"When you don’t know who you’re talking to. . . "

Mark 6: 37-38

 

²⁵And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins."

      The word of God that serves as the basis for my sermon this morning is found in the Gospel of Mark, chapter six, verses 37-38, “And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. But [Jesus] was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, ‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?’” This is our text.

Sarah is a beautiful young lady with a good looking husband and the proud mother of a new-born baby girl named Hannah. In a couple of months, Sarah and her family will be moving to southeastern Missouri. Seven years ago, however, Sarah was just another girl in my Communications class. She wasn’t overly assertive, she wasn’t considerably shy, she wasn’t stupid, she wasn’t a nerd, and she wasn’t someone that I knew. I didn’t know Sarah very well. If I had, I wouldn’t have shoved my foot down my throat.

It started with an assignment. We were asked by the professor to write and deliver a seven minute persuasive speech. While I was crafting a speech that would persuade people to never want to visit a place in Northern Minnesota called the Boundary Waters, Sarah was slogging through a speech on the importance of seat-belts in school busses.

While I shared personal stories about black bears and the Minnesota State Bird, the mosquito. Sarah told us school bus safety statistics.

While I comedicly relived the experience of tipping over a canoe in my speech, Sarah told us the technical details about the different kinds of seatbelts that can be installed in busses, and their varying costs.

While I talked about giant waves and cold driving rains. Sarah talked about safety techniques, petitions and fundraising opportunities.

I’ll be honest. I wasn’t much interested in Sarah’s speech.

Now, when our speeches came to an end, the class had five minutes to ask questions. So when Sarah finished her speech, I raised my hand and said, “Sarah, seatbelts in school busses isn’t even a real issue. The only real issue about busses these days is the issue of Palestinian suicide bombers on busses in Israel, and I don’t think a seatbelt is going to save anyone from a sizzling hot piece of flying shrapnel.”

The room suddenly got very quiet, and before Sarah could respond, the professor interjected and said, “Thank you Sarah, you may sit down.”

It was then that my friend Mike, leaned over and whispered into my ear, “Uh, Tim, Sarah’s mom was killed last year in a bus accident.”

Apparently, Sarah’s mom was a chaperone for the Seward High School Band, and the band was returning to Seward after a band competition. The bus veered off the side of the road, went through a bridge guard rail, and dropped 40+ feet into the gully below.  A national news story read, “The victims — two Seward High School students and the mother of a band member — died at the scene.” Sarah was a student, her mom was the mother.

I felt very very very small. I was ashamed. And I was embarrassed. I wanted to crawl into a hole and die. I was guilty.

When you don’t know who you’re talking to, you’re liable to say something you’ll regret.

Which makes life as a Christian a very precarious place to be, and it becomes an even more troublesome situation if you live in America. Because Americans have the unfortunate mindset that we have everything figured out, including God. We’ve managed to put God on a leash. We’ve muzzled Him, we’ve caged Him, and the second He steps out of line we hit him with a crop.

If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard someone say, “God wouldn’t allow that.” I could retire comfortably today.

It usually comes out of someone’s mouth when I talk about original sin. I tell someone that children are born, nay conceived sinful, and that they need to be baptized and forgiven of their sins. And what’s the response I hear? “That’s unfair, God wouldn’t allow that?”

Or else it will look like this.

It can take place during a voters meeting. A congregation is succumbing to a drop in weekly offerings, and the church can’t make ends meet. So the voters get together to discuss their options for cutting back on the budget, and it is decided that the best way to keep the church’s finances in the black is to cut a staff member. And now the church has the uncomfortable duty of laying off an individual, and as these discussions continue a concerned voter stands up and says, “We can’t cut a staff member. They need that money to support themselves and their family. Besides, the Lord won’t abandon his flock, finances might be tight now, but God will work something out. The Lord won’t allow this church to shut down.”

