July 9,
2000
THE PERFECT STORM (Mark 4:
35-41)
I admire seamen and sailors: how indebted we land
lovers are to those daring adventurers who from the dawn
of history have been willing to go down to the sea in
ships and venture to explore the unknown and open water
ways for our trade and settlement.
And how indebted is Hong Kong to seamen: We are a city
founded upon sail, grown up around the harbor, and now
Hong Kong is the largest container port in the world,
visited annually by thousands of ships and tens of
thousands of seamen. It's right that we take note of this
Sea Sunday, 2000! But why don't we make more of it? If
the Hong Kong government had its wits about it we might
have staged a great pass through of ships down below us
in our harbor instead of New York with its infinitely
less dramatic harbor did with its OpSail this July.
Well, there's always next year should the Hong Kong
Tourist Authority get with it.
The sea fascinates even those who prefer to stay on
land as evidenced in two cinema blockbusters this summer.
The one, now playing here, is the film U571, about
submariners in the Second World War.
The other is the film version of Sebastian Junger's
best-selling real life account of New England fishermen
trapped within a mighty Atlantic storm in l99l. This
oceanic epic, titled THE PERFECT STORM, relates the
courage of those seamen, and of those who sought to
rescue them, from the vortex of a monster storm. This
unique storm was named THE PERFECT STORM by
meteorologists who marveled at the coming together of
several weather events which produced what is the single
greatest storm at sea tracked in the 20th Century.
Compared to the great oceans the little lake of
Galilee may seem an unlikely locale for a great storm,
but the storm reported in today's reading from Mark was,
in its context, a major one. I think of it as THE
PERFECT STORM for Christians.
The 20 mile long Sea of Galilee is normally serene
because the deep lake is protected by mountains on its
eastern shore and hills on its western and northern
shore. But that same topography can on occasion produced
a tempest in a teapot when gale force desert winds sweep
from Iraq, across Syria, and then across the Golan
Heights and abruptly dump their power down the 3,000
sheer slopes upon the lake. If you were unlucky enough
to be in a boat on the Galilee when that phenomenon hit
you, you would be like Jesus' fellow passengers, several
of them fishermen, in today's story…afraid for your
lives.
This story is one of a series in Mark which are
placed there to demonstrate that God is in control of all
things, including a sea in tumult, and that Jesus is
God's chosen one to exercise the divine power to heal, to
instruct, or, in this case, to calm the waters and bring
passengers safely to shore.
The Hebrew tribes who conquered Palestine a thousand
years prior to this Marcan story came from the deserts
to the east.
The Jews were afraid of the sea. The Galilee and the
Dead Sea were the only large bodies of water they ever
saw or ventured upon. The distant Mediterranean was the
preserve of the seafaring Philistines and it was thought
to be under the sway of the Leviathan, and even of Satan,
and so in opposition to God. As a nation, the Jews turned
their backs on the sea because in their minds God was at
war with the wild forces that ruled the sea.
This dramatic story is offered by Mark as affirmation
that God was in control of the most violent situations in
nature and in human affairs, and that Jesus was the
channel for God's divine power to calm and subdue all
forces which would disturb and destroy humanity.
The contrast between Jesus and his friends is telling.
Jesus sleeps through the storm. It is not that he is
unconcerned with the reality of evil or that he is
uncaring about the fate of his disciples, but he is not
overcome with anxiety, as they are. Jesus alone
demonstrates full confidence in the presence and the
power of God to deal with the threats of the sea. He
alone is the one with sufficient faith to allow him to
leave matters in the caring and powerful hands of God,
who can and will save. Being tossed about on the wild sea
is no great issue with Jesus because he knows that God is
able to calm the storm.
*******
The traditional sermonic interpretation of Mark 4 is
to spiritualize it, using angles from the story to form
lessons about God's work in relation to the human spirit,
for example, "Christ still the storms of our souls" or
"faith in Christ brings peace amidst perils." And this is
one good use of the text. Peace of mind is a vital
blessing when we are personally troubled, and it can
contribute to a solution of a practical problem.
But the storm in Mark 4 was a real storm; not a
figurative one. So surely the theological claim that Mark
was making was that the power of God can deal with very
practical disturbances like storms, wars, plagues, and
vast social disturbances. We want to socialize the
application of Mark 4 rather than spiritualize it.
One point Mark wanted to make was that faith in God
can open us to added ways for problem solving and
generate attributes like courage, cooperation,
generosity, healing, and reconciliation which are
relevant in the crass physical world afflicted with wars,
crimes, drugs, and natural catastrophes. God can
intervene in crises and alter the course of events
through those who call upon the name of Jesus and become
empowered by the Holy Spirit to help change crises for
the better.
