Lectionary Reflection — 24 June 2018
35-38 Late that day he said to them, “Let’s go across to the other side.” They took him in the boat as he was. Other boats came along. A huge storm came up. Waves poured into the boat, threatening to sink it. And Jesus was in the stern, head on a pillow, sleeping! They roused him, saying, “Teacher, is it nothing to you that we’re going down?”
39-40 Awake now, he told the wind to pipe down and said to the sea, “Quiet! Settle down!” The wind ran out of breath; the sea became smooth as glass. Jesus reprimanded the disciples: “Why are you such cowards? Don’t you have any faith at all?”
41 They were in absolute awe, staggered. “Who is this, anyway?” they asked. “Wind and sea at his beck and call!”
In our Gospel Lesson today, some people see a story about Jesus’ divinity. The disciples had already witnessed Jesus’ power over diseases and demons (Mark 1-3) but now he revealed his power over the elements. The text even says the disciples asked, “Who is this, anyway? Even the wind and sea are at his beck and call!” Since God’s the only one with power over creation, this passage must be about Jesus’ divinity.
Right?
Well … not necessarily.
Some of the prophets of old had power over the elements2 and we wouldn’t ascribe divinity to them, would we? No. At the very least, then, Jesus would be seen as a prophet in a long history of prophets empowered by Yahweh to accomplish fantastic things.
But …
What if this story is about something else? What if it’s a story about what the Realm of God looks like when it’s fully present? As we saw last week, the stories Jesus told about the Realm of God are not about “going to heaven” when one dies; they’re about God’s Realm coming fully “on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6.10; cf. Revelation 21). Those stories are about God’s Realm growing and increasing within our world, within creation itself. And those stories appear right before this story.
Like so many people, I used to look at the stories Jesus’ told to explain his actions. But, I believe it was Tom Wright who said something like, “Look at Jesus’ actions to explain the stories he tells.” If Jesus just told a bunch of stories about God’s Realm and what that might mean for our world, what action could he do that would show the reality to which his stories pointed? Well, changing the course of nature might just be such an action!
Saint Paul touched on this a little bit in his letter to the followers of Jesus in Rome. He wrote:
19 The whole creation waits breathless with anticipation for the revelation of God’s sons and daughters. 20 Creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice — it was the choice of the one who subjected it — but in the hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from slavery to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of God’s children.
Many people associate this “glorious freedom” of creation with the “new heavens and new earth” of Revelation 21 (cf. Isaiah 65.17ff; 66.22ff). And I think that’s right but not in the way some people view “new creation.”4 Some people understand the phrase “new heaven and new earth” to mean God creates a new material universe after our existing universe has been judged and destroyed. But St Paul wrote that, “if anyone’s in Christ, that person’s part of the new creation” now, not at the supposed end of the world (2 Corinthians 5.17; cf. Galatians 6.15). This means “New Creation” — the “new heaven and new earth” — is all around us.5 In other words, “new creation” is the same thing as God’s Realm.6 It’s not a separate thing that happens at the alleged end of history. As we’ve seen already, it happens in the middle of history. And when Jesus tells stories about God’s Realm, he’s telling people what New Creation should be like, will be like, is like.
So…
If the Lesson today is about God’s Realm coming fully into our world, what would that mean for us today as followers of Jesus tasked with implementing God’s Realm? For starters I think it means that we need to refocus our understanding of the Gospel on God’s Realm.
If one can say anything about Jesus with any type of certainty it’s that Jesus’ focus, his intention, was God’s Realm. As we see in the beginning of Mark’s Gospel, Jesus started his ministry by proclaiming, “Time’s up! God’s Realm is here. Change your life and believe this Good News” (Mark 1.15; adapted). We see here that the “Good News,” i.e., the Gospel, is the coming of God’s Realm. So it should come as no surprise that the foundation of Jesus’ entire ministry is God’s Realm being birthed into our realm.
Or at least it shouldn’t surprise us. But far too often that’s just the case.
If we were to walk our streets and ask people what Jesus’ ministry was about — what did Jesus come to do — the overwhelming response would be something like, “He came to save us from our sins” or “He came to die for us.” And we might even get this response from people who aren’t really “church” people.
But why is that?
It’s because our focus is on Jesus’ death, especially here in America. In other words, we’ve defined the Gospel as Jesus dying on the cross while Jesus defined the Gospel as God’s Realm coming fully in our world.
