5th Sunday after Pentecost 2024
Text: Mark 4:35-41
Did you ever have the experience as a young child of being so sleepy, so tired that you were falling asleep before you could get to bed? I vaguely remember when I was probably about 5 or 6 I was so tired to go up to bed on my own. I remember my dad picking me up and putting me over his shoulder. He carefully took me upstairs to my bedroom and gently rolled me off his shoulder onto my bed, and he tucked me in. That feeling of being carried by someone who loves you has never left me. I felt so safe in my dad’s arms.
We took a Holy Hike yesterday, and one of the children needed to be carried by her dad. I walked behind them and watched as she fell asleep over his shoulder as we walked along. It reminded me of that feeling of safety I had felt.
Perhaps Jesus felt the same way in the boat. He was in the stern asleep on a cushion while a storm tossed the boat. His Father was watching over him. Jesus knew he was safe in God’s hands.
The disciples were afraid so they woke him up, and he stilled the sea. “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”
People who have done tremendously brave things—like rescuing injured soldiers in the midst of a battle, or swimming into rough water to rescue someone who is drowning, or running into a burning house, are not people who lack fear. They have courage. Their courage overcomes their fear. Their concern, their love for another person drives them to do what others consider heroic.
In Jesus’ prayer to the Father in the Garden of Gethsemane, the night before his crucifixion, we could see he had real fear about what was to happen to him. “My Father if it is possible, let this cup pass me by. Yet not my will but yours.” He was so afraid he was sweating blood. Jesus’ love for the disciples and all human beings whose souls would be lost without his sacrifice overcame his fear. He entrusted his life into the hands of his Father. He would pass through his crucifixion to the place of eternal safety.
So, what does Jesus mean when he seems to be saying ‘faith’ replaces ‘fear’? Fear is a powerful human emotion. We have a strong desire to be in a place of safety. It’s natural, we want to live, we afraid to suffer. It’s primal. So how can faith in God overcome such a strong instinct to survive within us, that was put into us by God in the first place?
When we come to know and trust God as our eternal Father, when we are grateful for everything he has given us—life, family, everything we need to live—we develop a sense of how much he loves us. We can actually begin to feel that he is protecting and carrying us. Just as it seems natural for us to love our own Fathers it becomes natural for us to love God the Father. He is the ideal of all fathers. In loving God, we want to please him, to seek his will for us, to be faithful.
That’s what I thought I was doing when I found myself all alone on an airstrip in the Arctic winter. My friends and family probably thought I had lost my mind. After the pilot of the plane helped me unload all my stuff, we both looked over to the village, which was about a mile away. He said, “I don’t think anyone’s coming to get you.” Communication in the Arctic back then was often unreliable. Maybe they really didn’t know I was coming that day. I remember thinking, “I know God wants be to be here, maybe it’s to get to this point to freeze.” Then the pilot said, “Do you want to put your stuff back in the plane?” I said no. So the pilot took off and circled around the village a couple of times to get someone’s attention. Harriet Tukrook, who was driving the truck for the polar bear watch, saw me with all my stuff at the airstrip, and she came out. I may have lost my mind, but I thought I was being faithful to God. He protected me in my foolishness.
As we walk this life trusting in God there will be times when it is scary to do the right thing, the good thing, to speak the truth in love, to value the life of a stranger so much that we are surprised to find within us the courage to save them, or to travel to a dangerous place to tell others about the love of God. We are all bundles of mixed motives, and discerning the will of God for us is sometimes difficult. That’s what Jesus was expressing in his prayer in Gethsemane. Mere human beings often get it wrong, and we revert to the survival instinct, to be selfish sometimes. It is trust in God, faith, that helps us break out of the place of fear to do the thing God needs us to do in the moment.
Trusting God the Father can be like having your own father carrying you on his shoulder to a place of safety. This is how I believe ‘faith’ can overcome ‘fear.’ This deep sense of being in the hands of God gives us courage to seek his will, to love him in return for all the many, many blessings we have enjoyed. In this broken world, we are all God’s children, and like a natural father, he has hopes and dreams for us. So, let us together seek his will for us, individually and as a parish. Amen.