Do we believe that Jesus Christ is still available to
us to help work out our problems, even those of a
tremendously potent kind.
*********
Paradoxically, even though the earliest Christians, as
Jews, had no love of the sea, the three earliest symbols
of the Christian movement all came from maritime
tradition. They are the symbols of the fish, the boat,
and the anchor.
The form of the fish is the earliest known symbol of
Christ, Christianity and the Church. Archaeology has
unearthed walls and stones in Jerusalem and Rome near or
at catacombs and from the first century, which bear the
outline of the fish. We know that the first Christians
used this symbol as a coded sign, once persecution began,
to show Christians where the churches were meeting in
secret places. Why the fish? Not as Nury's children might
guess because Jesus' followers included many fishermen,
or because Jesus promised to make all his followers
fishers of souls, or because Jesus ate a fish in a
Resurrection episode. Though these are all useful
references to fish in the scriptures.
The reason, however, was simply because the Greek
word for fish is spelled in Roman letters as ICHTHUS. And
those letters are the initials of the Greek words meaning
JESUS CHRIST, GOD'S SON, SAVIOR. Early Christians
scrawled the outline of the fish upon the walls to
indicate the way to the catacombs and safety from the
storms of religious persecution.
Two further early Christian symbols do relate to the
sea and probably derive from the Sea of Galilee storm in
Mark. They are the silhouette of the ship and the symbol
of the anchor. The ship was one of the first symbols of
the Christian Church; and the anchor became a popular
form of the Cross since the anchor is simply a cross
upside down.
These symbols can help us when storms threaten us.
When we are beset by physical or emotional storms, where
better to find help than within the Church, the solid and
seaworthy boat of faith.
Most storms can only threaten a ship if it begins to
leak water from inside because it is not tightly built.
The Church is a reliable redoubt to weather life's storms
because the Church is made watertight so long as it
follows the teachings of its captain Jesus.
It's true that even the most seaworthy ship can find
itself threatened by a storm of such tremendous force
that it is much better to tack sails, or find harbor and
drop anchor, and hope to ride it out. And so Jesus as the
anchor of our church and faith becomes our ultimate
refuge. When any difficulty appears beyond our capacity
to manage, then we should drop anchor in Jesus
Christ.
Let us consider how this text applies to two examples,
the one personal but with social dimensions; the other
social but with personal dimensions.
The last week one of our dear members has had to face
the storm of personal illness. Janet Ho learned only a
little over a week ago that her lower spine was assailed
by a large tumor. Last Monday she underwent four hours of
major surgery. She is healing now. Many of us have
shared Janet's "storm" by hearing her share with us and
praying and visiting with her. Janet did not want to
undertake this storm alone. She properly turned to her
friends in the Church for prayer and friendship. She
properly turned to her Lord, Jesus Christ, to rest her
hopes and faith in his power to assist her and her
medical team in managing and defeating the aggressive
malignancy which sought to destroy her. For Janet, I
would guess, Mark 4 is much more than a spiritualized
comfort; it is a real and palpable help in time of
need.
But what pertains to the individual and an intimate
circle of supporters, we may hesitate to apply to more
massive disturbances. We may hesitate to generalize and
universalize the power of Jesus to calm storms. We
hesitate to apply the meaning of Mark 4 to crises even
though the scriptures disclose a supreme God who yearns
to intervene and help us to overcome evil, injustice,
persecution, hunger, and sickness.
The second example is the pending pandemic of AIDS.
It is a major storm about which all authorities,
including the Church, have tried to deny God any role. We
have all dealt poorly with the crisis and many do not
even know there is a crisis.
It was in the U.S. about l7 years ago that AIDS first
caught some public awareness. General public opinion,
including most Christian opinion, was initially
indifferent to the sickness dismissing it as a problem
only for gay people. Public anxiety rose when it became
evident that it was a heterosexual affliction as well.
But once education and new drugs reassured the western
nations that they did not face a pandemic health crisis
among their straight citizens, public opinion and
government action slacked off once again into
indifference. The American public spends more on baldness
and its remedies than is spent on Aids research.
The United Nations joint task force on the epidemic
has just released stunning statistics which show that
globally there are l5, 000 new cases of AIDS diagnosed
daily and 40% are among teenagers and young adults. There
are 53 million recorded infections and l9 millions
persons have died. Despite reliable forecasts more than
l5 years ago of the potency of this gathering health
storm, and despite the marketing of control medicines
beginning 4 years ago, we are relentlessly sailing into a
pandemic which will not crest for another 20 years. It is
now reliably forecast that more people will die of AIDS
in the next 20 years than perished in all the wars of the
20th Century.
