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July 9, 2000
I admire seamen and sailors: how indebted we land lovers are to those daring adventurers who from the dawn of history have been willing to go down to the sea in ships and venture to explore the unknown and open water ways for our trade and settlement. And how indebted is Hong Kong to seamen: We are a city founded upon sail, grown up around the harbor, and now Hong Kong is the largest container port in the world, visited annually by thousands of ships and tens of thousands of seamen. It's right that we take note of this Sea Sunday, 2000! But why don't we make more of it? If the Hong Kong government had its wits about it we might have staged a great pass through of ships down below us in our harbor instead of New York with its infinitely less dramatic harbor did with its OpSail this July. Well, there's always next year should the Hong Kong Tourist Authority get with it. The sea fascinates even those who prefer to stay on land as evidenced in two cinema blockbusters this summer. The one, now playing here, is the film U571, about submariners in the Second World War. The other is the film version of Sebastian Junger's best-selling real life account of New England fishermen trapped within a mighty Atlantic storm in l99l. This oceanic epic, titled THE PERFECT STORM, relates the courage of those seamen, and of those who sought to rescue them, from the vortex of a monster storm. This unique storm was named THE PERFECT STORM by meteorologists who marveled at the coming together of several weather events which produced what is the single greatest storm at sea tracked in the 20th Century. Compared to the great oceans the little lake of Galilee may seem an unlikely locale for a great storm, but the storm reported in today's reading from Mark was, in its context, a major one. I think of it as THE PERFECT STORM for Christians. The 20 mile long Sea of Galilee is normally serene because the deep lake is protected by mountains on its eastern shore and hills on its western and northern shore. But that same topography can on occasion produced a tempest in a teapot when gale force desert winds sweep from Iraq, across Syria, and then across the Golan Heights and abruptly dump their power down the 3,000 sheer slopes upon the lake. If you were unlucky enough to be in a boat on the Galilee when that phenomenon hit you, you would be like Jesus' fellow passengers, several of them fishermen, in today's story…afraid for your lives. This story is one of a series in Mark which are placed there to demonstrate that God is in control of all things, including a sea in tumult, and that Jesus is God's chosen one to exercise the divine power to heal, to instruct, or, in this case, to calm the waters and bring passengers safely to shore. The Hebrew tribes who conquered Palestine a thousand years prior to this Marcan story came from the deserts to the east. The Jews were afraid of the sea. The Galilee and the Dead Sea were the only large bodies of water they ever saw or ventured upon. The distant Mediterranean was the preserve of the seafaring Philistines and it was thought to be under the sway of the Leviathan, and even of Satan, and so in opposition to God. As a nation, the Jews turned their backs on the sea because in their minds God was at war with the wild forces that ruled the sea. This dramatic story is offered by Mark as affirmation that God was in control of the most violent situations in nature and in human affairs, and that Jesus was the channel for God's divine power to calm and subdue all forces which would disturb and destroy humanity. The contrast between Jesus and his friends is telling. Jesus sleeps through the storm. It is not that he is unconcerned with the reality of evil or that he is uncaring about the fate of his disciples, but he is not overcome with anxiety, as they are. Jesus alone demonstrates full confidence in the presence and the power of God to deal with the threats of the sea. He alone is the one with sufficient faith to allow him to leave matters in the caring and powerful hands of God, who can and will save. Being tossed about on the wild sea is no great issue with Jesus because he knows that God is able to calm the storm. The traditional sermonic interpretation of Mark 4 is to spiritualize it, using angles from the story to form lessons about God's work in relation to the human spirit, for example, "Christ still the storms of our souls" or "faith in Christ brings peace amidst perils." And this is one good use of the text. Peace of mind is a vital blessing when we are personally troubled, and it can contribute to a solution of a practical problem. But the storm in Mark 4 was a real storm; not a figurative one. So surely the theological claim that Mark was making was that the power of God can deal with very practical disturbances like storms, wars, plagues, and vast social disturbances. We want to socialize the application of Mark 4 rather than spiritualize it. One point Mark wanted to make was that faith in God can open us to added ways for problem solving and generate attributes like courage, cooperation, generosity, healing, and reconciliation which are relevant in the crass physical world afflicted with wars, crimes, drugs, and natural catastrophes. God can intervene in crises and alter the course of events through those who call upon the name of Jesus and become empowered by the Holy Spirit to help change crises for the better. Do we believe that Jesus Christ is still available to us to help work out our problems, even those of a tremendously potent kind. ********* Paradoxically, even though the earliest Christians, as Jews, had no love of the sea, the three earliest symbols of the Christian movement all came from maritime tradition. They are the symbols of the fish, the boat, and the anchor. The form of the fish is the earliest known symbol of Christ, Christianity and the Church. Archaeology has unearthed walls and stones in Jerusalem and Rome near or at catacombs and from the first century, which bear the outline of the fish. We know that the first Christians used this symbol as a coded sign, once persecution began, to show Christians where the churches were meeting in secret places. Why the fish? Not as Nury's children might guess because Jesus' followers included many fishermen, or because Jesus promised to make all his followers fishers of souls, or because Jesus ate a fish in a Resurrection episode. Though these are all useful references to fish in the scriptures. The reason, however, was simply because the Greek word for fish is spelled in Roman letters as ICHTHUS. And those letters are the initials of the Greek words meaning JESUS CHRIST, GOD'S SON, SAVIOR. Early Christians scrawled the outline of the fish upon the walls to indicate the way to the catacombs and safety from the storms of religious persecution. Two further early Christian symbols do relate to the sea and probably derive from the Sea of Galilee storm in