Now, let’s be clear — I’m not suggesting that Jesus’ death isn’t part of God’s Realm. Indeed, it’s a critical part. But a lot of us have made it the only piece that matters at the expense of everything else. And that’s why, when we talk about God’s Realm, a lot of us don’t really know what’s meant by that or what it means for our world.7
When Pilate asked Jesus about his realm, his kingdom, Jesus told him, “My kingdom doesn’t originate from this world. If it did, my guards would fight so that I wouldn’t have been arrested by the Jewish leaders. My kingdom isn’t from here” (John 18.36; CEB). While Jesus’ realm isn’t from here (i.e., it didn’t originate here or have the qualities of our world) it is, nevertheless, for this world. That’s the whole point.8
If we back up for a minute and return to Jesus’ proclamation we mentioned above, we’ll see that God’s Realm was being birthed somehow through the life and ministry of Jesus. “Now is the time,” he said. Not later in some other time or age. Not when it’s more convenient. Now. Right now. “Time’s up!” God’s Realm came into our world during Jesus time, the final generation of the Old Testament age. And it’s been growing ever since.
But what does that Realm look like and how can we help implement it in our world?
By looking at Jesus’ life and ministry, we can pick up on things that help us understand God’s Realm a little better. Here’s a brief list:
1. Restoration — John 11.1-45
2. Wholeness — John 4.46-54; 5.1-15; 9.1-7
3. Equality — John 4.4-42; 8.1-11
4. Celebration — John 2.1-12
What we see here is a complete restoration of everything and the celebration of it. And it’s that very thing that the story from our Lesson is telling us. As we noted, the command over the weather is not unique to Jesus so what could this story be about? I think it’s about the internal storm that rages within the human condition and its impact on creation.
One of my favorite stories of all time is the trilogy, The Song of Albion, by Stephen Lawhead. And when I say it’s one of my favorite stories, I mean that I read it almost annually.
The story’s about Lewis Gillies, an American student at Oxford doing his graduate work in the Celtic Studies program, and his roomate and friend Simon Rawnson, who was born to English privilege. Lawhead weaves a tale that stretches from our world into the Celtic Otherworld. The ancient Celts believed that our world and the Otherworld are interwoven, each dependent on the other. In this trilogy the balance is disturbed — a breach has opened between the worlds and cosmic catastrophe threatens.
I think Lawhead touches on something here that a lot of us miss. Not that I think there’s upheaval in “heaven” — but that there’s an disruption in the human soul and that spills over into our world, into creation itself. And I think it’s what the Lesson is about on a higher level.
We can just look at our world around us and know that some things are out of control. People who are fleeing violent countries and seeking asylum in our own country are having their children taken from them by greedy and abusive people who are holding the children hostage until they get what they want.
We have countries who are destroying our planet for profit. We have corporations paying their CEOs and upper management ungodly amounts of money while the workers are having to make use of assistance programs just to survive.
The list goes on and on.
And all of it, every single bit of it, can be traced down to the soul. People are soul sick and their actions are showing us their addicted selves.
Our Lesson today shows us that Christ can come, speak to our storms, and calm our souls. And as our souls calm down, and peace returns, that peace will spill out onto those around us, onto creation itself.
But it all starts with the calming of the storm raging soul. The vocation of followers of Jesus today is to speak — not to our natural world — but to the storms of the soul. It is from there that God’s Realm will break open and bring peace and balance to people. And once that balance returns, creation will be brought to its glorious freedom.
What about your, dear reader? Is there a storm raging within your soul? Is Jesus asleep in the boat? Only Jesus can speak to those storms and bring peace. But it’s not a one-time fix. I’m sorry but that’s not the way life works. If your soul is calm now, know that there will be other storms, storms that spring up out of nowhere, and only Christ can calm them. I know it sounds cheap and silly, but it’s true. It won’t happen all at once. It might take years before the storms calm down, but they will. Christ will come, speak to the storm, and bring calm and balance to your soul.
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In the Love of the Three in One,
Br. Jack+, LC
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1. Scripture quotations marked (MSG) taken from The Message. Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.
2. The most famous, of course, is Elijah. See 1 Kings 17; cf. Luke 4.27; James 5.17
3. Scripture quotations marked (CEB) are taken from The Common English Bible. Copyright © 2011 by Common English Bible.
4. As we briefly saw last week, the fact that Revelation is the last book of the Bible helps create the idea that it’s about the “end of the world.” For a more biblical and historical view of the “end times,” please see my series, New Testament Eschatology.
5. And it’s precisely because of this passage from Paul that causes some people to separate these two things. That is, they see that “new creation” is not the same thing as “new heaven and new earth.” “New creation,” they estimate, refers to people being “saved” from this world and going to “heaven” when they die. “Heaven,” then, just becomes a shortened version of “new heaven and new earth.” So in this view, “new creation” means “being saved” and “new heaven and new earth” means “heaven.” But that’s hardly the case. If “new heaven and new earth” is not a “new creation,” I’m not really sure what is!
7. To be fair, people in Jesus’ day misunderstood God’s Realm, too. When they heard that phrase, they were thinking of a realm very similar to David or Solomon’s realm in the glory days of Israel. We see this misunderstanding in several passages, e.g., Matthew 20:20-28; Luke 17.20-21; John 6.14-15; 18:33-36; and Acts 1.6-8.
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