After many weeks journeying in the gospel according to John, we have returned to the gospel of Mark — the gospel with which we spend a lot of time this year. But we have jumped over a lot of action since we last visited the gospel. Check out the first four chapters to catch up.
The story that forms this morning’s gospel reading opens up the second major section of Mark’s gospel, Jesus’ ministry in Galilee. This section (which begins in chapter 4, verse 35 and goes to chapter 8.21) opens and closes with a boat trip. Though Mark might use language sparingly, he seems to repeat himself in this section of the gospel by narrating two perilous crossings of the Sea of Galilee, and two feedings of the hungry masses in the wilderness. Besides, Jesus’ healings are neatly organised in pairs of two Jews and two Gentiles. What Mark is doing, beneath the seeming redundancy, actually is narrating stories of healing, mission and proclamation in both Jewish and Gentile worlds.
In Mark’s gospel, Jesus asks the disciples nine times to go to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. We tend to think of the sea as a gentle and romantic place but for Mark, the sea is a metaphor for the demonic and apocalyptic chaos that confronts Jesus, terrorises his disciples and threatens the future of his mission. Perhaps Mark is tapping into the universal myth of the hero conquering chaos, represented by the sea, characterised by the Babylonian story of the god Marduk who slays the sea dragon Tiamat.
I think, too, we don’t really understand just what the power of the sea is. I have been thinking a lot about the unforgiving nature of the sea in the weeks following the Air France crash off the coast of Brazil and how we probably will never know what happened because the sea has swallowed up most of the evidence. I think of the sea for its vastness and mysteriousness, which I have seen from the safety of an ocean liner. And I think of the sea as a terrifying and merciless force as described by a woman who was the first woman to row alone across the Atlantic twice (once unsuccessfully and once successfully) in a 23-foot long boat. She got caught up in two hurricanes that turned her little vessel every which way, pitch-poled and capsised, to the point that she nearly died. So the sea is not just a metaphorical place of harshness but a real one.
For Mark, the sea is where discipleship is tested and where life always hangs in the balance. It also serves as a boundary between Jews and Gentiles. When Jesus and the disciples move to the other side of the sea, they move beyond the safe harbour of all the teachings they know to an unknown world. When Jesus moves from one side of the sea to the other, he is also breaking down the barriers that divide humanity from itself.
Jesus teaches the disciples in parables and then suggests they cross the sea — over into Gentile territory. As they push off from the shore, the sea churns into a dangerous squall. All that Jesus has taught the disciples about trust is lost as they panic. If we understand the sea as representing the forces of evil, then it makes sense why Jesus faults his disciples for their thinking that evil is stronger than he. But for the fearful disciples, they cannot see how Jesus, or God, could sleep through such a storm. Jesus must rebuke the sea, cast out its demonic forces. As is so often the case in Mark’s gospel, the outsiders understand who Jesus is, whereas the insiders, his disciples, do not.
But not only the sea tests the disciples’ faith: on the other side of the sea lies the geographic heart of Galilee, Gentile territory, and most of all, that which is alien, foreign and dangerous. Every single time he asks them to cross over, something powerful and frightening happens. They don’t want to go over there — eventually they clue in that their lives will be changed in ways they cannot control or anticipate. And why should they go over there? That side is full of strangers.
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Have you ever experienced a moment of terror or deep fear, that type of moment when your stomach sinks, when you tremble, and after the danger has passed, you can only shake your head at how close a call you had? It can be having a near accident while driving, hitting the ‘send’ button for a personal email that goes out before you wanted it to or to an entire list-serve rather than the individual you’d intended to receive it; nearly falling… any sort of near-miss event in life. There’s another sort of fear, one that can be deeper, one that is more, ‘What have I gotten myself into and how am I going to get out of it?’
Probably one of the most vivid moments of quiet but very heightened anxiety I had happened in 1987, flying into Guatemala City on the last flight of the day, a day after I was supposed to arrive. I was going to be met by relatives of someone I knew up in the states but I had never met them before. I worried whether they’d gotten any communication from the airline that my previous flight from Panamá had been overbooked…. And so I arrived in a foreign airport, without any local currency late at night. Little by little everyone else left until the only people left were the army guards with their machine guns, two car rental agents and myself. I did ask myself as I waited with mounting fear, why did I do this to myself, how I was going to get myself out of this jam since I didn’t have any money and there was no way to get any and what was I doing in a country that had barely stopped its civil war? The story turned out fine—but for forty-five minutes I was pretty worried.
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Fear is part of the human condition—it’s a survival instinct that protects us but it can also be an emotion that paralyses us. Fear can also be used by people in power or those who are afraid themselves as a way of controlling others.
Fear-mongers are not limited to politics — they function well within our church, too. Some people fear and threaten others that The Episcopal Church and Anglican Communion facing schism and will shatter after this summer’s General Convention. I could have written these words three years ago, six years ago, nine years ago, twelve years ago. Somehow that fear doesn’t go away.
These threats were brought forth 33 years ago when the canon permitting the ordination of women to the priesthood passed at General Convention; they reappeared when the Diocese of Massachusetts elected Barbara Harris to be their bishop suffragen in 1988. They appear again and again with change.
I am not afraid of schism in the church. I am more concerned that the church will not cross over to the other side of the lake, and that the church will not continue to break down the barriers that classify people into better or lesser children of God. My concern is that we will lose sight of the fact that Jesus, not the church, is the boat in which we sail, that Jesus is the source of our strength and unity. Will the church have the courage to keep crossing the lake? And will we have the courage to let go of our fears and lay our heads on Jesus’ chest, find in him a resting place and be glad [Hymn 692]?
Pray for your bishop, for this Diocese of Vermont, its General Convention deputies and this Episcopal Church as it prepares for its General Convention in two weeks.
And whether it is someone heading off to General Convention, or those staying behind in the local congregation, God provides for us. As nourishment for the wild boat ride that takes us across stormy seas to unknown places and people, God gives us the bread of heaven and the cup of salvation. Come, join in the eucharistic feast, and then set sail, knowing that Christ dwells in us, fortifying us, quenching our fears and setting us free to find Christ in one another.
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