Calming the Storm
August 26, 2007
Band Shell Sunday
Part One:
What are you afraid of?
Ferris Wheels
Have you ever been afraid?
I have been. I don’t mind working on roofs and climbing a ladder but there are some moments on the edge of a roof I feel like I’m about to pitch right off the edge and tumble down to the ground in a mass of broken bones and a puddle of bloody flesh. Some people call that an unreasonable fear. Personally I prefer to think of it as healthy respect for gravity.
Some people love roller coasters and all kinds of death defying rides at the amusement parks. I enjoy them all but one. That old flimsy, held together with baling wire, chewing gum and coat hangers, carnival Ferris wheel. You know the one I’m talking about. It’s not really that tall but it’s down right scary. The bucket isn’t much more than a padded plank with a couple of ends, a back, and a foot rest painted gray with a red pinstripe design. The safety device is a wooden bar that is clicked into place by a skinny man with a scruffy beard, a half a cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth, and a pack of Lucky Strikes rolled up in his dirty white t-shirt. This is just plain scary.
That’s one kind of fear but there is another kind. It is the fear of the unknown, the unseen, and the uncontrollable.
Have you seen the first movie called Pirates of the Caribbean? In it an evil captain of turned to another character and said: "Argggg" there be monsters’ Have you heard that line before? Have you ever wondered where it comes from?
In the British Museum in London, there is an old mariner’s chart drawn in 1525 outlining the North American coastline. The cartographer who created the map did so from information gleaned from ocean-going crews of the day. There were notations on where reefs might be, and where the best harbors could be found. But there were certain sections that were relatively blank. And in those sections were notations like the following:
Here be giants!
Here be fiery scorpions!
Here be dragons.
In other words: Here be monsters. Ever since man has gone out on the water in boats, seafarers have always been just a little afraid of the unknown, the unseen and the uncontrollable. And they felt great fear. We all often feel great fear with the unknown, the unseen and the uncontrollable in our lives. Some of us really struggle with worry, anxiety, depression, and a looming sense of dread.
Interactive Question: So what are you afraid of?
Part Two: Why are you so afraid?
35 That day when evening came, he said to his disciples, Let us go over to the other side. 36 Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat. There were also other boats with him. 37 A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. 38 Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?
39 He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, Quiet! Be still! Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.
40 He said to his disciples, Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?
Mark 4:325-40
Jesus had spent the day preaching and sharing parables with the crowds that gathered to here Him teach. Evening has come and He tells His disciples to set out in the boat. About half way across the Sea of Galilee, a terrible storm descends upon them. The winds blow, the waves broke upon their ship and they began to take on water. In fact, there’s so much water coming in that the disciples are afraid they might sink.
But in the stern of the boat, Jesus is asleep. It’s been a long hard day and virtually nothing seems capable of waking Him. The disciples can’t understand this. In fact, they seem to be a little angry as they shake Him awake and say Don’t you care that we drown? Jesus gets up, calms the sea, and then asks Why are you so afraid?
Why are you so afraid? Was Jesus rebuking His disciples for being afraid?
Now - what strikes me as so unusual about Jesus’ question is that it would seem the Disciples had every reason to be afraid. These are experienced sailors, fishermen who made their living on the Sea of Galilee. When these men got scared of a storm while out on the water you can pretty well bet, they had good reason.
But Jesus asked them: Why are you so afraid?
From the very start of my preparation for this sermon I was troubled by Jesus’ question. It didn’t seem reasonable to say these fishermen shouldn’t have been afraid of the storm. They had spent their lives on the Sea of Galilee, and I’m convinced they knew of other fishermen who had gone out on that Sea and not returned. Other storms like this one had claimed the lives of more than one fisherman. And now, they’re in the midst of a terrible storm and their boat is in danger of being swamped. They had reason to be concerned.
But it wasn’t their fear Jesus was rebuking. It was the way they were reacting to this fear. "Why are you SO afraid?" Mark 4:40 That little word SO is from the Greek Houto which means "in this way" or "in this manner".
I have been around people who’ve encountered the storms of life, and I’ve seen them react just like this. They’ll have someone try to calm them and give them encouragement and they get angry and frustrated with the person who’s trying to comfort them.
Why were the disciples so angry at Jesus? Why did they say "Don’t you care?" What made them so ready to lash out at God?
It really is quite simple: they lacked faith in Jesus.
Storms are not accidents - they are teaching opportunities
I don’t think this storm was an accident. I believe that this situation was engineered to teach these men about faith.
C.S. Lewis once wrote: You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn’t you then first discover how much you really trusted it?
I believe this storm was brought about by God to see how the disciples would react. It was designed to see if they really TRUSTED Jesus. It was designed to push them off the cliff of their casual relationship with Jesus. It was designed to educate them something
And I believe that whatever storms we go thru in our lives, God can use those struggles to educate us, to change us, to challenge us, and to strengthen our faith in Jesus. Because it is only in the midst of the storm that we learn how much we really trust Jesus and then we learn to trust him more.
It’s easy to believe in Jesus when the skies are clear, and things are going smoothly, but when the storm gather and the winds blow and beat upon our lives it’s then we have to examine our Rope - our Jesus - and see how much we trust Him.
Whenever I’ve encountered storms in my life there has always been that sense of helplessness. A frustration because there appeared to be nothing I could do to change my situation. It even bordered on anger. I suspect that many of you have gone thru storms of your own you’ve experienced the same helplessness and frustration. So we can sympathize with those men in the boat all by themselves.
But those men weren’t in the boat alone
Jesus was there. In fact, that’s WHY Jesus was there. HE was there to deal with a storm they couldn’t handle. For this storm they had Jesus.
Man going into surgery, just in time he felt the presence of God and the comfort of the Holy Spirit.
At the beginning of this message I told you about an ancient map that is on display at the British Museum in London. Before the map made its way to the British Museum however, it was the prized possession of a British explorer by the name of Sir John Franklin in the 1800’s.
But in spite of its value, Sir John Franklin was offended by the fear that the ancient mariners had. And so he scratched out the inscriptions. And in place of the phrases that had once read:
"Here be giants!" "Here be fiery scorpions!" "Here be dragons."
He wrote these words across the map: "HERE IS GOD."
Fear is a very real emotion. It’s often written on the hearts of many in this world. And it’s often even written on OUR hearts. But when we scratch out that fear and replace that fear with the statement: HERE IS GOD - that’s when our faith grows strongest. That’s when we are best able to tell those around us:
For this we have Jesus.
