Muzzle It!

By

Reverend Litton Logan

June 25, 2006

Scripture:

Mark 4:--41 (NRSV)

³⁵On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” ³⁶And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. ³⁷A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. ³⁸But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” ³⁹He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. ⁴⁰He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” ⁴¹And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

Sermon:

          Today’s scriptures begin a section in Mark’s Gospel that focuses on a variety of miracle stories that demonstrate Jesus’ true nature and power.   These stories would have brought a lot of comfort to Mark’s readers as they anticipated the possibilities of persecution at the hands of the Roman emperor, Nero. These miracle stories would also have helped answer many of their questions about Christian suffering and persecution as the work of demonic forces. 

However, if Jesus exercised power and authority over the demonic, over sickness and disease, and over a violent storm, then Jesus could be trusted to see them through what lay a head.  Jesus, the mighty Son of God had the power in life and death to ensure their salvation.  This story of Jesus’ power over the supernatural influences in nature would have given them great courage in this time of the gathering storm clouds of imperial persecution.

          Many religious leaders across the ages have interpreted these scriptures differently for Mark’s readers and for us modern readers.  For Instance, when faced with the storms of life if we have faith in Jesus, contrary to the disciples’ example, we can persevere and be saved.  I think this is one very important dimension in understanding these scriptures, but I do not think this is all that Mark had in mind.  Such misreading or limiting scripture reminds me of the story of these three hikers:

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          One day these three guys were out hiking in a wilderness area.  They had hiked a long way on a circuitous route that would bring them back to where they had started only from a different direction.  According to their reckoning, they were not far from their trail’s end.

          Their map indicated that a small stream lay just ahead and once over the stream they were only a ¼ of a mile or so from their car.  However, arriving at the stream they found instead of a small, placid creek they found a raging, violent river that had far exceeded its banks with water from a storm higher up in the mountains.

          They needed to get across and they were too tired to backtrack their journey in what was soon to be dark.   Therefore, the first guy bowed his head, “Please God, give me the strength to cross this river."

The young man felt a surge of physical strength and energy; he jumped in the raging torrent and swam to the other side with some difficulty.

Seeing this, the second guy prayed, "Please God, give me the strength and the tools to cross this river."  Suddenly the young man felt a surge of supernatural energy and he grab a passing log, straddled it and paddled across the river.

The last guy had seen how this worked out for the other two, so he also prayed to God saying, "Please God, give me the strength and the tools, and the intelligence, to cross this river."

Miraculously, a very beautiful young woman appeared at his side, she took his map, studied it for a moment as the young man stood in amazement.  She took him by the hand lead him upstream a couple of hundred feet and then walked him across a bridge.

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          After Jesus’ encounter with John the Baptist in the opening chapter of Mark’s Gospel, only the women and the demons seem to know Jesus’ true nature. The women and the demons in Mark’s Gospel frequently all but draw the disciples a map, take their hands, and lead them in to understanding Jesus’ true nature, and they still wander off and get lost.  Moreover, if we will but read scripture instead of reading into scripture we too can come to know Jesus’ true nature in a very powerful and personal way in our lives.

          It is evening, Jesus is tired and needs to get away from the demanding crowds, so he gets into a boat along with his disciples in hopes of crossing over the Sea of Galilee and finding a place to rest and recoup.  Scriptures tell us that there were several other boats following them across the Sea of Galilee.

The Sea of Galilee lies in a shallow basin surrounded by hills. The lake is subject to sudden, furious squalls.  We get and idea about the fury of these storms by the disciples’ terror.  Remember several of the disciples were fishermen who must have weathered many a storm on this very sea.  We also sense that there may have been something supernatural, demonic, about the storm because when Jesus speaks to the storm to be quiet it does so.

When the storm blows up Jesus is asleep, resting his head on a course, leather cushion in the stern of the boat.  The disciples in their terror wake Jesus up.  In their fear, they scold Jesus:  “How can you lay there calmingly sleeping while we are about to die?”

