Fourth Sunday in Epiphany 2011

Fourth Sunday in Epiphany
1/30/11
Matthew 8:23-27
Bror Erickson



[23] And when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him. [24] And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but he was asleep. [25] And they went and woke him, saying, "Save us, Lord; we are perishing." [26] And he said to them, "Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?" Then he rose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. [27] And the men marveled, saying, "What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?" Matthew 8:23-27 (ESV)

“Save us, Lord; we are perishing.” Most of us have prayed something similar at one time or another as we have one of those near death experiences, a car accident, or natural disaster of one sort or another. The disciples are no different. They fear for their lives. Trying to ride the storm out on a small boat on the sea of Galilee, which is really just a huge mountain lake, fed by snow fall from the Golan Heights. The lake is given to rough storms as the winds crash like an avalanche onto the water from the snow capped peaks. These winds stir the lake up like a witch standing over a boiling cauldron causing enough turmoil to toss and capsize any small fishing boat. And there Jesus is asleep. Ever been on a boat in a good storm? It can be nerve racking. In the early kick about days of my youth I booked passage on a ferry going from Marienheim Åland to Stockholm Sweden. Now these are normally good sized boats, this one wasn’t the largest of them, but large enough. We were caught in a storm the likes of which had sunk an Estonian Ferry just that last year in the same waters. I remember the storm being so violent I watched people fall upstairs as they were trying to get out from underneath the bowels of the boat. I imagine the disciples were having a worse time of it, and it is beyond me how anybody sleeps on a boat in such a storm. Jonah managed it once.
Tired. How tired do you have to be to sleep in such a mess? And this is the man they wake up to save them? Prayer to God is something we can understand. But waking a man so weak that he sleeps through the storm, what can he do? Yet they wake him up, the man sleeping on the boat, saying “Save us, Lord; we are perishing?”
The story is short. Jesus rebukes them for a lack of faith, and calms the storm. Why are you afraid he says. It’s funny, so often we claim we have no fear of death. Yet, when we are faced with it we are greeted with fear. Adrenaline begins pumping as we meet the threat. Perhaps sorrow seeps in, and we begin to wonder what life is about as we see a loved one go. Death robs meaning from life, or at least it has the potential to do so. And so it tends to add a healthy amount of fear to life. It’s only natural then that the disciples would fear for their lives. People today try to convince themselves that death is natural. But we know that it isn’t. Deep down we know even naturally, without the revealed word of God, that death is the result of judgment for sin. It isn’t natural, it isn’t supposed to happen.
But you see. Jesus isn’t afraid and doesn’t think his disciples should be either. They are after all with him, and if he can save them from a storm while awake, then they ought to know the storm has no power over them while he is asleep. And if he can’t do anything about it, why wake him? But this man so weak, so exhausted that he sleeps through the storm being tossed about on the boat, wakes up and rebukes the wind and the sea. And the storm stops!
Who has ever heard of the forces of nature answering to a man? That is the question with which the disciples marvel. And that is the beauty of this story! It shows so clearly who Jesus is! He is not only a man, who gets weak like us, tires out and becomes exhausted, a man who needs to take breaks and sleep, eat and drink. A man, fully man, shown in the weaknesses with which we ourselves suffer. But here he shows that he is also God. Fully God, Fully man. And therefore he can stop the storm. The wind and the sea listen to him! As the great Te Deum says, the sea is his for he made it. It listens to him.
But then not only does this man Jesus put an end to this temporal tempest plaguing the disciples. He comes to calm the existential angst of the soul experienced in the face of sin and death. He comes to calm the fear we have of death, the fear caused by sin. And this he does as a man who is truly man, and truly God. This is why it is so necessary, brothers and sisters, that we recognize Jesus is God. This is what was meant by the early Christians when they would say, Jesus is Lord. They confessed that Jesus is God. Because if he is not the God that created the world then he cannot do what he did. This is why we say that our Mormon brothers are not Christian. They cannot confess this with us, that Jesus Christ is Lord. They refuse to say that He is God, but that he became a god and showed us how we might do the same. But you cannot become God. God can become man, But God is eternal, so man cannot become God. We have a beginning and God does not. But being God, and being man. He is able to die as man for our sins, and the infinite value of the divine blood of Jesus is able to cover and forgive all our sins. So that whoever believes in him, will not perish but have eternal life! Though we die, we do not perish. We do not perish because God has died in our place to forgive our sins, to give us life. To give us heaven. And this storm he calms when he dies on the cross, when Jesus picks up his cross for us.
Now the peace of God that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.