+ In the Name of Jesus +
Your Truly Human, Truly Divine, All-Powerful Savior Does Care.
Sermon on Mark 4:35–41
For Pentecost 5 (Proper 7, B)
June 23, 2024

Grace and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, dear brothers and sisters.

  1. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are not really biographies—the way biographies are usually written. I think of Carl Sandburg’s Lincoln, or Roland Bainton’s biography of Martin Luther, Here I Stand. Those books are full of background. “This is what life was like on the Kentucky frontier in 1809, and this is what Abe Lincoln came from.” “This is what medieval life was like, and why Luther was drawn to the monastery.” The gospels have almost no background. Little explanation. Just eyewitness accounts of Jesus, his teaching, his miracles. The gospels are their own genre or type of writing—the good news about Jesus, who he is, and what he came to do.
  2. Today’s gospel shows us the person of Jesus—it shows us his two natures—but as one Savior Christ, he cares and helps. In the Nicene Creed we confess that Jesus is “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God…” and that he “was born of the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary and became truly human.” We see both natures very clearly—and the way they are displayed teaches us much about our Savior. It was a long day. Jesus was teaching. Mark 4 records four parables, taught to the crowds. Now it’s late in the day, six, maybe seven in the evening, and Jesus wants to retreat from the crowd and go to the other side of the lake in a boat. The disciples prepare the boat, set sail, and within a few minutes, Jesus falls asleep. Maybe you’ve experienced that, late in the afternoon or early in the evening, you sit down in your favorite chair or on the couch, and then you catch yourself—“Oh, I dozed off for a few minutes.” Jesus knows that part of the human experience—feeling tired after a days work. And he knows so much more of the human experience. Does he understand hardships? Yes he does—the pharisees plotting against him, trying to discredit him when he’s doing his best. Does he understand pain? Yes he does—with a scourge tearing his back, spikes driven through his hands and feet, yes he knows pain. Does he understand the inner pain when family and friends turn their backs—people you trusted fail you? Yes, he knew that very well, too. That truly human nature of Jesus shows us that Jesus knows and understands us because he fully experienced human life. And this Savior cares about you in your troubles, losses, and pain.
  3. Jesus true human nature is a great comfort to us for another reason. There’s a passage—I remember it because I memorized it for a children’s Christmas program long ago. “When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:3-5 ESV). Jesus became human so that the commandments would apply to him, too—and he did that so he could trade places with us. He lived a life of perfect obedience, and he credits that righteousness to you and me. As the Lamb of God he took our sins—he also gave us the status of God’s children. He gave us all of what was his. That is something to comfort and strengthen us, too. In his human nature, Jesus lived and died for us to make us his own.
  4. In catechism class we teach about Jesus’ humiliation and exaltation. For years, pastors have drawn steps on chalkboards and whiteboards as they taught the lines of the Apostles’ Creed. Step by step, Jesus descended into helplessness as he suffered and then rose to glory with his resurrection, ascension, and power. I still teach it this way—yet I’ve come to understand Jesus’ humiliation in a little different way—like the volume knob on a radio. Jesus turned down the display of the divine most of the time. One of our Christmas hymns says “He conceals for sinners’ sake his majesty as God” (CW 355:4). If Jesus displayed his glory at all times, the disciples would be afraid of him. So he turned the glory down. That’s what was happening when he fell asleep in the back of the boat. He was showing no divine power or might at all.
  5. Then the disciples woke him up. And how they woke him up! “Lord, don’t you care if we drown?”  You can read some things between the lines there, can’t you. “How can you sleep at a time like this?” And perhaps even this: “See how we are scrambling in this storm, bailing the water out of the boat, trying to secure the sails, holding on for dear life! Wake up and panic with us!” I’m not sure what they expected Jesus to do. I know they didn’t expect Jesus to do what he did, because that frightened them too.
  6. Jesus turns that knob up. He displays his glory as “true God from true God.” I like the way our Christian artists portray this. Jesus goes from sleeping in the back of the boat to standing in the front of the boat—putting out his hands, and saying “Peace! Be still!” and then it is completely calm. Really, for Jesus this is a very small thing. In John chapter 1 we read the basis of “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God.” “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him everything was made, … The word became flesh and dwelled among us” (John 1:1-2, 14). If Jesus was that voice of God saying, “Let there be…,” creating and ordering the universe simply by speaking, stilling a storm was a very small thing for him. And he did it… for his disciples. They didn’t ask him directly did they? It was more of an accusation. “Lord, don’t you care?” “Yes, I do care. Let me turn this display of glory up. Here’s what I can do for  you.” Instead of displaying his glory with thunder or lighting or the roar of the sea, he displays his glory with complete peace and calm.
  7. When the sea is calm, Jesus asks his disciples two questions—but the questions tell us he knows.  “Why are you so afraid? Do you still lack faith?”  He asks because he knows their hearts. He also could have gathered it from their question, “Teacher, don’ you care that we are about to drown?” They were afraid. They were probably expecting Jesus to grab a bucket and bail out the boat, not to put his hands out and still the storm. Psychologists tell us that fear is supposed to be a safety mechanism. That’s why you get the willies when you are on the ledge of a cliff or near the window of a high building. Fear keeps you away from the edge and keeps you safe. The problem is fear when we don’t need to be afraid. Fear when there is nothing to fear. For those disciples—fear on the sea when the Maker of the sea is with you in the boat, quiet, calm, even sleeping himself. “Why are you so afraid?” Jesus says also to you and me. You and I have his promise, too. “Surely I am with you always until the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20b). In his time, he will act. Sometimes he is waiting for us to ask. Sometimes he’s waiting for us to ask in faith—instead of “Lord, don’t you care…” asking, “Lord, have mercy! Lord, please help!” Because he is “true God from true God,” nothing is beyond his power. When we must go through awful experiences, it is because he has a better purpose for it. What awful things did he go through—“for us and for our salvation”?  He knows our hardships, heartaches and heartbreaks from his own experience. He knows our troubles from his knowledge of all things as God. “He who knows / all my woes / knows how best to end them” (CW 831:2). Sometimes his resolutions are quick and sudden—faster than you could have imagined—filling you with awe. Yes. He does care. Your truly human, truly divine, all-powerful Savior does care.

Amen.

© 2024 Pastor Paul C. Stratman St. Stephen’s Ev. Lutheran Church, Beaver Dam WI http://www.saintstephen.org http://pastorstratman.wordpress.com http://ststephenspulpit.wordpress.com pcstratman@gmail.com

 

Mark 4:35–41

On that day, when evening came, Jesus said to them, “Let’s go over to the other side.” 36After leaving the crowd behind, the disciples took him along in the boat, just as he was. Other small boats also followed him. 37A great windstorm arose, and the waves were splashing into the boat, so that the boat was quickly filling up. 38Jesus himself was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. They woke him and said, “Teacher, don’t you care that we are about to drown?”

39Then he got up, rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” The wind stopped, and there was a great calm. 40He said to them, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still lack faith?”

41They were filled with awe and said to one another, “Who then is this? Even the wind and the sea obey him!”