There are many explanations for our indifference but
ignorance is not one of them. The human mind has worked
well to produce understanding of the virus and expertise
in defeating it. We know the statistics and what they
predict. But reason is not enough; there must be will
and I would suggest our is weak because we do not have
faith that God wants this scourge defeated.
Simplistic though it may appear, we need to ask: What
would Jesus have us do to combat and defeat AIDS? What
is the will of God in confronting this health storm of
monumental danger to humanity?
We know Jesus would strip bare the prejudice among the
wealthier nations which led them to ease off from any
sense of crisis once they were confident that their own
peoples would not be afflicted with a heterosexual
pandemic of the disease. We know Jesus would oppose the
miserly attitudes which prevent sufficient funding for
medicines and education to the poorer societies, while
spending infinitely vaster sums on armaments, not to
mention baldness.
God has practical resources to give to us to defeat
AIDS when and if we are willing to trust and follow God's
guidance.
I hope our congregation will get more invested in this
crisis. On the first Sunday of December this year the
Hong Kong AIDS memorial worship will once again take
place at St. John's Cathedral in the evening. Last year
as the year before I alone was there from our
congregation. I suggest that our Outreach Committee
consider this issue as meriting financial support from
the congregation and that a delegation attend and give
our offering at that memorial event next December.
We have been generous in funding individuals with
afflictions like blind Sam and burn victim Tak Tsai. But
we avoid and ignore the unknown millions who die from
AIDS. Do we think the problem is too immense for our
interest? Or that God is indifferent to the millions
perishing in this storm?
I would further suggest to our Worship Committee that
at our ecumenical Good Friday service next April you
think about a pilgrimage around the APEX to each of the
stations of the cross and that the congregation at each
station lift up prayers relevant to the AIDS crisis.
There are many other storms which threaten our
societies: communal disharmony and violence;
environmental degradation; missile and armament
escalation; the scourges of drugs, mindless gambling and
commercialized flirtations with superstition, pornography
and sexual exploitation of children, and scandalously
unequal wealth distribution.
Regrettably, some Christians are content to ignore the
power of Jesus Christ to still these vast storms. They
prefer to spiritualize Mark 4 so that its relevance is of
a non-palpable kind and addressed, at most, only to
individuals in their private distress instead of to our
collective, moral will.
I believe Jesus really did have utter confidence that
God could overcome any evil and alter any course, be it
one of drift toward a personal disaster, or one of
suicidal social escalation like AIDS, or one of
transcendent import as his own coming crucifixion.
*********
Of course Jesus knew, as did Mark, that there are
disasters which cannot be stopped and losses which must
be suffered. God does not intervene to prevent
earthquakes nor stop death in its tracks for us. He did
not prevent the death of Jesus. The Gospel of Mark was
written, as were those of the other evangelists, to
assure believers that their losses and grief, their
sorrows and anguish, were not the last word. That must be
why Jesus could snore through the storm because he knew
and trusted that glorious surmise like no one else in the
world.
When awakened, Jesus commanded the wind to be quiet
and the waves to be still. Then he had the audacity to
ask his disciples why they were afraid. His
soaked-to-the-skin companions could only marvel and ask
that most crucial question, "Who is this man, that even
the wind and the waves obey him?"
These men in the boat were amazed indeed by the one
who had managed the very waters and winds by which
several of them had to live as fishermen. That Jesus
could command the natural elements was to them a
propitious sign that things which had and could yet
overcome them had and could be overcome. That hope
foreshadowed Jesus' beautiful statement to them a bit
later: IN THE WORLD, YOU SHALL HAVE TRIBULATION; BUT BE
OF GOOD CHEER…I HAVE OVERCOME THE WORLD!" (John
l6:33)
I hope Community Church will continue on that true
course of faith and trust in the sovereignty of God and
with Christ as our anchor in all tribulation. If you do,
you will remain relevant and useful to God's purposes.
Satan will certainly hate you for such faith; and many in
the world will also scorn you. But the ship and anchor of
faith are more reliable in troubled waters than all the
cunning wisdom and self-rationalization of worldly
thinkers.
Jesus is the anchor of our salvation, and he is also
our close, storm-proof companion, our fellow traveler.
Like all who follow him, he has been through the storms
and bears the marks and scars of the journey. They are
part of his beauty and they attest to his authority.. And
such marks from the storms of life we have, too, and
Jesus loves us for them and bids us to stay our course
with him.
Pastor Gene
Preston
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