Sermon Archive

Forget any mental images you have of solitary walks along a seashore at mid-tide, or of languid nights listening to the waves roll in as you stroll a hard-packed beach, looking out across calm, moonlit waters. Forget any mental images you have like that, for what Mark is offering us today is no idyll of the sea, no picturesque portrait of waters’ healing and restorative powers.

No, Mark is instead describing for us a sea that’s a widow-maker—a caldron of demonic chaos, “where life … hangs in the balance, and … evil lurks as a formidable foe.” (Gary W. Charles, in Preaching Mark in Two Voices [Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002], p. 60)

And it is just this ominous side to the sea that the great 17th-century Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn captures so powerfully in his masterpiece called Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee (1633). I have a color photograph of that painting here with me today so that I can show it to you later, at the coffee hour—which is yet one more good reason why you should attend it! But you’ll also find a black-and-white version in your bulletin.

Now, throughout the Old Testament and the literature of the ancient Near East, as in Rembrandt’s painting, the sea is portrayed as something that is no friend at all to humankind.

Take, for example, today’s psalm, Psalm 107, where those who had gone down to the sea in ships were caught in a violent storm that overwhelmed their courage and overtook their wits, causing them to reel and stagger, like drunkards, and to cry out to God in fear and distress.

Yes, in the Bible, the sea is portrayed as a place of threat and danger that poses a seemingly impassable barrier to whatever it is that lies beyond. It is portrayed as a realm where God’s order seems not always to pertain and where God often has to intervene to rescue and carry one through. Indeed, when, at the very end of the Bible, the author of the Book of Revelation envisions the new earth that God will create in place of the old earth, at the end of time, the author describes that new earth as a place where “the sea [is] no more” (Rev. 21:1), that is, as a place where the threat posed by chaos no longer exists.

Now, the Sea of Galilee, which, as the axis for Jesus’s ministry, is the setting for today’s Second Lesson and therefore for Rembrandt’s painting—the Sea of Galilee is not really a “sea” at all. No, it is in fact a fresh-water lake. But its sizable surface, and its shallow depth, and its location in a rift valley framed by mountains—these factors taken together render this body of water highly susceptible to sudden squalls and frequent storms. So fishing and traversing this lake often proved as dangerous to life and limb as sailing the high seas.

Well, earlier in Mark’s fourth chapter, at the end of which is narrated today’s chaotic storm—earlier in this chapter, Jesus has been proclaiming, along the seashore (4:1), a whole series of parables about the coming of God’s reign and rule to earth. “Listen,” Jesus said. “A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and … ” (4:3–9) Then Jesus followed up that parable by saying, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and … ” (4:26–29) And then finally, Jesus said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, … ” (4:30–32) Now, by telling these parables, Jesus was making this point: in God’s good time, God’s will shall indeed come to be done on earth just as it is now done in heaven.

And then, following up on these parables by Jesus, Mark offers us his own parabolic story—the story of this storm at sea, which so vividly makes Mark’s point about how hard and chaotic a transition it will be for all of Jesus’s followers as we undertake the difficult passage from this shore to the other—that is, from the shore of the present order of things, in which it is the world’s will that is done, to the shore of God’s new order of things, the shore that is awaiting us on the other side of our difficult journey, the shore of the new order, in which it is God’s will that is done, rather than the world’s. But, so difficult is this journey that it is the presence and power of Jesus alone that enables us to get anywhere near that other shore.

So, as Mark tells this story, Jesus has just put in a long and tiring day teaching the multitudes. Then, as evening descends, Jesus says to his disciples, “Let’s go across to the other side.” (vs. 35). Now, Jesus’s followers include a number of fishermen, so they take him with them into a boat to undertake by sail and oar the seven-mile passage to the far shore. Mark also tells us that “other boats were with him” (v. 36b), thereby inviting us, as his readers, to imagine ourselves out there on the sea, alongside of Jesus and the Twelve.

Now, in 1986, the hull of a first-century fishing boat was found pretty much intact at the bottom of the Sea of Galilee, so we can describe fairly well the kind of craft Jesus and his followers were sailing. It would have measured some 26 to 27 feet long and 7 to 8 feet wide, with a hull about 4 to 5 feet deep. So its length was the same as the length of the chancel, from this pulpit to the sculptured arch, and almost as wide as that arch. And the heighth of its hull would reach the height of the top choir pew. The mast would rise to up near the rose window. The boat’s fore and aft sections would have been decked in, to provide cargo or passengers with a covered space protected from the weather. It was in the aft compartment, on top of which the helmsman stood, that the exhausted Jesus fell asleep just before the onset of the sudden squall.