But in their compassion, the voter forgot who he was talking about. He was talking about the same Lord who allowed his cousin John the Baptist to be beheaded.  He was talking about the same Lord who sent an entire Babylonian army to destroy His temple in Jerusalem, the most beautifully constructed worship space to ever grace the surface of this planet.  He was talking about the same God who is worshipped by men and women in Laos and Thailand and the Sudan who have no fingernails because they were pulled out by persecutors of the church.

That voter doesn’t know what God has in store for that particular church. The Lord might watch as that church is shut down. And that voter is left with nothing except the embarrassment of his faulty convictions, and not only does the church close its doors, but the voter’s faith is shaken as well.

And so we find ourselves in a precarious situation don’t we. We find ourselves as the disciples of a transcendent God. A God who is beyond our understanding. We cannot possibly know everything there is to know about God because we are not God. And God does not hesitate in reminding us of this. In Isaiah 55:8-9 we hear the LORD, Yahweh, say “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.”

And these words are not necessarily the most comforting words in the Bible. These words offer no hope to the man who has just lost a long drawn out and nasty custody battle for his children. He wants what’s best for his children, he’s made faithful court appearances, he’s prayed to the Lord, and after too many months and after too much money, he is defeated, and his heart breaks as his children are taken away from him. And I promise to you, it is not going to cheer this man up if you tell him, “Don’t worry, God’s ways are not our ways.”

And yet sometimes, you feel like that’s all you can say. You can’t promise this man that God will help him get his children back. You can’t promise this man that God is going to give him more children in the future. You can’t even promise him that everything is going to be all right. But sometimes we do anyway. And once again, we say something we regret, because we don’t know who we’re talking about.

And that’s exactly the problem the disciples found themselves in when they were in the boat crossing the Sea of Galilee. At some point across the lake the boat got caught in a storm. The waves were crashing over the edge of the boat. And the disciples woke Jesus and said, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”

            “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”

            I can hardly believe it. Do they realize who they are talking to? Do they realize they are talking to God himself? Do they realize they are talking to the God who became a man and in humiliation suffered the injustices of a broken world? Do they realize they are talking to the Messiah, the promised Messiah of old? Do they realize they are talking to Jesus, the man whose name means, “He saves?” Do they realize they are talking to the son of the Father who must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again? (Mark 8:31)

            No, they don’t realize who they are talking too. The text tells us that the famous miracle that immediately follows this accusation is Jesus’ calming of the wind and the sea. And after this display of miraculous power the disciples ask among themselves. “Who then is this, that even the wind and sea obey him?”

            And that’s where we find the problem. The problem is imbedded in the question “Who then is this?” The disciples honestly don’t know who they are talking to. They don’t know who Jesus is. And this terrible accusation will haunt them when Jesus finally answers their question.

            I’m sure you have heard it said that God has three standard answers for prayer? “Yes” “no” or “wait?”

            In the case of the disciples in the boat, at first glance, Jesus doesn’t answer their question. Did you notice that? “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”

            Jesus doesn’t tell them the answer, he shows them the answer. Do you remember? It happened on a Friday. Jesus bound and captured. He was put on trial. And he was crucified.

            I can only imagine the shame and regret the disciples felt when they stood at a distance and saw the silhouette of their savior as he was sacrificed for their sins on the cross.

            Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing? Of course he does. And we only have to look as far as the cross to remember it.

            And that’s what the disciples did. They went out into the world and told people about their teacher who cared very much that they were perishing. And they suffered for it. It was no longer the winds and the seas that battered the disciples, but instead it was imprisonment, floggings, rejection, and slandering. And yet, they did not ask, “Lord, do you not care that we are perishing.” They remembered the cross, and even when all external circumstances suggested otherwise, they knew that the Lord cared.

            And so it is with us. To the man who loses his children in a custody battle and wonders if Jesus cares, there is the cross. To the family that watched their house engulfed in flames and are wondering if Jesus cares, there is the cross. To the farmer who can’t get out into the fields, there is the cross. And to those who are having multiple surgeries, there is the cross.

            And so when life’s got you down and there is nothing else, look to the cross, because there we meet Jesus. And talk to him. It’s ok. You know who you’re talking to, and I promise, it’s not something you’ll regret.

            Amen.