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 Rowing against an Adverse Wind |
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23 July 2006 A couple of weeks ago, some of us lucky enough to be at Dianne and Kasey Kaseman's home for the choir party enjoyed the opportunity to kayak on the lake by their property. It was a perfect day for it. Warm, but not the heat we've seen most recently. An occasional faint breeze. Water almost glass smooth. We could paddle into one of the coves and take our chances with snapping turtles, beaver, and waterfowl. Being swamped by stormy seas or even having to fight a strong wind was a remote possibility at best. It was as close to idyllic as I could imagine. Certainly it was a far cry from the adverse seas that confront the now-exhausted disciples of today's gospel. Today's story is focused especially on Jesus' disciples - those who have made the life-choice to be his followers. The crowds have been sent home, almost as if the whole story is bracketed so that we will pay it special attention. Jesus' disciples have every right to be tired. In Mark's telling, they have just returned from their assigned mission of proclamation and teaching and healing, the mission in which they are sent out two by twoBsort of a reverse Noah's ark. Thinking they will have a chance for a little R&R, they join Jesus and head for the hills. But the crowds follow them, and instead of rest for the weary, they don't have so much as five minutes to eat. Just the reverse - Jesus instructs them to pull off a feeding that would fluster even Martha Stewart: five thousand men on five loaves and two fishes. The leftovers fill twelve baskets. Then Jesus immediately gives the disciples another instruction: get into the boat and cross the sea to Bethsaida while he dismisses the crowd and goes to the mountain to pray. They may have been sent on missions of teaching and healing without Jesus, but this is the first time they have crossed the sea on their own. In our era of routine air and space travel, crossing the sea - especially a body like a small lake - is ho-hum. But 'the sea' carries entirely different freight in Jewish tradition. By God's power, Moses controls its boundaries so that the Hebrew people can escape Pharoah's army. Just the word, 'sea,' conjures up a mysterious and threatening force opposed to God. So when our ancestors in faith want to emphasize God's power and authority, they tell of divine mastery over the waters.[1,68] Jesus has already claimed this authority by stilling the storm on a previous voyage. But on this trip, he's still on shore, dismissing the crowds, and praying. He isn't present to calm the elements. Suffice it to say, being a disciple is not always an easy progression of faith and witness. Discipleship is a process of shattering the limitations by which we define our existence. And like those first disciples, our progress may seem erratic and incremental. As Anne Lamott describes it, Acoming to faith did not start with a leap but rather a series of staggers from what seemed like one safe place to another. Like lily pads, round and green, these places summoned and then held me up while I grew. Each prepared me for the next leaf on which I would land, and in this way I moved across the swamp of doubt and fear. When I look back at some of these early resting places...I can see how flimsy and indirect a path they made. Yet each step brought me closer to the verdant pad of faith on which I somehow stay afloat today."[2,3] Last Wednesday afternoon, seven friends and members of our church drove to Morgantown, West Virginia, for UCCSV's annual ministry with Habitat for Humanity in Mon County. On Thursday, they went to the site where seven homes in a row stand in various stages of completion. Four of them are now occupied - and the proud owner of the fourth home had hugs and warm remembrances for several of UCCSV's Habitat veterans. Thursday was the hottest day our group worked. I believe the combined effect of heat and humidity here was over 100, and I don't think it was so much as a degree cooler there. Their work was hard manual labor, digging a ditch through rock and clay to set the forms for a concrete curb, and when even Pam Van Prooyen and Jim Russ run out of steam, you know it was exhausting! Still, as Pam noted, it was like the old Sunday school song, "inch by inch, row by row," that garden of curb forms began to grow...right along with the increasingly finished exterior and interior of the sixth home. This doesn't mean that there weren't mistakes. The curb form crew put one set of forms in backwards and had to re-do a serious piece of work. Some of the indoor crew had done a neat job of caulking where there was supposed to be spackle, and had to re-do that part of their careful work. But like the disciples rowing toward Bethsaida, they made steady progress. Of course, steady progress doesn't mean you don't come to the point of exhaustion. Rowing against adverse winds is exhausting. But it doesn't mean we can't do what we set out to do. We don't know for sure what Mark is trying to suggest with Jesus heading out toward the disciples with the odd little phrase, intending to pass them by. Perhaps Mark is suggesting that Jesus has confidence in their efforts, but is near at hand if needed. That in spite of their difficulties, he doesn't want to interfere, that he is anxious - after all, they are in training for a future without him - but he is not paternalistic[3,129]. The disciples already have taken first steps in the direction of that future. They have just returned from their own paired missions of proclamation and teaching and healing. They have just left the scene of the feeding of multitudes. They are learning to walk the talk. The disciples may be somewhat calmer—they no longer act as though they are seeing a ghost—but they are unsettled. They recognize that God’s capabilities surpass their wildest imagination. If it is possible to feed the multitudes, it is equally possible to trample the waves of the sea. If it is possible to trample the waves of the sea, it is equally possible to feed the multitudes. The limitations they’d understood even for God no longer apply. Perhaps it is because the disciples still limit God’s capabilities – however unconsciously – that they end up in Gennesaret rather than Bethsaida. But you know what? Jesus is still present with them. Jesus is still able to bring healing and restoration. Jesus is still able to bring God’s realm into being among the poor and the sick.[3,130] Thanks be to God! ***** [1] Borg, Marcus J., Jesus: A New Vision, Harper & Row, 81987. |