Past Sermon

Sermon Title: "Trusting A Sleeping Jesus "
Date: June 25, 2006
Minister: Rev. Charles E. Ensley, Jr.

Lesson: Mark 4:35-41

Just how comfortable do you think I would have been last month if the pilot had come over the intercom a half-hour after take-off from LAX and announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve now attained our cruising altitude of 40,000 feet. We’ll be proceeding over Canada and across the tip of Greenland before we land in London ten hours from now. Sit back and relax; sleep if you can. I’m putting the plane on auto-pilot and plan to get some shut-eye myself.”

Just how comfortable would a cruise ship passenger be on a winter voyage across the North Atlantic if the captain were to announce: “Ladies and gentlemen, there are no more ports to visit until we dock in England. There’s really nothing to see overnight except a few icebergs. Relax and go to sleep. I am. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Even uneducated fisherman are not comfortable in a boat overnight while the leader of their fishing expedition is sleeping. Especially when they’re in a small boat on a big sea. Ill winds at night on the Sea of Galilee can rise with terrifying suddenness and create the perfect storm. Violent storm winds that come off the Golan Heights get trapped in that large freshwater basin and can be deadly even to the most experienced of fishermen. For fishermen in small ancient boats, the waters of the Sea of Galilee could grow disturbingly, dangerously and immediately immense.

As recently as 1992, a windstorm raised 10-foot waves that crashed into the town of Tiberias, causing significant damage there. Ten-foot waves are humongous and deadly, especially when you’re in a small sailboat that is only four and a half feet high from the bottom of the keel to the top of the rails (gunnels). This size boat might well be the type of boat Jesus and his followers were in that fateful night.

Back in 1986, during a drought in Galilee, the framework of an ancient boat was uncovered. Carbon dating placed its age between 100 B.C. and A.D. 100, right in the timeframe of Jesus’ life and ministry. At 26 feet in overall length and seven feet in the beam (its widest point) the boat could fit 15 persons, including a helmsman and a crew of four. It would take a boat that size to haul Jesus and his crew from one shore to another.

These vessels, once common on the Sea of Galilee, had a single mast rigged with a yard-arm from which hung a square sail, similar to what is pictured on the cover of today’s worship bulletin. These nearly flat-bottomed boats sailed well with the wind behind it, and terribly into it. Jesus’ crew was seasoned. These were seamen sailing a trustworthy boat with which they were most likely familiar, and perhaps was even owned by one of them. These men understood the waters, the wind and the shoreline. They could handle themselves and their boat whenever the weather went from calm to horrendous. In the dark of that night, perhaps they dropped (removed) their square sail when the wind kicked up. Maybe four strong-backed fishermen/disciples took to the oars and began confidently to row a course that could, with the help of the helmsmen — in a power struggle with the wind and sea — save the boat, and thus their lives.

Meanwhile, in one of the most dramatic and alarming Gospel stories, the winds raged and increased, tossing the boat about on angry white-topped waves, all the while astern of the helmsman Jesus slept soundly and comfortably cuddled on a wet deck on a soaking soft cushion. Maybe all self-trust of the fishermen, maybe all their skill, was suddenly washed overboard in mounting, terrifying and smashing seas. The disciples had reason to believe they were headed to the bottom.

Now if you were in a boat in a raging sea, who would you trust? Who would you want to be there? Would it be sailors of lifelong experience, or the carpenter’s son sleeping in the hold?

Isn’t this the dilemma any of us face during life’s most perplexing and confusing moments? Who do we want to be there, and whom do we trust to help us in our decision-making? Pastor Kevin McHarg of First Christian Church in Benton, Kentucky, says that the question is: Am I willing and ready to trust a sleeping Jesus?

When I’m in the doctor’s office awaiting a diagnosis, am I willing to trust a sleeping Jesus?
When I’m in the middle of a bitter dispute, am I willing to trust a sleeping Jesus?
When I’m making a change in my career path, am I willing to trust a sleeping Jesus?
When I’m challenged by my failure to serve God beyond my own needs and interests, am I willing to trust a sleeping Jesus?

