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Grace, mercy and
peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
And
they woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are
perishing?” And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace! Be
still!” And the wind ceased and there was a great calm.
Prayer: Dear Lord
Jesus, breathe out upon us all your Holy Spirit, to me that I may preach well,
and to all of us that we may hear well. Amen.
It’s one of the
great mysteries of Christian faith that Jesus is both true God and a true man.
We actually say something about this every Sunday in the creeds: We say that
Jesus is true God and that he was conceived not in the natural way, but by the
Holy Spirit. And then we say that he was born of the Virgin Mary. Jesus had God
the Father as his true Father, and the Virgin Mary as his true human mother.
And so, we say that Jesus is 100% God and 100% man, 100% of the time.
The fact that Jesus
is completely and totally human means that he is just like us. But the fact
that he is also completely and totally God means that he is nothing like us and
that he is completely different from us. In our reading today, we see that
Jesus is exactly like us when he is having a little cat-nap on the boat. But
then we also see that Jesus is nothing like us when he wakes up and simply
tells the wind and the waves to be quiet. What an amazing thing!
If we look
throughout the bible, we often find little pictures of this, about how Jesus is
both true man and true God at the same time. I often like to think of Moses and
the burning bush. We read in the book of Exodus: The
angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a
bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. Here we have two things: we have a bush, and we have the fire. And these
two things are joined together in a wonderful, miraculous way. Both the bush
and the fire are intact. The bush doesn’t burn up and turn black, and yet the
fire is still burning. And so in the same way, Jesus’ human body is like the
bush, and his divinity (the fact that he is true God) is like the fire. And in
the person of Jesus, the two things are together is a supernatural way.
But there’s also a
passage in the book of Isaiah, where the prophet Isaiah sees a wonderful vision
of heaven, and it says that the angel took a burning coal from the altar and
touched his lips with it and said: Behold, this has
touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.
Can you see that
there are two things there? You have the coal, but it is also put in the fire,
so that is takes on the heat and becomes glowing red hot. The coal is still a coal,
and the fire and the heat still burn, but they are both together in the same
thing. And so, we could say that Jesus humanity (the fact that he is a true
human being, a real man) is like the coal and his divinity (the fact that he is
true God) is like the fire, and yet they are both there together in the same
person, just like this burning coal. And when Jesus comes into contact with us,
it’s also like this passage in Isaiah: Your
guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for. Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes
away the sin of the world.
But then, also in
the New Testament, in the Gospels, we also have a similar picture of this, in
the event in Jesus’ life which we call the Transfiguration. This is when
Jesus went up on the mountain by himself with three of his disciples—Peter,
James and John—and we read: He was transfigured
before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as
light. Can you see, here is Jesus’ real human body, his
real human face, and yet, at the same time, the fact that he is true God shines
through? He radiates from his own face the pure light of God. Jesus here in
this passage is like a burning coal or a burning bush.
But then there’s
something that happens in the passage about the Transfiguration that is very
relevant to our Gospel reading today. After Jesus’ face glows with this light,
and Moses and Elijah are seen standing with Jesus, we read that a cloud
overshadows him, and the disciples here the voice of God come from the cloud: This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased;
listen to him.
Do you hear this
amazing thing? Even though Jesus shows himself to his disciples in the
wonderful way, shining the light of his face, God the Father hides all this
from them, and tells them to listen to him. It is Jesus’ words that we are called to listen to.
Last week, in my
sermon here, I was talking particularly about how the word of God is the key to
so many things in the church. If we want renewal in the church, we need renewal
in the study of God’s word. Without the bible, we really have nothing. When we
read the bible, we hear God speaking to us—this is his voice, and with his
voice comes all of his power, and all of the power of the Holy Spirit. And we
know that God’s word is such a wonderful thing, because in God’s word we find
Jesus. And when we find Jesus, then we have the forgiveness of sins, and when
we find the forgiveness of sins, then we have the Holy Spirit, the church and
the promise of heaven. And when we have these things, then we can encourage and
strengthen each other as we look forward to that time when Jesus will return at
the end of time. What can we do to promote God’s word in our church today, and
to spread this wonderful word into our world and community? – not to spread us,
and our ideas and opinions, but God’s word?
And so in our
Gospel reading today, what does Jesus say? God the Father says about his Son: Listen to him. Let’s listen to him
then. What does he say?
Well first of all,
we read: On that day, when evening had come,
Jesus said to them, “Let us across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd,
they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with
him. And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so
that the boat was already filling. But he was in the stern, asleep on the
cushion.
Jesus had told the
disciples to go to the other side of the lake with him. And yet, here’s this
terrible storm, with terrible waves. We read that the boat was already filling
up with water. And yet, Jesus is saying nothing: We read—he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion.
Here is the God of
the universe, the maker of heaven and earth, the one whose face shines with
divine, radiant light—and yet, right in the middle of a massive storm on the
lake, he is having a nap.
And this teaches us
a wonderful thing—there are all kinds of things that we might worry about in
our own lives. And in one day, even in our whole lifetime, we’re not going to
fix everything—and yet, God blesses our time of sleep. God knows that our weak
bodies need sleep. There’s a wonderful psalm, Psalm 127, which says: Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it
labour in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake
in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the
bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep.
Do you hear that?
