Saint Margaret
Anglican Church
Budapest, Hungary
Job 38:1-11; Psalm 107:1-3, 23-32; 2 Corinthians
6:1-13; Mark 4:35-41
Who then is this…?
Climate change and the devastation it brings in its
wake is much in the news these days.
Still, there is not much, if anything, in the Gospel
accounts of the life of Jesus about climate change.
In fact, the weather is hardly mentioned at all. An
exception to this is clearly our account this
morning from the Gospel of Mark, the well-known story of our Lord calming a storm on the
Sea of Galilee, a great freshwater lake or inland sea about a third the size of our Hungarian
Balaton, although of a different shape entirely.
The Sea of Galilee supported then, as it still does today, a sizeable population and a
significant fishing industry. And Jesus’ disciples were for the most part people who made
their livelihood from the Sea in commercial fishing. They knew the Lake and its vicissitudes
including its occasional storms and winds. Our Lord himself, though of course not a
fisherman, is often found near the shore of the Sea, first calling his disciples there, and later
teaching the people of the surrounding countryside from its shores and nearby fields.
No surprise then to find the Sea of Galilee figuring prominently in today’s narrative from the
Gospel of Mark. In some sense, I suppose we can say that the Sea is itself, along with our Lord
and the disciples, one of the major protagonists in the story. In keeping with Mark’s
straightforward style, the account is simple enough. It is evening as our Lord and his disciples
clamber aboard a boat and, at our Lord’s behest, decide to cross over to the other side of the
Sea; the other side being foreign Gentile territory; the unknown.
And since it is evening or nightfall, our Lord is not surprisingly found sleeping on a cushion of
some sort, an ancient flotation device perhaps, as a major storm arises. The disciples,
seasoned seaman or not, are understandably frightened. A storm is bad enough, I suppose,
but at night it becomes cause for even greater alarm. In their growing terror, the disciples
awaken Jesus. Our Lord promptly commands the sea and the wind to be calm, and it is so.
Jesus then nonchalantly asks the disciples, “Why are you afraid…?”And they in turn, far from being reassured by his question, are terrified further; not by the
storm but at our Lord and the significance of his presence among them. “Who then is this…?”
they ask themselves. And all this transpires, keep in mind, the evening of the same long day
upon which our Lord had earlier told the story or parable of the mustard seed and its lesson
of life and generation, a lesson of the power of God at work in the smallest things of this
world and in the life of each of us.
Who then is this, ask the disciples, as this huge storm is calmed. Good question. In fact, this
account in Mark is the first of a series or miracle stories demonstrating just who Jesus in fact
is. And in this case, the implication is that he is the master not just of his small circle of
disciples, not just the long-awaited Messiah of Israel, but the Lord of Sea and of Sky; the Lord
of the Cosmos, the Lord of the Universe. No wonder the disciples are “filled with great awe,”
as the text tells us. In fact, a better translation of these words from the original Greek would
probably be “frightened out of their wits.”
For, they get it. They now understand who it is that moments ago was fast “asleep on the
cushion.” They now see who their “teacher,” as they call him, really is. For, his words in
commanding the sea and the wind are as much lesson as is any parable or discourse. This
simple straightforward story of Mark is spectacular in the truest sense of the word; it is in
other words beyond anything which words themselves can convey; beyond anything the
disciples could have imagined.
The story is a living parable of the cosmic struggle of the material and the spiritual, of
darkness and light, and of the ultimate victory of the reign of God and of his Christ. Call it a
tale of spiritual climate change; a revelation of the inner and deeper reality of all that is; a
revelation of who Christ is. The disciples, we can be sure, will never see the world the same
again. For, it is now different. The climate has changed. Infinitely for the better.
And our Lord’s innocent-sounding question, “Why are you afraid,” becomes as much a
challenge for us as it was for the disciples long ago. Our Lord has not abandoned us anymore
than he had abandoned the disciples in their creaky boat. In fact, we are with them in that
same boat. Their evening at sea is our evening at sea. Their unknown shores are ours as
well. Their storm is our storm. But their teacher is also our teacher, the master of the
universe. And his words, spoken then to sea and wind, are addressed as much to us today.
Peace: Be still. And know who then this is,
“that even the wind and the sea obey him?"
Amen.
The Revd Canon Dr Frank Hegedűs
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