Peace, Be Still!

Homily for June 23, 2024
The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
Mark 4:35-41

Alice Munro, the recently-deceased Canadian short story author,once wrote:

A story is not like a road to follow… it’s more like a house.  You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the rooms and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside is altered by being viewed from these windows.  And you, the visitor, the reader, are altered as well by being in this enclosed space, whether it is ample and easy or full of crooked turns, or sparsely or opulently furnished.  You can go back again and again, and the house, the story, always contains more than you saw the last time.  It also has a sturdy sense of itself of being built out of its own necessity, not just to shelter or beguile you. – From Selected Stories

Munro might well have been writing about St. Mark’s Gospel, from whom we just heard.  Unlike Luke, the middle ten chapters of whose Gospel area road (Jesus’ journey up to Jerusalem (9:51-19:44)), [unlike Luke,] Mark’s Gospel is more like a house, where – at least for the first nine chapters – we go inside Galilee and stay there for a while.  Unlike Matthew, whose Gospel has a somewhat defensive posture to the outside world, a world that is not so much to be altered as it is to be endured(e.g., Matt 24:9-14), [unlike Matthew], Mark in his Gospel does believe that “the world outside is altered by being viewed from these windows” of Jesus, who in Mark casts out demons and proclaims “the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near” (Mk 1:15).  And unlike Luke, who writes with an eye to what might hold the readers’ attention, Mark “has a sturdy sense of [his Gospel] being built out of its own necessity, [and] not… to shelter or beguile you.”  

“A story is not like a road to follow… it’s more like a house.”  The first nine chapters of Mark’s Gospel are not like a road to follow but more like a house in which we go inside and stay a while.  These nine chapters are set in Galilee, with the Sea of Galilee at their center.  And at this center, along the shores of the Sea of Galilee, Jesus:  calls the first disciples (1:16-20), begins his public ministry (1:21), makes his home (2:1),heals the sick (e.g., 2:1-12; 6:53-56), casts out demons (e.g., 3:11), teaches the crowds (2:13; 3:9), argues with the Pharisees (3:22ff), tells parables(e.g., 4:1ff), feeds the five thousand (6:30ff), walks on water (6:45ff)…. The entirety of the first nine chapters of St. Mark’s Gospel is not so much a road to follow as it is a house in which we the readers go inside Galilee and with Jesus stay there for a while.  

As we stay with Jesus in this “house,” and as we – to paraphrase Munro – [as we] wander back and forth and settle where we like and discover how the rooms and corridors relate to each other, we discover that, with Jesus, “the world outside is altered by being viewed from these windows.”

Take today’s Gospel lesson, for example.  In today’s Gospel lesson – which, by the way,coming at the end of Mark chapter 4 is in the very center of the “house” of these first nine chapters – [in today’s Gospel lesson,] whereas the other stories in these chapters are centered around the lake, today’s story takes place on the lake.  Both in the text and geographically,today’s story is in the heart of the “house.” As the disciples are looking at the view from the “windows,” as it were,of their boat – looking without Jesus, who is asleep – they believe themselves to be perishing:

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 the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”

As soon as the disciples wake Jesus, the disciples’ view changes:

He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm… And they were filled with great awe…

Looking out the windows without Jesus, while he is asleep, the disciples believe they are perishing.  But viewing the world outside with Jesus, after they wake him – “there was a dead calm,” Mark writes – the world is altered.

How often do we, like the disciples, when we look to the world outside without Jesus believe ourselves to be perishing?  Storms come, waves beat into our boat, we are already being swamped and feel overwhelmed.  But when we wake him – “Teacher,” said the disciples, “do you not care that we are perishing?” – [when we wake him,] he rises and rebukes the wind and says to the sea, “Peace!  Be still!” and the wind ceases and the waves become calm.  Looking at the world outside with Jesus, the world is altered.  

And we, “the visitor, the reader, are altered as well” by being in this space with Jesus:

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

With Jesus in our “house” – when we wake him from where he sleeps in the stern – Jesus can rebuke the winds and say to the sea, “Peace!  Be Still!!” and not only in the world outside but also in the world within do the winds cease and the waves calm.  When in a storm, if we call on Jesus and wake him – he is right there asleep in the stern; why not wake him? –[if we call on Jesus and wake him], Jesus offers peace and stillness no matter how strong the storm.  

And if you are skeptical, and if today’s Gospel lesson and Jesus’ power seems to you to be merely a story, allow me remind you of Alice Munro’s words:  “You can go back again and again,”she writes, “and the house, the story, always contains more than you saw the last time.”  If you are skeptical about this story and Jesus’ power, maybe go back to this lesson from Mark chapter 4 and look again, for “the story always contains more than you saw the last time.”  Perhaps this time you will find Jesus asleep the stern, waiting to be awakened.  By you, so that you may know his power and peace.

I will leave us with a quote from Frederick Buechner:

Christ sleeps in the deepest selves of all of us, and whatever we do in whatever time we have left, wherever we go, may we in whatever way we can call on him as the fishermen did in their boat to come awake within us and to give us courage, to give us hope, to show us, each one, our way.  May he be with us especially when the winds go mad and the waves run wild, as they will for all of us before we're done, so that even in their midst we may find peace...we may find Christ.– from Secrets in the Dark

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