When I was far less experienced than I am now, I went sailing with someone I didn’t realize wasn’t very experienced either. We ended up in the Atlantic Ocean in the middle of a terrible storm. My buddy panicked, got seasick, and went below, ordering me to bring the boat to land.
We had to go beam to the waves, and because he didn’t have any storm sails, it was motoring all the way. Sails are important to a sailboat’s stability, so that without them, things get much more bouncy. The waves hit the side of the boat over and over, and we were frequently swamped, so much so that at some points the entire hull, including me, were under water.
I don’t know about you, but a word I hear a lot these days is “overwhelmed.” There seems to be just too much coming at us. Crazy diseases, crazy politics, crazy conspiracy theories, crazy weather, crazy economics. Too much information, so much we can’t process it all.
Anyone feel like their little boat is swamped? That the forces arrayed against us are going to sink us?
1 Samuel 17:45-16
You come to me with sword and spear and javelin; but I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This very day the LORD will deliver you into my hand…
Israel was outnumbered and outgunned. They had no warrior who was anything close to the equal of Goliath. Existential dread is what this story is about. It’s quite something in such a circumstance for David to feel the confidence he felt. This is a story of faith in the face of existential dread.
David is given a suit of armor and a proper sword, but he throws them off. Who does that? We’ve all heard the saying, “Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight,” which could be rephrased, “don’t bring a slingshot against a javelin.” A javelin is easily aimed, can go very far and very fast, and can certainly do a tremendous amount of damage if it even touches its target, whereas a little rock, while fast and deadly, has to hit a very specific target to inflict serious damage. Otherwise it will ping off armor with no effect whatsoever.
But David believes his skill with the weapon is a gift of God, and not his own capacity. He doesn’t need armor. He doesn’t need a sword. He doesn’t need a javelin. He has God.
Psalm 9:9-10
The LORD is a stronghold for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble. And those who know your name put their trust in you, for you, O LORD, have not forsaken those who seek you.
The psalm is assurance for little Israel against all those predatory nations out there. Human power and majesty may be impressive and scary, but God’s power is awe-inspiring and far greater in the long run than any human nation or ruler.
But the key here is not to trust in the kinds of human powers that those nations employ to dominate others. Israel is commanded to remain small, to eschew imperialistic colonization of other nations. “You shall not covet” and so on. But other nations defied God’s will and grew in worldly power, become oh-so-scary that Israel felt it couldn’t rely on God alone, which was their fatal error.
2 Corinthians 6:3-8
We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute.
Paul’s whole point here is to reveal himself as small and crazy and weak so that God might be revealed through him as great and wise and strong. He has suffered mightily for his gospel and continues to preach it. And despite his many issues, he has been able to manifest the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
His Jerusalem critics, possibly some of those responsible for his suffering, argue for the upright, all-together kind of preacher who stands above the sinner and yells at him. But this is not the way of Jesus, who emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, rather than counting equality with God as something to be exploited.
Mark 4:39 and 41
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 and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”
Mark is pretty specific about his claims for Jesus, or perhaps about Jesus’ claims for himself. The demons in Mark’s gospel recognize Jesus as “Son of God”, which the voice from heaven named him at his baptism, but this title is one Jesus doesn’t wish to be known, calling himself instead “Son of Man”, which might bear both the meaning of “everyman” and the character in Daniel who is given all authority over heaven and earth.
Jesus is said to teach with authority. Tertullian, an early Christian theologian, compared Jesus’ relationship to God the Father to the relation of an emperor’s son to the emperor. An emperor’s son carries with him the authority of the emperor. He can make a law, he can pardon or condemn people accused of crimes, he can do all the things his father can do, even though he is a different individual. So the son is one with the father, but the son and the father are also distinct individuals.
It’s not a bad analogy. Except that Jesus in his resurrection offers this same authority to his church, something an emperor’s son would never share with his subjects. The key is that we have to follow in Jesus’ footsteps to receive such a power. We have to walk through the confession of our sins and God’s washing them away. We have to make ourselves as small as possible, so that God can be great in us. Taking up our cross is to take up God’s will for us and let go our will for ourselves.
In the face of a heavily-armed, deeply evil opponent, we need to shed our armor and trust in a very small rock.
So easy to say, so hard to do.
The increasing instability of the world has swamped many boats, and has caused us to be filled with dread, and more and more people believe that God is not big enough, so we turn to Goliaths, big powerful humans. We worship them and praise them and defend them and pray to them to save us from all that we fear. Why? Because it seems that God doesn’t care, and Goliaths have all that armor and all those glittering weapons.
We fear we are oppressed and so we seek a champion, someone powerful enough to tame the great forces arrayed against us. But human champions will always turn out to be the next oppressor, and not the deliverance we seek. God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is the only saving power, and no single living human is given that power, and certainly not any puffed-up Goliath.
When Jesus finished rebuking the wind so that it stilled the waves, he rebuked the disciples for not having faith.
This always struck me as kind of unfair of Jesus. But a similar moment comes later, after the transfiguration in chapter 9, Jesus expresses frustration with the disciples’ inability to cast out a demon. Back in chapter 3, Jesus chose his apostles and gave them his authority. Perhaps the issue was not simply that the disciples didn’t trust Jesus or God as much as that they didn’t believe in the authority Jesus had given them. They didn’t need to wake him. They could have stilled the storm themselves.
Who is this, that he commands the winds and the waves and they obey him? Well, of course, he is God’s Son, but he is also, as he himself says, “everyman.” He aims to give his life so as to share God’s authority and power with his disciples through the gift of his Spirit.
Jesus received the power and authority of God by giving up his own. He gave up his desires and his will for himself when he went into the waters of baptism, and he tested his resolve in the wilderness against the devil. He sustained his obedience to God by regularly withdrawing from the world so as to stay in conscious contact with his Father. He made himself nothing so that God could be everything.
It seems ridiculous that the best thing to do about a huge and threatening adversary is to throw off all of one’s defenses and become vulnerable, as David did, trusting only in God and a little rock. But this is the great good news of God’s kingdom. When we come together as those with no authority or power whatsoever, and instead seek together the will of God, no force on earth can defeat us, no matter what calamity comes along.
What the captain of my boat didn’t know during that very wet sailing adventure is that the worst thing to do in a storm at sea is to try to go to land, because when it’s hard to manage your vessel, the last thing you want to do is get close to a lot of other boats and obstacles. The best thing to do is to give into the storm, turn up or downwind, set the autopilot to ride the waves like a duck, and go below to nap until God stills the storm. Good seamanship requires humility, and so does a good life.
Does our boat feel swamped?
Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?
Amen.
Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, 2024
1 Samuel 17:1a, 4-11, 19-23, 32-49
Psalm 9:9-20
2 Corinthians 6:1-13
Mark 4:35-41
