Scripture: Mark 4:35-41; 1 Samuel 17:41-46; Isaiah 9:1; John 14:1; Job 38:1; Matthew 5:45 Series: After Pentecost
Preached in ordinary time on the stilling of the storm (Mark 4) read alongside David and Goliath (1 Samuel 17), this sermon argues that storms come even to those whose lives are usually calm, and the question is whether we have greater faith in the storm or in Jesus. Wilson distinguishes courage (fearing the right fears) from foolhardiness, and defines biblical fear as respect: David feared God more than Goliath, just as the disciples first believed the storm more than Christ. Jesus stills the sea not as a pagan storm-god or X-Men mutant but as the Logos and second person of the Triune God who actively sustains creation today. A key distinction is drawn between God’s power (what God can do) and God’s providence (what God chooses to do), the tension we feel when one friend is healed and another suffers. Faith is lived not on mountaintops but in ordinary, storm-prone daily life, growing through sanctification, closing with Cyprian on doing the will of the Father.
Illustrations: west-texas-roads-runoff, galilee-vs-lake-travis, who-male-drowning-rate, thor-zeus-storm-xmen, mountain-climber-courage, boy-who-cried-wolf, job-god-enters-the-chat, very-ordinary-child, transfiguration-vs-bleeding-woman, cyprian-will-of-father
June 24
Be Still
1 Samuel 17:41-46
Mark 4:35-41
The Philistine came on and drew near to David, with his shield-bearer in front of him. When the Philistine looked and saw David, he disdained him, for he was only a youth, ruddy and handsome in appearance. The Philistine said to David, “Am I a dog, that you come to me with sticks?” And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. The Philistine said to David, “Come to me, and I will give your flesh to the birds of the air and to the wild animals of the field.” But David said to the Philistine, “You come to me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This very day the Lord will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down and cut off your head, and I will give the dead bodies of the Philistine army this very day to the birds of the air and to the wild animals of the earth, so that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel. - 1 Samuel 17:41-46
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?” And waking up, he rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Be silent! 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 fear and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” - Mark 4:35-41
My family and I love going out to West Texas. We love the desert, the openness, the brutality of survival and how nature finds a way. When you’re driving out west, it doesn’t rain very much. Sometimes in the mountains it’ll rain, but only a few times a year does it rain on the main roads throughout far west Texas. Nevertheless, the highways and major roadways are designed around rainfall that only happens a few times a year. Even if it only takes place 3 or 4 times a year, The rain and runoff are the guiding principles of road construction. Because, if there’s not a place for runoff, those roads are destroyed. Storms happen fast. Water happens fast. If a storm hits a road that hasn’t been designed around the rain, the roads are gone. Haphazard dirt and stone washes away like the house made upon the sand that did listen to the word of God and do it. Some of us have lived lives filled with storms. Others have been blessed to only experience a few storms in their life. Even when storms don’t happen very often in our life, they happen. It’s important to be ready for them.
The early disciples of Jesus Christ were fishermen. They fished on a large body of water, the Sea of Galilee. The region of Israel is historically called Galilee, coming from Isaiah 9:1 to describe the gentiles who lived in the area. Galilee was a heterogeneous society then and now. The sea is called Kinneret in Hebrew. It is a fresh water lake fed by the Jordan river.
It is 8 miles wide at its longest and 13 miles long. Its surface area is more than twice the size of Lake Travis. It is large enough that it’s hard to see to the other side. It’s large enough that there can be a storm in on one side that doesn’t affect the other side. These aren’t the kind of fishermen who sit on the creek, pass the line all day. They work for Volume, and they know that if a storm comes, that that is going to affect their bottom line. It is going to be a lot harder to fish. Fish also don’t like storms. The waters are often calmer deeper below, but there’s still turmoil in the waters, and fish are hunkered down as well. Even if the storms don’t happen all the time, we know they’re outside of our control.
Men are especially at risk for drowning. The World Health Organization says that the mortality rate of males is twice as high as females for drowning, “Studies suggest that the higher drowning rates among males are due to increased exposure to water and riskier behaviour such as swimming alone, drinking alcohol before swimming alone and boating.”1 But I don’t think the disciples were as reckless around storms as people are today.
The fishermen knew that storms could not be controlled. Many pagan religions have gods specifically connected to the weather. Thor, the god of thunder, Zeus, god of lightning, Storm, the X Men from the Marvel Comics religion.
Hurricanes are scary. Storms are scary. Even when you’ve been in them before. The ancient Greeks had a difference between the words for courage and foolhardy. A foolhardy person is someone who has no fear. A courageous person is someone who fears the right fears. If you’re climbing a mountain, a courageous person knows where the riskiest spots are to be extra careful there. A foolhardy person climbs every spot the exact same way and then slips and falls to their doom.
But the disciples that day were not really being courageous. They were troubled. They were terrified. Either word works. The same word is used in John 14, where Jesus says, do not let your hearts be troubled. The disciples were troubled. I think it’s a better understanding here. Terrified, gives us connotations of whimpering, covering our eyes for troubles. The disciples were concerned. When Goliath saw the young David, he was not afraid. He was not troubled. He was not terrified. David, though, should have been afraid. Someone who’s never seen combat going against the man whom the entire army is scared of. You would think David should have been afraid of Goliath, but he was not. Fear is another term for respect. Not in modern languages, but in ancient languages it was. You feared the ones you respected; the people that you knew would follow through with threats. Aesop’s Fable about the boy who cried wolf. The story is about this idea of respect and losing it because of saying a wrong thing so often that people can’t hear you when you say the right thing.
