Pentecost 4

Pentecost 4 (Mark 4:35-41) “Why are you afraid?”

It was a dark and stormy night.

In the midst of a violent storm, in the middle of an inland sea, with the boat filling with water the disciples faced certain death.  Many of them were fishermen. They knew the sea. They knew the danger. They understood the impossible position they were in.

Jesus was sleeping through the whole thing. For one thing, he must have been really tired. Remember, he was fully human. He had no special knowledge or power. He also was the co-eternal Beloved of God. He had come from the eternal realm into the realm of time. He had left the infinite expanse of the Divine Domain in order to enter into the natural universe of matter, energy, time and space.

Jesus slept from exhaustion. And, he slept in the fullness of the Beloved who never ceases to trust His Heavenly Father.

The disciples do not have this trust. They had a belief in God. It is a belief formed from the place of separation and molded by the pride of self-will. The God the disciples believe in is a God of rewards and punishments. It is a God of rigid inflexible uncompromising demands on human thought, word and deed. It is also a God of detached impersonal perfection.

Jesus had come to offer people a very different experience of God. That experience was planned in the eternal realm to help human beings catch a glimpse of the original blessing God had infused into our souls. That experience had been crafted to offer people a new and more complete way of living.

As a particular human being, Jesus could not be present to everyone at once. He did the next best thing. He selected twelve men of the dozens perhaps hundreds who offered to study with him. He selected the twelve to train. He selected them to train in the Way of Blessing.

Of the twelve, Jesus selected three for special training in leadership. Those three were Peter, James and John. They were each unique and had different qualities that would enable them to share different aspects of the divine revelation embodied in Jesus.

Of the three Jesus chose one. He chose the one who chose him to be his closest and best friend. He chose John to become the  beloved of the co-eternal Beloved so John could weave the strand personal relationship into the Sacred Tradition of Faith and Hope and Charity,

As the disciples experienced throughout the three years of their association with Jesus as their teacher, this moment was a unique moment. It was also a teachable moment.

Under ordinary circumstances this storm would have been a moment of fear. Jesus offered to transform this experience into a moment of faith.

Faith is not belief. Faith is not rules and restrictions. Faith is trust in a person. Jesus is the unique personal presence of God on earth. He and he alone unifies divinity with humanity in a single individual at a particular place and time.

His presence in the boat and the storm transforms an occasion of fear into an invitation to faith in the living God. Faith. Not belief. The great obstacle to faith is belief. More often than not, belief is impersonal, detached from fact, and expressive of the individual will to power.

Faith is personal. It is fully engaged in and defined by our relationships. It is teachable.  It is willing to walk side by side with others in mutual cooperation and support.

Belief defines human behavior. Faith does not come easy to us. The power of original separation reinforces belief even as it subverts faith. The power of the original blessing emerges in moments of crises, in moments of quiet and in moments of doubt. These are the moments of grace God the Holy Spirit uses to invite us to receive the gift of faith.

The gift of faith is not doctrine or discipline. Those things have their place once faith emerges, strengthens and evolves. The gift of faith is a personal relationship with the infinite and eternal love of God through a personal relationship with the co-eternal Beloved incarnate in Jesus Christ.

What do you fear?

Most of what we fear has some basis in fact. But, it is fact distorted by belief about how the universe works and how life should  be. Our belief creates a dark and stormy universe filled with the certainty that we are alone and  surrounded by threats.

Jesus invites us into the moment of fear the disciples experienced that day. He invites us to ponder how that fear was perfectly natural, based in the struggle for survival. And, he invites us to hear his word of command. Peace be still.

It is a word of command only Jesus as the co-eternal word of God can speak in union with the Father by the real presence of the Holy Spirit. Jesus speaks the word and the world responds. The world changes.

The storm ends. The wind and waves transform instantly from a life threatening tempest to an almost supernatural calm.  The disciples move from the place of fear to the place of awe. In that place of awe they ask a question. Who is he?

That question is the portal of grace. That question sets aside belief, at least for that moment, and opens the minds, hearts and wills of the disciples to move from belief into faith. This is a universal pattern of transformation emerging in a very specific experience in a singular moment of time.

What makes the difference for this moment of fear and all future moments of faith is Jesus.