Poor disciples, they just never quiet get it right.  They are so thick and obtuse in their understandings of Jesus’ true nature.  However, we shouldn’t be too hard on the disciples.  We Americans can get to be a bit obtuse also.

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1. Only in America...can a pizza get to your house faster than an ambulance.

2. Only in America...do drugstores make the sick walk all the way to the back of the store to get their prescriptions while healthy people can buy cigarettes at the front.

3. Only in America...do people order double cheeseburgers, large fries, and a diet Coke.

4.    Only in America...do banks leave both doors to the vault wide open and then chain the pens to the counters.

5.    Only in America…do we leave cars worth thousands of dollars in the driveway and put our useless junk in the garage.

6.    Only in America...do we use answering machines to screen calls and then have call waiting so we won't miss a call from someone we didn't want to talk to in the first place.

7.    Only in America...do we buy hot dogs in packages of ten and buns in packages of eight.

8.    Only in America...do they have drive-up ATM machines with Braille lettering.

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          Only in Marks’ Gospel, can one witness Jesus heal the sick, exorcise the demonically possessed, calm raging storms, and not know who he really is.  The demons called him The Holy One of God, others called him John the Baptist returned from the dead, others the prophet Elijah or some other great prophet. But, the disciples, see all that Jesus does, and duh, don’t have a clue to Jesus’ true nature.  Finally, Peter says that Jesus is the Christ—the Anointed One of God.  However, even in this understanding Peter, like many today, sells Jesus short.

          Jesus awakens and speaks to his disciples, “Do you still not have faith in me?”  He then calms the storm with a command, which is accurately translated as “Muzzle it!”

⁴¹ And they were filled with awe, and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even wind and sea obey him?”

          The disciples just didn’t get it.  They seemed incapable of understanding that Jesus was the Son of God, the one whom God had given such power on earth.  God had given Jesus the power to heal the sick and possessed, forgive sins, control the forces of nature, and to vouch for his followers eternally.

          What does Mark’s storm story mean for us, 2000 years later?   The same thing it meant for Mark’s church. Jesus is the mighty Son of God—the fullest possible manifestation of God in human flesh.  How is that possible? What does that mean in some grand metaphysical understanding? God only knows!

Some of the smartest people on earth have tried to explain such a thing and yet the question remains unanswered.  However, here is what we believe to the point that we can say we know:

1.    Jesus, revealed God’s power, love, and presences in human flesh.

2.    God was in Jesus in such a powerful and personal way that we can say he was truly of God--son of God, if you will.

3.    Jesus teachings and his way of being human in the world are sufficient for our salvation in this life and the one to come.  Living the way of the Christ saves us from the worst of ourselves and the worst of this world.  Living the way of the Christ gives a real hope in death.

4.    This knowledge of salvation can only be known by the human heart and mind with the aid and power of the Holy Spirit, which convinces us with knowledge beyond the capacities of our human logic.

5.    God was and is revealed in Jesus not only as a harmonizing power of the world but in particular the harmonizing power of God for you and me and all those others like us, who believe in him and call upon God in his name.

          How do we know this?  How do we know who Jesus really is?  It is by the power of God’s Holy Truth that is presence in our lives as followers of the Christ. 

          Oh, yes, we may doubt some of the theological stuff we’ve learned and heard. We may even question the “how’s” and “why’s” of our salvation. That’s okay, because the truth of the matter is when one hears the Gospel preached and gives it opportunity in one’s deepest self; one comes to a very special way of knowing that God cares, personally, for us and wants an eternal relationship with us.  This relationship is grounded in God’s love for us, and God wants us to respond in kind, not only to God, but also to one another out of our capacity to love, albeit an imperfect love.  The Spirit of Truth convinces us that God, the Creator-Sustainer of the Universe, was in some logic-defying way present in Jesus of Nazareth’s revealing all of this as the Good News of God to us. 