David didn’t have a fear of Goliath, he had a fear of the Lord. Not fear in the sense of being scared of God. No, David respected God more than he respected Goliath. He had courage. Because he was more afraid of failing God than he was of being defeated like Goliath. It’s based on the reality that God was with him. David had a greater faith in the power of God and in the power of Goliath. He wanted to enact the will of the Father.
That really does get us to the storm in Galilee again. For those disciples on the boat, at first, they had a greater faith in the storm than in Jesus. They believed in the storm. They had seen the storm do powerful things before. And then Jesus says to the storm, be silent. Be still. Jesus questions the disciples after the storm had been stilled and said, “why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” They had trembled. They had been in great fear.
Power over storms was often the special position of a pagan god. To have power over storms with a sign. Now the source of Christ’s power over the storms is important. It is not because he has a mutant ability like the X-Men, Storm. Nor is God a watchmaker god who created the earth and then walked away. Nor is God a pagan rationalization for the existence of these frightening things. That is, we don’t know where storms comes from so we will call it God. No. Jesus has power over the storms because Jesus is the son of God. Jesus is the logos of God, as the word of God, the very language God spoke through which all creation came into being. Jesus is the second person of the Triune God of all creation, who made everything from nothing. The god of all creation is not a watchmaker god who built everything and then walked away to left. His creation continued now. Our God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is an active God, a present God, actively sustaining creation. This is a concept we often lose today. Creation is not just about what happened a long time ago. Creation is about today and tomorrow. God is sustaining the world today. Without God, all of reality would cease to exist. This is the power revealed on that stormy day by Jesus Christ. This power over even the wind and the seas. The power of Jesus displayed that day, it recalls us back to the end of the book of Job, where, after long conversations with his friends, God enters the chat and speaks from the whirlwind. Jesus doesn’t speak from the whirlwind here in Mark. Jesus has become human and flesh. Momentarily contained in the finite flesh of person. Jesus doesn’t speak from the whirlwind, but Jesus does speak to the whirlwind. And the whirlwind will listen. It becomes silent. The whirlwind knows who to fear.
Goliath and the Philistine army come across into Israel like a storm. They seem unstoppable, like a tsunami. Nothing could stand in their way. David, the youngest son, volunteers. At first, he tries to wear the the armor of the king, but it doesn’t fit.
He doesn’t need it. He has more faith in the gods of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and the power of the storm in front of them, personified in Goliath. He believes in a god who had power over the storms. David believed that even if he died, he would live with God.
Do you believe in a God who has power over the storms? I think it’s important here to distinguish the difference between God’s power and God’s providence. God’s power is what God is able to do. God’s providence is what God chooses to do. Sometimes we struggle in this difference between God’s power and God’s providence. We see a friend healed and we see another friend who is still suffering. We see one friend to get a job and then another getting laid off. We see the harshness of the reality as Jesus describes this, where the rain falls on the just as well as the unjust.
We are frustrated at God’s providence and we want to be the judge. We want to mete out justice
Our hope, though, is found not in our own justice, but in God’s. Even if we live in the desert where storms are rare, they still come, and they can be devastating.
We’re in a season of the church here that is sometimes called ordinary time. Ordinary is a word that can be diminished and dismissed by a lot of people. It’s not a huge compliment if your parents talk about you and say, oh, you know, Wilson, he’s very ordinary. But ordinary is not a bad thing. It’s not a pejorative term on its own. Ordinary is necessary. If everything was extraordinary, then the extraordinary would become ordinary. And then we would just have a new ordinary. We are often exhorted to have mountaintop experiences. Those experiences shape us, but they’re not constant. Most of life does not take place on the mountain top. It is reality where storms can come. It is the day to day where the life of faith is born out. The faith of Peter in John on the mountain during the transfiguration was small. They didn’t need a lot of faith to believe inJesus’s power when he was displayed in heavenly light. The faith of the mother who touches the tunic of Jesus is great. She believed when it wasn’t easy or obvious.
The point is not that we should all be like David and ignore the storms around us. God doesn’t want us to be foolhardy but to believe, to grow and believe. This is what we call sanctification, becoming more holy. Holiness is not in the sense of holier than thou, but in the sense of being set apart for God, fulfilling the purpose God has for us. This is what it means to follow Jesus. Not just be changed, but to follow
Or as Saint Cyprian wrote:
All Christ did, all he taught, was the will of God. Humility in our daily lives, an unwavering faith, a moral sense of modesty in conversation, justice in acts, mercy in deed, discipline, refusal to harm others, a readiness to suffer harm, peaceableness with our brothers, a wholehearted love of the Lord, loving in him what is of the Father, fearing him because he is God, preferring nothing to him who preferred nothing to us, clinging tenaciously to his love, standing by his cross with loyalty and courage whenever there is any conflict involving his honor and his name, manifesting in our speech the constancy of our profession and under torture confidence for the fight, and in dying the endurance for which we will be crowned—this is what it means to wish to be a coheir with Christ, to keep God’s command; this is what it means to do the will of the Father.
In the name of the Father and the Som and the Holy Spirit. Amen.