SLEEPING IN THE BOAT

Mark 4:35-41
On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was.

Other boats were with him.  A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped.  But he was in the stern, asleep on a cushion, and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”  And waking up, he rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Be silent! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm.

He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”  And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, “Who then is this man, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

Recently we have been talking about scripture – where it comes from, who’s written what – and on and on. 

Our reading for today is one of the many stories about Jesus that we find in the four gospels.  In fact, if we stop and think about it, all that the know about Jesus comes from these stories.  There is no historical record – just stories.  This particular story can be found in three of the gospels. 

The base, the core of the story is pretty much the same in all three.  It’s the part that comes just before that core, and the parts that come after that teach us the most about Jesus, and who he is as a person.  A real person -- and what we learn here in this story is that Jesus, like every one of us at one point or another is worn out and in dire need of a rest. 

Driven by his “calling” from God as well as his own love for all of us, he has been dealing with a lot of people and their needs in the past few days.  This particular day has been pretty much non-stop.  The three gospels vary in these “before” stories but all three show us a busy and often besieged Jesus.  He may be God’s Son, the Chosen one, but he is also a human being, and just like any of us he needs a couple of hours away from all the demands – he needs a nap, at least, if not a good night’s sleep.

In his book, Peculiar Treasures, Frederick Buechner gives us a list of people and events Jesus has dealt with just in this one day alone, taken from both Matthew’s gospel and Mark’s:

• People had been flocking up to Jesus the way they always seemed to when word got around that he was in the neighborhood.  A Roman officer came up to ask if he would do something for a paralyzed servant back home, and Jesus said he'd go have a look at him.  When the officer said he hated to take that much of his time and asked if he couldn't just do something from right there where they were standing, Jesus was so impressed by the way the man trusted him that he told him he'd see to it that what he trusted would happen, would happen indeed, and when the officer got home, he found his servant up and around again.  Later on, when Jesus dropped in at Peter's house, he found Peter's mother-in-law in bed with a fever, and all he did that time was touch the old lady's hand, but that turned out to be all it took.
• A scribe showed up and in a burst of enthusiasm said he was all set to follow him any place he went, to which Jesus answered, "Foxes have holes, and birds have nests, but if you stick with me, you'll find yourself out in the cold" (Matthew 8:20).  One of the disciples asked for a few days off to attend his father's funeral, and Jesus said, "Look, you've got to follow me.  No time for funerals.” (Matthew 8:22).
• When he saw a big crowd approaching, he figured he didn't have enough steam left to do much for them that day, so he went and climbed into a boat for a few hours' peace, only to find that the disciples were hot on his heels and wanted to go along too. So he took them.  Then he lay down in the stern of the boat with a pillow under his head, and went to sleep.

He went to sleep ... for a few hours at least, only to be awakened by his panicking followers, crying that they were drowning, and Jesus, quite possibly still sleep deprived and sounding just a little bit cranky, snaps at the wind and the water to “Be silent!  Be still!” and then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm, leaving even those who thought they knew him best to say, “Who then is this man, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”
 
It isn’t the heavenly theology that draws us to Jesus – it’s the stories that show us his humanity.  Hey, he gets tired and sometimes cranky just like us . . . 

His calling is to touch as many hurting, frightened people as he can – to teach us how loved we are – to welcome everyone into God’s family and he mostly does it one human at a time.  And we see him and welcome him as someone like us who meets us where we are -- wherever that is -- someone who  understands us.

We think therefore that we understand him but we are still so often brought up short by the question, “Who then is this man, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”   We have so very much yet to learn.