It says that God gives sleep as a gift, and when we are tired at the end of a
busy day, God knows how much sleep to give us and apportions it just for us in
the right amount. Apparently, when Thomas Edison invented the light-bulb,
either he or someone else thought that we wouldn’t need to sleep anymore, and
that sleep was something that was only necessary because of the darkness at
night time. But God created the rhythm day with evening and morning right from
the beginning, and created our human bodies in such a way that we have time for
work during the day, and a time for rest at night. And so often Christians
throughout the years have made the time of sleep a time for prayer—it’s the
time to lay ourselves down at the end of the day and to place ourselves into
God’s protecting hands, and when we rise from sleep at the beginning of a new
day, God gives us his forgiveness, his life, his blessings in a new way for the
new day. The book of Lamentations says: The
steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end. They
are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. If you have never had the habit of praying before you go to sleep, I
would encourage you very much to give it a try and to start a new habit. And if
you would like some help, there are morning and evening prayers in the Luther’s
Small Catechism, which are available at our little book stall in the narthex.
So here in our
reading, we have Jesus—and he’s fast asleep. And yet, he seems to be asleep at
the wrong time. There’s a storm howling outside. The boat is filling with
water. And all the time while this human body of Jesus is resting, it seems as
though his divinity is also inactive.
And so the
disciples go to him and say: Teacher, do you not
care that we are perishing? We often sometimes
think that Jesus is asleep, and that he simply doesn’t care about us,
especially when we look around during some time in our life, and all we see is
doom and gloom, and trouble and anxiety. And then we go to Jesus and we say:
What are you doing? Why are letting this happen to me? Don’t you care?
And yet, we read in
the book of Psalms that God will neither slumber
nor sleep. But then, what do we do when we find ourselves in a
time where we might feel as though he is sleeping? Well, we read in Psalm 44 a
wonderful prayer where it says: Awake! Why are sleeping,
O Lord? And the disciples in our reading say: Teacher, don’t you care that we are perishing?
They think that
Jesus doesn’t care, but wasn’t Jesus the one who said that they would cross
over in the boat to the other side? Didn’t they trust him to deliver them
safely to the other side, just as he said, simply according to that simple
word? And so, we see that there is a time of testing for the disciples. They
know Jesus is there, but they can’t seem to see that he’s in control of the
situation. And yet, as soon as they begin to despair, Jesus immediately gets up
and he says: Peace! Be still! And we read: And the wind ceased,
and there was a great calm.
Here we see this
man Jesus, who is a true human being, speak with all the authority of God.
Remember God’s word at the transfiguration: This is
my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him. And so what does he say: Peace! Be still! In actual fact, the gospels tell us that he
awoke and rebuked the wind and [spoke] to the sea. And here Jesus reveals that it is not just any human being who is with
them in the boat, but that it is their maker and their God who is with them in
the boat, and all the authority of heaven and earth belongs to him.
Also, notice here
in our reading that all of the power comes from Jesus word: Peace! Be still! He could have
simply turned off the tap with a click of his finger, but he doesn’t want us to
trust his finger click—he wants us to trust in his word. Now, anything that we
might like to say about this event, and how it applies to our lives, only comes
from the fact that this event actually happened. It’s worth our while to just
sit for a while and to think it through and to ponder it for a moment that the
disciples who wrote this down believed that what Jesus did actually happened.
It was no myth or fairy tale, but an event in history.
Here today we see Jesus
at work today once again in his word. He is going to baptise some people just
as he has baptised us. In baptism, he takes simple water, and says: I baptise you in the name of the Father and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit. He gives us the Holy Spirit, he
adopts us as his child, he makes us a citizen in his kingdom, and he gives us
the forgiveness of all of our sins. And we know then that through our whole
life, no matter difficulties and dangers we encounter, Jesus says, I am with you always, and gives
everything that we need for service in his kingdom. He won’t give us everything
that we need for our life if we want to serve our flesh, and if we do think we
have everything we need and yet, we don’t have Jesus, then we have nothing, and
our whole life is under a curse. But when Jesus is the boat with us, then we
have his blessing at all times, even when we find ourselves being tossed about
on the high seas.
All the power is
simply in Jesus’ precious words: Peace! Be still! And in Psalm 46, we read those words: Be
still and know that I am God.
One last thing:
Right at the end of our reading, we read where Jesus says: Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith? And they
were filled with great fear and said to one other, “Who then is this, that even
the wind and the sea obey him?”
How strong is our
faith? Do we trust in Jesus for each day, and each situation? We know that the
disciples believed in Jesus in general, we know that they loved him and wanted
to follow him, and yet Jesus says to them here: Have
you still no faith?
And here this
teaches us that faith is a gift that Jesus gives—it’s not something that comes
from ourselves. And Jesus creates faith in us through his Holy Spirit simply
through speaking his word. He speaks wonderful miraculous words, like: Peace! Be still! so that we can
also have faith in the simple words, such as in our reading where Jesus says: Let us go across to the other side.
And yet, often in
the gospels, Jesus rebukes his disciples for the lack of faith or for their little
faith. And we know that so often we have such a weak faith, and we wish that we
had a stronger faith. Well, where does the power come from? It doesn’t come
from your faith, it comes from Jesus’ word. Listen to that—listen to him.
St Paul says: I will boast all the
more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Even if you are weak, Jesus is the strong one, even when you think he is
fallen asleep.
And just as at the
beginning of the world, there was such a wonderful sense of calm—a gentle mist
going up from the land watering the whole face of God’s beautiful world—so also
in heaven, there will also be perfect and eternal peace, the peace of God which
passes all human understanding. This peace is even more profound that the
wonderful peace of nature, even deeper than the peace of the quiet still open
sea. We read in our reading, that when Jesus spoke, there
was a great calm. And for us, still today, Jesus, the one whom the
wind and the waves obey, speaks to our raging and roaring souls, our troubled
consciences, our anxious hearts and says: I forgive you. Peace! Be still! Be still and know that I am God! Come to
me, all you are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Amen.
Dear Jesus, we long
for your perfect and eternal peace, especially during our rocky and turbulent
lives. Strengthen our weak faith with your strong word, and speak your eternal
peace into our hearts, the peace that passes not just all human understanding,
but even the understanding of the angels. Amen.
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