Year B
Job 38:1-11
Psalm 107:1-3, 23-32
2 Corinthians 6:1-13
Mark 4:35-41

May the words of my mouth, O God, speak your truth…

In the last four verses of today’s reading from Job…  God declares that it was only God who shut in the sea with doors…  and set limits to where its proud waves must stop…  and we remember in Genesis’ creation story that…  the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep…  that God formed order out of chaos…  and there’s a story in the book of Jonah…  that’s similar to today’s Gospel…  in Chapter 1:4-6…  we read that the LORD hurled a great wind upon the sea…  and such a mighty storm came upon the sea that threatened to break the ship up…  then the mariners were afraid…  and each cried to his god…  Jonah meanwhile…  had gone down into the hold of the ship and had lay down…  and was fast asleep…  the captain came to him and said…  what are you doing sound asleep…  get up and call on your god…  perhaps your god will spare us a thought…  so that we do not perish…  

And in today’s Gospel…  a great windstorm arose… and the waves beat into the boat…  so that it was being swamped…  but Jesus was in the stern…  in the back of the boat…  asleep on a cushion…  and they woke him up and said to him…  Teacher…  don’t you care that we are perishing…  and Jesus rises from a deep place…  from the calm beneath the chaos…  and he simply gets up and issues commands…  he REBUKES the wind… he says BE STILL to the sea… and they obey…

And Jesus uses these same two words in Mark 1:25…  in Capernaum… when the man with unclean spirits came into the synagogue…  in that story too…  Jesus rebukes…  he says be silent…  and in the Greek…  the word means to close the mouth with a muzzle…  and by using the same two words…  in these two situations…  Efrain Agosto…  the New Testament professor at Hartford Seminary writes that Mark connects the Jewish and Greco-Roman mythological dimensions…  of storms at sea…  as being ruled by demons…  gods…  and sea monsters…  in other words…  chaos… 

And what’s surprising…  is that four of the men in the boat were experienced fisherman…  being out on the Sea of Galilee was familiar to them…  they were tuned in to the wind and the water…  they could read the signs…  but that didn’t matter here…  because this storm came up out of nowhere…  perhaps for a purpose…

In our reading from the Jewish scriptures…  when God asks Job…  Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge…  I will question you…  and you shall declare to me…  in this reading…  we tend to think that God is angry…  don’t we…  like in The Wizard of Oz when the Wizard bellows fire and smoke as a way of using fear to establish his authority…  but we didn’t hear God’s tone of voice…  or see flames…  so why do we assume that…  why don’t we think God questioned Job simply to help him understand his place in the world…  I wonder if it’s because we can tend to project our own anger…  our own desire for authority…  onto God…  who lords nothing over us…  remember in Philippians 2:Jesus did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited…  but emptied himself…  was born in human likeness…  and took on the form of a slave… 

Proverbs 9:10 says…  the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom…  and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight…  and in the Gospel on June 6…  and June 13… Jesus taught with parables…  simple stories used to illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson…  and so I propose that today’s story has a spiritual lesson…  to help us gain this some of this wisdom that God wanted for Job…

Now remember where Jesus was sleeping…  in the stern…  in the back of the boat…  and what is the back of the boat…  it’s the place from which one steers the boat…  guides the boat…  determines its course…  and he was asleep…  grounded in silence…  established in the calm beneath the chaos…  and it was from this place…  both literally and figuratively…  that Jesus not only calmed the storm…  brought order to chaos…  but directed the course of the disciples…  they had already seen him perform some miracles…  and they were beginning to realize who he was…  and so when Jesus asks…  why are you afraid…  have you still no faith…  why don’t they answer his question…  but instead ask each other…  who then is this…  that even the wind and the sea obey him…  and so isn’t it the same thing…  about God and Job…  why do we think that Jesus…  who knows our hearts…  would be angry with them…  or be angry with us… when we don’t fully get it…  when the chaos of fear rises up in us…

But if fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom…  then what kind of fear leads to wisdom…  I think its reverential fear…  and it arises when we ask questions like… who then is this…  that even the wind and the sea obey him… when we know who we are…  and who we’re not… 

During this past year…  I’ve had moments of fear…  perhaps some of you have too…  I have feared that during COIVD…  the boat of the church was getting swamped…  and that after COVID…  it would sink…  that too many would think I did too little…  and psychologists tell us that trauma can wire us so that fear is our default position…  and the last fifteen months have certainly been traumatic for many of us…  but trauma is not a foregone conclusion…  Jesus is still in the back of our boat…  guiding it…  making mid-course corrections so that we can reach healing and wholeness on the other side…  

In 1988…  President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act intended to effect some healing and wholeness…  this Act compensated more than 100,000 people of Japanese descent…  whose relatives had been incarcerated in internment camps during World War II…  the legislation offered a formal apology…  and paid out $20,000.00 in compensation to each surviving victim…  it was a watershed moment…  which said…  Yes…  we did this…  and it was wrong…  and we want to make reparations…

When 94 year old Opal Lee was just nine years old…  her family moved into an all white neighborhood…  and shortly afterwards…  a mob surrounded their home and threatened their lives. They set their home on fire. Lee says newspapers elsewhere in Texas reported the crime –– but local papers where the violence took place ––  ignored it…  the date of the attack was June 19th…

When she was 89 years old…  she finally decided that something must be done to make Juneteenth a national holiday…  and just three days ago…  President Biden signed legislation making Juneteenth an federal holiday…  for Miss Lee…  Juneteenth is a celebration of freedom…  and commemorates the seldom told story of about 250,000 slaves in Galveston…  who didn’t learn of their freedom…  until June 19, 1865…  two and half years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation…

In the midst of the storm…  the disciples said… Teacher…  do you not care that we are perishing…  could Opal Lee’s family have asked this…  or could every person of color murdered because of racism ask this… could the 600,000 Americans who died from COVID ask this…  could the 49 LGBT young people murdered at the Pulse nightclub five years ago this month… during PRIDE…  ask this… could all of the Israeli and Palestinians killed during recent attacks ask this…  could Thursday night’s shooting victims in Detroit ask this…

And Jesus’ answer every single time…  would be…  Yes…  of course I care…  but I think too many of us have more respect for a 220-volt live wire than we do for God’s Word…  we politicize issues which have no partisan charge at all…  and we don’t use the intelligence and creativity we’ve been given…  often enough…  to solve the biggest issues which impact the greatest number of people… 

And so I wonder…  why is anyone afraid of doing what’s needed to acknowledge America’s sin of racism and eliminating it…  or doing what’s needed to at least reduce gun violence…  why is anyone afraid of doing what’s needed so that every single eligible voter can vote…  why…  after more than 2,000 years…  are we still afraid…  

Jesus can drive out demonic spirits…  and can calm the storms within us…  all we have to do is invite him to sit in the stern of our boats…  and direct our course…  and remember…  that Jesus is with us not only in our terrors…  when along with Job…  the world makes little sense to us…  but also when the morning stars sing together…  and all the heavenly beings shout for joy… so that we can own a share of God’s peace…