Present in the midst of the storm
Link to gospel and sermon: https://youtu.be/aFBUXAC1AI4
Clare L. Hickman
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Ferndale
June 20, 2021—Proper 7B
“Refuse to fall down” by Clarissa Pinkola-Estes; Mark 4:35-41
It was a dark and stormy night. The disciples were in a small boat, on a wind-whipped sea, and the waves crashed against them. Though they were experienced fishermen, and not easily frightened by the water, this was clearly different. Fear howled within them, and death was all around.
In the gospel of Mark, the drama is always epic. It has been since the very beginning. In his first public appearance, Jesus enters the synagogue in Capernaum and encounters a man tormented by an unclean spirit. Immediately, the spirit shrieks: “I know who you are: you are the Holy One of God, and you have come to destroy us!” (Mk 1:24)
The scene is set: For Mark, the core of the good news is and always will be Jesus versus the unclean spirits. Jesus, come to set us free from those things that enslave and torment us. Jesus, against whom the death-dealing forces of this world cannot stand!
Death-dealing forces like those unclean spirits that possess the man in Capernaum. Death-dealing forces of infirmity, leprosy and illness, in so many people that Jesus heals; things that separate people from health and community and the opportunity to love and serve each other. Death-dealing forces like sin and an unwillingness to forgive and be forgiven. And right after the story about the storm, death-dealing forces like the political and military occupation by Roman forces, seen in the story of the Gerasene Demoniac, when Jesus cast out the “Legion” of evil spirits, who are then thrown over a cliff and drowned.
Today’s storm, then, joins this dramatic sweep, in which Jesus stands against all these forces that prevent us from flourishing, all these forces that break apart the web of life God created us to thrive within. The storm on the sea is like the rumble of thunder in a movie: it’s a sign of anything and everything that might threaten their safety.
Jesus, then, is the hero who can, does, and will defeat those forces. Here, he wakes up and does it with two words: Peace. Be still. And the threat is gone.
After having rebuked the wind, however, he turns to the disciples and essentially rebukes them: “Why were you so frightened? Don’t you have any faith?” Which I think is a question about whether they understand what he’s here to do, and if they do, whether they trust him to be able to do it. “Having faith” in Mark’s gospel has a very active, bold element to it. People who take risks to get to Jesus; people who dig through roofs or push through hostile crowds to ask him for healing: these are the ones whose faith he commends. To have faith is to be so sure of the power of Jesus to stand against the workings of death that you put it all on the line. You do your part, whatever that takes, to unite yourself to that power, to be part of that healing, to boldly put yourself on the side of life!
Have faith. Because the Holy One of God came here to bind the strong man. That’s how Jesus described his mission in the previous chapter of Mark: he is here to bind the strong man, to render Satan powerless so that we can be freed from all of his death-dealing powers (Mk 3:27). So have faith, and trust in that task, and follow the example of all those people in Mark who would do ANYTHING to get to Jesus.
He will be there, on the side of life; he IS there, in all the ways and times we experience a flourishing life. And I believe he is there in every single battle with the forces that stand against that kind of flourishing, even those in which the victory is far less dramatic than a stormy sea that he calms with a word. Sometimes all we get is the knowledge that we are on the right side; that Jesus is with us; and that our efforts are a foretaste of the fullness of time, when God will bring that abundant life into fruition for us all.
Yesterday, for the first time in our nation’s history, we honored Juneteenth as a Federal holiday. It’s a remembrance that is long-known to everyone in Texas and black Americans everywhere, but most of the rest of the country has only been catching wind of it fairly recently. Which seems fitting, somehow, given the ways in which the day itself reminds us of how gradual progress can be.
By definition, Juneteenth recalls June 19, 1865, on which previously enslaved black people in Texas received official news that they had been freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, made two years earlier. For some, perhaps, this was the first time they’d heard of it; for everyone, it was the point at which the protection of the government was there to make it safe to embrace the reality of their freedom.
Freedom is complicated, and not as either/or as we like to imagine it. But on that Texas day in 1865, there was a sense (a promise that inspires us, even today) that this country was moving more fully into the values on which we were founded: that all people are created equal.
We believe it. And on our best days, we’re working towards it. But that movement is only possible when we’re able to admit the ways in which we have not fully lived it out. Not when we declared independence but still held slaves. Not when only propertied white men could vote. Not when black people only counted as 3/5 of a person. And not, much later, when a G.I. Bill aimed to provide housing and education to a generation of vets, but deliberately excluded Black veterans from those benefits.
And the list goes on. But it does not have to be. Because we can acknowledge these things, can admit the ways in which we have fallen short of our ideals. Because we’re human, right? We are broken people in the hands of a God whose deepest desire is to redeem us. We can examine our lives and admit our mistakes, as individuals and as a nation. It is painful, but we can confess, we can ask forgiveness, and we can work towards atonement. We can try to make it right.
Acknowledging Juneteenth is a step towards that. It’s an admission that our Independence Day wasn’t independence for all. It’s a celebration of the forward movement that abolition brought about. And it’s a reminder that freedom isn’t a one and done. It must always be re-examined and worked towards and moved into more fully.
Because it is part of the battle Jesus wages against the death-dealing powers of this world. Part of his stand against political and economic domination, part of his stand against marginalization and the forces that deny some people the means to flourish, part of his stand against fear and hatred of the other.
He is here to bind the strong man. And in the storms that threaten to overwhelm us, he simply asks us to trust that he will be with us. That his power and his presence will be with us, any and every time that we stand against those death-dealing powers. And that we should have faith: the kind of faith that digs through roofs and pushes through hostile crowds to reach him. To reach for the promise of Life! May it be so. Amen.