This truth quiets the universal, human storms of fear, anxiety, doubt, and longing for an eternal peace in the face of our contingency and the eventuality of our deaths in the deepest parts of our human minds and spirits.  

Mark wanted his readers to understand that Jesus is the powerful Son of God, not just the Messiah of Jewish expectation, the Anointed One, but in some profound and inexplicable way, God, the Holy Self, sufficiently present in the man Jesus for our salvation and the salvation of the world. 

People must listen to the Gospel of Jesus Christ partly out of an innate sense of hope and certainty.  People must listen to the Gospel with a heightened sense of perceptions.  People must perceive the truth of the Gospel from within that aspect of our consciousness that allows us to know the truth of anything.  Within this faculty lies the Holy Truth of our relationship to God.

The person who first told me the story of God’s love and grace was an African-American woman, my aunt Mattie, who could barely read and write, but had a powerful and abiding faith in God’s love for her and for the world.  She told me the story of God’s love within the living context of her demonstrated love for me.  I came to believe her love for me and to count on it, as I have came to believe in God’s love and count on it. 

How have I experienced God’s love for me?  I experience God’s love through the love of my family, friends, and other people of a kind and caring spirit.  The capacity of other people to care unselfishly to the point of self-sacrifice has sustained me through some of the darkest days a human spirit can travel. Like the writer of John’s Gospel, I can say God is love and Jesus is not only the harbinger of that knowledge but also the example-unto-death of that love.

Religious philosophies and various theological understandings may be helpful in our intellectual understandings of our relationships to God, to one another, to the world, but such understandings are not the saving, grace-filled knowledge of our salvation.   That comes to the simplest, most uneducated, unsophisticated, or religiously uninformed person through the work of God’s Spirit of Truth when it encounters an open and receptive human heart and mind.

Therefore, when the storms of life assails us, when anxieties seem about to drag us under don’t start whining, complaining, and going on about all that we don’t know and are not sure of in our religious life. Listen again to Jesus speak to those demonic forces of doubt and fear-- “Muzzle it!”  Be quiet, listen to his voice in the storm; listen to that voice that comes from within each of us.  A voice that comes in part as an analogue of our human experiences of love, and in part from a very special form of reasoning. A voice that says, “Peace, peace, be still, be quiet, where is your faith?”  “Where is your justified true belief?” (Socrates test of knowledge)

Have you ever wondered about those other boats that set sail with Jesus?  Did some of those boats and passengers turn back for lack of faith? Did some of those boats continue and subsequently sink and drown their occupants? Did some persevere and ride out the storm until Jesus quieted the winds and waves?   Scripture doesn’t tell us.

Mark’s audience would have wondered about these boats too.  They would have identified with the uncertainty of those boats and passengers.  They would have seen themselves as passengers and their leaders as steersmen in boats of doubt, the unknown, and the uncertain wondering what were they going to do---turn back, recant their faith in the face of persecution, or ride out the storm until Jesus returned and “muzzled” the demonic forces of their times. 

We’ve all seen ourselves at one time or the other as passengers in such ships of uncertainty, the unknown, and doubt.   What did we do that got us through the storms of our life? Where did we find the strength and courage to ride out the storm and come out the other side wiser and stronger in our faith?  How did we do it? For some people they would answer, “We don’t know, we just did it.”  Others would say, “Easy answer--with God’s help we muzzled our fear, our doubt, and we took courage that God was with us and would see us through and bring us out the other side.”  “We weathered the storms.”  “We may have come through spiritually or even morally battered and bruised, but we came through; faith intact and full of hope of the dawning of better days.”

Moreover, those folks’ faith seemed well placed, doesn't it?  Those who don’t know how they made it through their storms are like boats that were tossed to and fro on the sea, without a steersman, and by chance survived.  Not me, I want someone powerful, someone who is a proven steersman guiding my boat in life’s storms.