Rembrandt’s painting captures the moment in this storm when water is swamping the fore deck and Jesus, in the stern, has just been awakened by some of his harried and terrified disciples.

But in this painting, as is generally noted, the darkness born of this evening tempest has already been broken by an opening in the clouds and a burst of light coming from it that foreshadow the calm Jesus will soon create by exorcising the demon in this storm.

Yet what is not noted, at least in the sources I consulted, is that this stream of light, which is so characteristic of Rembrandt’s paintings, this illumination, which directs the viewer’s eye to Rembrandt’s focal point—this light is bathing not the figure of Jesus and those waiting upon him, which would be the typical focal point in a Rembrandt gospel-scene, but rather the light is bathing those of Jesus’s disciples who on their own, in the fore section of the boat, at some distance from the just-awakened Jesus—it's bathing those who on their own are carrying out an ever-so-mighty struggle against the wind and crashing waves. Now, religious convention dictated that Rembrandt had to entitle his painting, formally, “Christ in the Storm,” but Rembrandt’s own stylistic clues suggest that the actual theme of his painting is “Us in the Storm.”

And it is certainly true that we today are able to identify our own selves as ones standing there among those struggling on the fore deck in Rembrandt’s painting, for, as modern-day followers of Jesus, we, too, find ourselves caught in what seems like the mother-of-all-storms. We, too, find ourselves struggling desperately just to keep our boat afloat amidst the churning, chaotic sea of current events and personal tragedies that threatens to swamp us, as, on our difficult journey from one shore to the other, on our difficult passage away from the old order of sin and toward the new order of God’s reign and rule on earth, we struggle to make even some headway.

For, to cite but a few examples, we American Christians are swept up, aren’t we, in the cyclone of Israeli-Palestinian violence and vengeance, and we are also caught up in the tempest of lies and propaganda that swirls around Iraq. And we American Christians are reeling as well, aren’t we, from the gale of assaults on the environment that is being unleashed by our own industries and federal government, and we are also staggering from the noreaster of rampant sexual abuse and sexual discrimination that is buffeting the church. Yes, we do indeed feel like it’s “Us in the Storm.”

But where today is Rembrandt’s break in the clouds and his stream of light? Where today is the figure of a just-awakened Jesus that offers us some foretaste of calm? Where today is there a source of hope that somehow something of the reign and rule of God can be established in the very midst of this chaos of sin?

Well, easy as it is for me to say it and hard as it is for any of us to believe it, this is exactly where our faith in God comes in.

You see, as followers of Jesus, our lot is to continue to struggle for the good, against seemingly hopeless odds, while hanging on to the faith in deliverance affirmed in today’s psalm, hanging on to the faith in deliverance called for in today’s gospel lesson, hanging on to the faith in deliverance conveyed through today’s painting.

Listen again to the words of the psalmist (Psalm 107:28–30):

“Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble,
and [God] brought them out from their distress;
[God] made the storm be still,
and the waves of the sea were hushed.
Then [those in ships] were glad because they had quiet [on the sea],
and [God] brought them to their desired haven.”

And hear again Jesus’s call to his disciples to have complete faith in deliverance. Mark tells us (Mark 4:39–40): “[Jesus] woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’ Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. [And Jesus] said to [the disciples], ‘Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?’”

And view again the faith conveyed through Rembrandt’s painting. In this scene, so certain is the eventual triumph of the power of Jesus over the forces of chaos, that in faith, even before Jesus has spoken, the clouds have parted and some light has burst forth.

So we are called to struggle on in the face of the storm of world events, to struggle on in the sure and certain faith that humankind’s difficult passage from the way of sin to the will of God will eventually reach that other shore by virtue of the power of the risen Christ. Yes, we can pray with confidence the petition, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Yes, we can pray these words out of a sure and certain faith that in God’s good time, the reign and rule of God shall indeed come to pass on earth.

And in the meantime? Well, in the meantime, on this difficult passage of ours, one made fully into the teeth of the storm of chaos, illumined solely by the light of our faith in God’s promises—in the meantime it is quite simply, or quite difficultly, our task to struggle on. It is our task to keep on offering our mighty opposition to the forces of sin and chaos, so that the ship that is our world can at least be kept upright and afloat while we await the sure and certain coming of God’s deliverance.

Let us pray: