Third Sunday after Pentecost                                          
June 20, A+D 2021
Our Redeemer and Our Savior’s Lutheran Churches
Custer and Hill City, South Dakota
Shipboard Life         

   Boats is boats.  Back when I wore short hair by obligation, not by choice, we had a saying about the Navy:  Boats is boats.  Ocean-going bus drivers is how we kindly referred to our sailor friends.  I won’t get into the less kind names we had for them.  No matter how impressive the vessel, in my Marine Corps, boats is boats. 

    So it was a bit humbling for me to consider today’s texts, which are full of nautical and oceanic themes.  Really, the whole Bible is full of stories about boats and rivers and seas and the ocean, all tied up with God’s plan of salvation.  Lots of boats, but not an amphibious assault to be found.

    Lots of sea stories in the Bible.  According to Genesis 1, the whole earth started out covered in water, until the LORD caused dry land to appear.  Then there’s the most famous ship of all, when the earth needed to be cleansed of human evil, and God started over with faithful Noah and his family.  God rescued eight souls from His well-deserved wrath, a rescue through water, upon which they safely floated in the Ark.  We most often turn Noah’s Ark and the Rainbow into decorations for babies’ rooms, which is great, because in the end it is a story of renewal and promise, that points us to our Baptisms.  But we usually skip over the frightening parts of the flood account, such as the wickedness of mankind, and the destruction of so much life. 

    There´s also plenty of fright for the Twelve Disciples in our Gospel today.  They are caught by a terrible storm, far from shore, in a small boat.  The ferocity of the storm is revealed when we consider that many of the Twelve were professional fisherman, experts in small boat navigation, not prone to panic.  But every sailor knows there are limits to what any boat can withstand, and being tossed into the sea during a violent gale is usually a death sentence.  Imagine the fear of Matthew, the tax collector, when he realized that even Peter, Andrew, James and John, all fishermen, were terrified.  And meanwhile, where is Jesus, their new rabbi, the miracle worker sent from God?  He’s asleep, in the back of the boat, perhaps lying on the sails of the boat that they took down to try to survive the storm.  

    These stories of different groups of God’s people, stranded in boats, afraid for their survival:  Do you suppose we should learn something about Christian life from them? 

   If we consider the Church through the lens of a ship at sea, what would we say about her?  Are we enjoying smooth sailing?  Hardly.  There have been times in the history of the Church when being a Christian was seen as a positive by most people.  Not so much today.  Churches and Christians today are still free to do their thing, read old books, sing hymns and whatever, as long they remove and renounce any teaching or idea that isn’t popular or politically correct.  But if we stick to Biblical values and practices, as handed down by the Holy Spirit, well, better sound battle stations.  What happens if we argue in the public square for the sanctity of human life, from conception to natural death, and God’s design for family and marriage?  What happens if we confess the Truth, that there is no salvation outside Jesus Christ?  Well, get ready to take some broadsides.  Now, it’s better to take the broadsides from enemies of Christ than to abandon His teaching, which gives us life.  When the ship of the Church rejects God’s Truth, she may avoid attacks from external enemies, but she rots away from the inside out.        

    So, we must sail in stormy seas, and in enemy waters.  How’s our ship doing?  Are we charting a steady course, or are we taking on water and in danger of sinking?  Really, since the Church is the people of God, not the structure in which we meet, it makes more sense to ask how the crew is doing.  That’s the focus of our Gospel reading this morning, the Apostles, who were panicking, afraid of drowning.  How about us?  Do we face the increasing opposition of our culture calmly and with confidence, or are we cowering in dread of the next salvo, fearful that our church won’t hold up, and we might be cast into the sea? Are we quietly confident, and full of peace?  Or are we more afraid than anything?    

    Would you feel better if Jesus were sleeping in the back of our boat?  Or does the idea of God’s Son taking a nap while you fight the storm seem to fit the way things are going today?  Do you feel like God is not listening, not caring for us, somehow not available, dozing away as things get worse and worse?   And what was that about, anyway?  What does it mean that Jesus napped in the back of the boat, while the waves and the wind rose and began to threaten?  Why was Jesus sleeping? 

    Jesus was sleeping ... because He was tired. 

    Leading up to today’s Gospel, Jesus, as reported in Mark chapters 3 and 4, is fully engaged in His Galilean ministry.  He is casting out demons, debating with Pharisees, teaching the 12 privately, and healing the sick.  He is traveling around on foot from village to village, teaching in synagogues, in the countryside and in the streets, telling parables to the crowds, which He later interprets for His disciples.  Jesus has been hard at the work of ministry.  And so, as He enters into a boat one evening, with the Twelve, to cross to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, Jesus is tired.  Which is magnificent Good News.  Jesus is tired, because ministry is hard, and He is a man, who gets tired.  We tend to focus on the end of the story, when, after the terrified twelve wake Him and beg for rescue, He gets up and saves them.  “Peace, be still,” He cries out, and the wind and the waves obey.  Notice He doesn’t speak like a prophet, calling on the Name of the LORD for rescue.  He doesn’t say:  Oh Lord, please calm the storm.  No, rather Jesus speaks on His own authority, and the creation obeys.  Jesus shouts “Peace, be still,” and it is. 

