his love, and his peace to each of us — to those of us here in this sanctuary, and to all of the people outside these walls.  Before his death, Jesus promised his followers that after he returned to heaven God would send them the Holy Spirit.  Hear, now, the other promise that Jesus made to his followers — that Christ now makes to you and me:  “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.  I do not give to you as the world gives.  Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”[v]  Amen.

Copyright 2008 © Leslie R. Stacks. All rights reserved.