A Jesus on the road to Jerusalem I might be able to trust.

A Jesus opening the eyes of the blind I might be able to trust.

A Jesus teaching the Torah to a crowd on a hillside I might be able to trust.

A Jesus rebuking the Pharisees I might be able to trust.

But — a sleeping Jesus? I don’t think so!

If the tormented sea and waves actually were two feet tall that night, or even eight, we can understand the fear in the gruff, bass voices of the sea-worthy disciples when they awakened Jesus, saying, “Teacher! The boat’s going down. Don’t you care?!”

To which he eventually replied, “What’re you afraid of? Where’s your trust in me?” But before he said those words, he spoke loudly, shouting out into the storm, out into the night, saying to the wind and water, “Peace! Be still!”

At his words, as you know, the wind dropped and the seas flattened. His men were stunned. The seascape went from tempest to calm in the breath of a few words. The loud howling wind ceased. Roaring waves vanished. Their boat bobbed. The men stopped their shouting. There was no noise. All was silent. All was calm, except perhaps, the beating of their shocked hearts, alarmed at what he had done.

Then, into the silence, in a quiet voice, Jesus asked his friends, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” ‘Where is your trust?’, he seems to ask them.

I am always in wonderment when I discover in the Bible something that—though I’ve read it dozens of times, even preached on it a half-dozen times—I never saw before. In selecting today’s Gospel lesson, I discovered Jesus’ question to the disciples after quieting the storm and bringing calm to their lives was not in the past tense, but the present. Jesus does not ask them after it’s all over, “Why were you afraid” but rather “Why are you afraid?”

The whole story ends with the disciples asking, “Who then is this…?” Their response to this wonder of the stilling of the storm is literally, “They feared a great fear.” Our New Revised Standard Version’s translation “And they were filled with great awe…” is not quite strong enough. Was it fear they had for a man who could still a storm, or awe? Our English word “awful” didn’t originally mean something bad, smelly or ugly. It was derived from “awe”—great and wondrous respect.

We have been taught since Sunday School that we need not fear; that God is in charge. We can lay our heads on our pillows at night in the assurance that God has heard our prayers. We can sleep comfortably . . . but how would we feel if we were to know that while we slept, God was also asleep in heaven, or that the footprints that were supposed to be Jesus carrying us on the beach are really our own, for he’s decided to go off-duty and take a nap somewhere? How do we come to place our trust in someone, or in Jesus? We want to trust, we want to have faith, but sometimes, it’s just the hardest thing.

It might be easier if faith came in a bottle. Might be easier if all we had to do was spray on some Liquid Trust. Or maybe it would automatically come after one year after church membership. Instead, all we have is our experience of Jesus, and words on a printed page that tell us about him. Because —

Jesus will calm some of our storms.

Jesus will not calm all of our storms.

We have to trust that Jesus knows which storms need calming.

And no, we don’t have the physical Jesus asleep in the stern of our boats, or in the passenger seat of our cars. What we have is more difficult. We have words. We have the words of his disciples. We have Jesus’ words, telling us, “Blessed are those who have not seen, but yet have come to believe.” Belief is a powerful thing, more powerful maybe than chemicals. Belief makes us live differently, and it’s not short-lived like a morning spray of Liquid Trust. True belief lasts.

When the fear that is Good Friday is transformed into the fear and awe Mary Magdalene experienced on Easter; when Jesus – who has been to us merely a good teacher – reveals himself to be the powerful Lord of the wind and wave, the question remains: do we trust enough to stay in the boat with Jesus, even if he’s asleep?

(Portions adapted from a sermon on this text entitled: “Uncommon Scents”,

from Homiletics, vol. 18, no. 3, May-June 2006, pp. 63-64.)