June 23, 2024, Mark 4:35-41, What Are You So Afraid Of? – Mtr. Kathryn Boswell
To listen to the sermon, click the link above. The text is below.
I am afraid of the dark. I know that seems baby-ish,, but if I am honest I have to admit that as old as I am, I am still afraid of the dark. When I walk Dobby around the yard late at night, I never take him into the deep shadows under the maple tree, where the glow of the street lamps doesn’t reach.
I’m a Christian, and a priest. Faith is my life, and yet even so, I find that I am afraid of a lot of things. I’m afraid of guns, and large crowds of people, and I am afraid for the futures of my children and grandchildren. I am afraid for the women and children of Gaza, who have no safe place to go. I am afraid of the hatred and racism and division and violence that seem to be growing in our country. I have lots of fears. I don’t think I’m too unusual. There are a lot of things to be afraid of in this world, because there are a lot of things – a lot of things – that are too much for us to handle: too big, too strong, too complicated, too hard. That’s just a fact.
There’s an old collect that acknowledges the scariness of human existence: “O GOD, you know us to be set in the midst of so many and great dangers, that by reason of the frailty of our nature we cannot always stand upright…” It makes sense for us to be afraid sometimes, because we are frail creatures and because so many things in this world are bigger and stronger than we are. In the gospel reading today, the storm that came up while the disciples were ferrying Jesus across the lake must have been a doozy. These were men who for the most part had grown up on the water. They knew how to handle boats in rough weather from the time they were little boys. But on the night that Mark writes about, they were facing a storm that was too much even for them, and they were terrified.
And in their terror, they ran down to wake up Jesus – and can you even imagine how exhausted Jesus must have been, to be sleeping through this catastrophic storm – but they shook him awake, and they asked him, “Don’t you care that we are about to die?” It’s really important to notice and remember that question, because after Jesus had rebuked the wind and the waves and everything was quiet again, he rebuked the disciples as well. “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?”
And I don’t believe that Jesus was rebuking them for being terrified of the storm. Mark tells us that the waves were filling the boat; they were in the middle of the sea, and it was dark, and the boat was about to go down. Of course they were afraid. Their failure of faith was not that they weren’t facing death like heroes, or that they didn’t know ahead of time what Jesus was going to do. Their failure of faith was in forgetting the love that Jesus had for them. “Don’t you care?” They allowed their fear, their entirely natural fear, to overwhelm the faith they had in Jesus’ concern for them. Their fear of death was made so much more terrifying by the fear that their Teacher and Lord and Friend was not there for them. “Don’t you care?”
We all know how big a difference there is in facing suffering, whether we face it alone, or in the company of those who love us. Pain and sickness and loss and even death are so much less scary, so much less painful, when we are holding the hand of someone who loves us, when we hear the beloved voice near us, even when we just know that people are praying for us, and that we are in their thoughts, no matter how far away they are. It makes all the difference to know that people care. It makes ALL the difference to know that God cares.
But like the disciples, even though we know God loves us, we still forget in our fear. We all waver in our faith sometimes, saying to God, “Don’t you care?” Because in the end, that really is our very worst fear.
But for the disciples on that night, when the story came to its happy ending, when the waves and the wind were quiet and still, when the boat had stopped pitching on the waves and shuddering under the force of the gale, Mark tells us, “They were filled with great fear.” Then they looked at each other, saying in hushed voices, “Who is this man, that even the wind and the sea obey his voice?” The poor disciples went from one fear to another on the sea that night, but this new fear was a completely different kind of fear. They were terrified all right. But not because they feared for their lives. Not because they doubted Jesus’ concern for them. They were terrified because they had caught a glimpse of his divine power. To be standing in that boat, face to face with their teacher and friend, and to really realize for the first time that he was Lord even over the most powerful forces of nature – that brought them to their knees in awe, but more than that, in fear.
Sometimes we try to make the idea of “the fear of God” more palatable by saying it’s not really talking about fear, per se. It’s more like respect or awe, we say. I’ve said that myself. It’s like the feeling you would have in the presence of a magnificent cathedral, or in the presence of a great person like Pope Francis. But what the disciples were feeling was a lot more than that, a lot more than respect, a lot more than awe. They were shaken to the very core of their being that this man Jesus, this Teacher that they thought they knew – that he was someone and something much different, much stranger and beyond their knowing than they had ever imagined. “They were filled with great fear.”
But it wasn’t the helpless panic they were feeling when the waves were crashing over the sides of the boat. And it wasn’t at all like the despair they were feeling when they ran to wake up Jesus. God never wants us to feel that kind of fear.
Jesus talked about fear to his disciples who were going to face persecution. “Don’t be afraid of things or people who have the power to kill your body, but who have no power over your soul,” he told them. “The only one you need to fear is the one who has the power to destroy your body and your soul in hell.” Which sounds pretty darn scary. But then Jesus went on (and it kind of sounds like he was going off on a rabbit trail here – but, of course, Jesus always has a direction and a purpose for what he says): Jesus said, “You can buy two sparrows for a penny in the marketplace, can’t you? But not a single sparrow falls to the ground without your Father taking notice. So – going back to the subject of fear, here’s what I want to tell you – “don’t be afraid at all, because you are worth more than many sparrows.”
It’s a teaching that kind of makes your head spin. Jesus tells us that there is nothing in creation worth being really afraid of – human or otherwise. God is the only one with the power to destroy you utterly, body and soul. But guess what, that terrifying, all-powerful God is your own Father, and he loves you so much, he values you so highly, that he takes the time to count the hairs on your head. Your Father is terrifyingly big, and he is alarmingly powerful, no doubt about it. He is the boss of the wind and the waves; he is the boss of the demons; he is the boss of cancer; he is the boss of darkness and evil and bombs and loneliness. But here’s the thing, he is the one who loves you more than his own life. So then, Jesus told them, you have absolutely nothing to fear.
The fear of God is not a tame and refined thing like mere awe or respect. The fear of God is the truly terrifying and utterly glorious wonder of who God is. The God we worship is more powerful, more good, more strange and Other – and more unimaginably loving, than any being or force we human beings could have ever imagined on our own.
In the story of Job, poor Job is overwhelmed by the suffering he endures – the loss of his family and friends, the loss of his worldly goods, and finally, the loss of his health and the suffering of physical pain. His so-called friends gather around to reassure him that God is always fair, so clearly he must have done something wrong to bring all this suffering upon himself. But God silences Job and his friends alike by reminding them who he really is.
“Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” God thunders. “I will question you, and you answer me.“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know! Have you commanded the morning since your days began, and caused the dawn to know its place? Have you entered into the springs of the sea, or walked in the recesses of the deep? Have the gates of death been revealed to you, or have you seen the gates of deep darkness? Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth?” God goes on and on, at great and fearsome length, and he closes by saying, “Declare, if you know all this. Shall a faultfinder debate with the Almighty? He who argues with God, let him answer it.”
These are words to humble the proudest soul. These are words to strike terror into the heart of the most self-assured. Only fools make light of the eternal power and majesty of God.
But, we never need to doubt his love for us. We never need to dread what he has in mind for our future. We never need to worry that he is too busy to take notice of us. We never, never, never, need to ask him, “Don’t you care?” Because it is smack in the middle of his loving care for us, smack in the middle of the raging storms of life, that we are struck dumb time and time again with the wonder of who God really is – Almighty Lord and Everlasting Father; Creator of the Universe and Good Shepherd; Ruler of the Nations, and Lover of our souls. +
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