   “Who is this guy?” wonder the Twelve.  Well, He’s God.  Which is stunning.  But the wonderful Good News is that He is the God who gets tired, because He has now become also a human being.   As LORD God Almighty reigning in heaven, the Son has never grown tired.  Almighty God never slumbers nor sleeps; He is the ever-vigilant Shepherd of Israel.  But now something utterly new and unique has come to pass, called the Incarnation: in Jesus, God has been born of a woman.   

    Mark in his Gospel skips over the birth narrative of Jesus.  He doesn’t tell us about angelic choirs announcing that the Son of God has been born in Bethlehem.  But it’s super important to the story.  So Mark makes that point here.  Jesus is clearly a man. because the hard work of ministry tires Him, and He needs to rest.  And yet He is also God, the Creator and Sustainer and Ruler of the Creation.  And God becoming a man is essential, absolutely critical, to the Good News of free salvation.  Because a man who becomes tired is also a man who can suffer, who can be crucified, who can die. 

    It often seems the Twelve Disciples are slow learners.   But from this point on, the fact that their friend Jesus is truly God begins to penetrate their brains.  Of course, understanding that Jesus is God in human flesh may well have made it more difficult for the Twelve to understand Jesus when He three different times plainly foretold His suffering and death.  After all, how can God die?  Surely, He will simply use His power to destroy anyone who gets in His way, no matter if they be Pharisees, Priests, or Roman soldiers.  Which of course Jesus could have done, if His purpose were only to destroy evil. 

   But the Christ came not just to destroy evil, but also to save evil people, sinners,
trapped by their sins under the power of Satan.  Utterly destroying evil would have been easy for the Almighty.  But saving sinners would be hard.  Because our sins could not just be overlooked.  Jesus hates sin.  He is radically opposed to evil.  Justice must be done, evil must be corrected, not just overlooked.  The debt of sin must be settled.   

   And we could never work off our debt.  To even begin to pay for our own sins, first we’d have to stop sinning.  Good fruit cannot come from a bad tree.  Even we who have been brought to faith still sin, every day.  The Christian does not want to sin, and fights against it.  But sadly, we do sin.  So the way of works righteousness, the idea of us earning God’s forgiveness by our good behavior and our good works, is hopeless. 

    And yet the justice of God requires that sin be paid for.  This is why it is such marvelous Good News that Jesus fell asleep in the back of the boat.  Because it shows Jesus is a man, the man who is also God’s Son, who came down from heaven and got into our sinking boat, in order to die in our place.  He took on human flesh to take away the sins of the world, to take our sins upon Himself.  He came to rescue us from Satan, to destroy the power of evil to harm us, now and forever, by paying our debt in full, on the Cross.  To do that, the Son of God had to become the Son of Man, the child of the Virgin Mary.    

    Jesus, resurrected and ascended into glory, is still a man, but a new, glorified man, and so He no longer gets tired.  But it is the very best news that He did get tired, and suffered, and died, in our place.  So when the devil, or some false preacher, or your own doubting heart roils the water of your soul by telling you that you must earn God’s favor, or else, well, don’t listen.  You, as a Baptized crewmember under Captain Jesus Christ, can rebuke them and reject their lies.  You can and should cry out, “Be still, in Jesus’ Name, for He has made peace with God, for me.” 

    The ship of the Church still passes through choppy water, and it may seem from time to time that Jesus must be asleep.  It sometimes seems like we are under fire and in danger of sinking, but God is not aware.  But fear not.  Though you and I be of little faith, Jesus is faithful.  Whether we feel it or not, He is with us, for He has given us His dying Word, and then rose from the depths of death on the third day.  The Church cannot sink, because her resurrected Captain is Jesus Christ.  We will make it to harbor, to finally rest in perfect peace with all the sailors... I mean all the saints, who have gone before.  Jesus is with us, even when He seems silent, even when He tests our faith, to strengthen it.

  So no matter how fierce the storm, the eternal truth is that we are sailing on glassy smooth seas, with our Captain firmly at the helm.  The Spirit of God fills the sails with the breath of life to carry us along, as Jesus guides us home to His Father.  

    So enjoy the cruise.  And along the way, let’s not forget to throw a life preserver to the souls we see in the water, in danger of being forever swept away.  Because our Savior is the Savior of all. Amen.