Mark. They are the silhouette of the ship and the symbol of the anchor. The ship was one of the first symbols of the Christian Church; and the anchor became a popular form of the Cross since the anchor is simply a cross upside down. These symbols can help us when storms threaten us. When we are beset by physical or emotional storms, where better to find help than within the Church, the solid and seaworthy boat of faith. Most storms can only threaten a ship if it begins to leak water from inside because it is not tightly built. The Church is a reliable redoubt to weather life's storms because the Church is made watertight so long as it follows the teachings of its captain Jesus. It's true that even the most seaworthy ship can find itself threatened by a storm of such tremendous force that it is much better to tack sails, or find harbor and drop anchor, and hope to ride it out. And so Jesus as the anchor of our church and faith becomes our ultimate refuge. When any difficulty appears beyond our capacity to manage, then we should drop anchor in Jesus Christ. Let us consider how this text applies to two examples, the one personal but with social dimensions; the other social but with personal dimensions. The last week one of our dear members has had to face the storm of personal illness. Janet Ho learned only a little over a week ago that her lower spine was assailed by a large tumor. Last Monday she underwent four hours of major surgery. She is healing now. Many of us have shared Janet's "storm" by hearing her share with us and praying and visiting with her. Janet did not want to undertake this storm alone. She properly turned to her friends in the Church for prayer and friendship. She properly turned to her Lord, Jesus Christ, to rest her hopes and faith in his power to assist her and her medical team in managing and defeating the aggressive malignancy which sought to destroy her. For Janet, I would guess, Mark 4 is much more than a spiritualized comfort; it is a real and palpable help in time of need. But what pertains to the individual and an intimate circle of supporters, we may hesitate to apply to more massive disturbances. We may hesitate to generalize and universalize the power of Jesus to calm storms. We hesitate to apply the meaning of Mark 4 to crises even though the scriptures disclose a supreme God who yearns to intervene and help us to overcome evil, injustice, persecution, hunger, and sickness. The second example is the pending pandemic of AIDS. It is a major storm about which all authorities, including the Church, have tried to deny God any role. We have all dealt poorly with the crisis and many do not even know there is a crisis. It was in the U.S. about l7 years ago that AIDS first caught some public awareness. General public opinion, including most Christian opinion, was initially indifferent to the sickness dismissing it as a problem only for gay people. Public anxiety rose when it became evident that it was a heterosexual affliction as well. But once education and new drugs reassured the western nations that they did not face a pandemic health crisis among their straight citizens, public opinion and government action slacked off once again into indifference. The American public spends more on baldness and its remedies than is spent on Aids research. The United Nations joint task force on the epidemic has just released stunning statistics which show that globally there are l5, 000 new cases of AIDS diagnosed daily and 40% are among teenagers and young adults. There are 53 million recorded infections and l9 millions persons have died. Despite reliable forecasts more than l5 years ago of the potency of this gathering health storm, and despite the marketing of control medicines beginning 4 years ago, we are relentlessly sailing into a pandemic which will not crest for another 20 years. It is now reliably forecast that more people will die of AIDS in the next 20 years than perished in all the wars of the 20th Century. There are many explanations for our indifference but ignorance is not one of them. The human mind has worked well to produce understanding of the virus and expertise in defeating it. We know the statistics and what they predict. But reason is not enough; there must be will and I would suggest our is weak because we do not have faith that God wants this scourge defeated. Simplistic though it may appear, we need to ask: What would Jesus have us do to combat and defeat AIDS? What is the will of God in confronting this health storm of monumental danger to humanity? We know Jesus would strip bare the prejudice among the wealthier nations which led them to ease off from any sense of crisis once they were confident that their own peoples would not be afflicted with a heterosexual pandemic of the disease. We know Jesus would oppose the miserly attitudes which prevent sufficient funding for medicines and education to the poorer societies, while spending infinitely vaster sums on armaments, not to mention baldness. God has practical resources to give to us to defeat AIDS when and if we are willing to trust and follow God's guidance. I hope our congregation will get more invested in this crisis. On the first Sunday of December this year the Hong Kong AIDS memorial worship will once again take place at St. John's Cathedral in the evening. Last year as the year before I alone was there from our congregation. I suggest that our Outreach Committee consider this issue as meriting financial support from the congregation and that a delegation attend and give our offering at that memorial event next December. We have been generous in funding individuals with afflictions like blind Sam and burn victim Tak Tsai. But we avoid and ignore the unknown millions who die from AIDS. Do we think the problem is too immense for our interest? Or that God is indifferent to the millions perishing in this storm? I would further suggest to our Worship Committee that at our ecumenical Good Friday service next April you think about a pilgrimage around the APEX to each of the stations of the cross and that the congregation at each station lift up prayers relevant to the AIDS crisis. There are many other storms which threaten our societies: communal disharmony and violence; environmental degradation; missile and armament escalation; the scourges of drugs, mindless gambling and commercialized flirtations with superstition, pornography and sexual exploitation of children, and scandalously unequal wealth distribution. Regrettably, some Christians are content to ignore the power of Jesus Christ to still these vast storms. They prefer to spiritualize Mark 4 so that its relevance is of a non-palpable kind and addressed, at most, only to individuals in their private distress instead of to our collective, moral will. I believe Jesus really did have utter confidence that God could overcome any evil and alter any course, be it one of drift toward a personal disaster, or one of suicidal social escalation like AIDS, or one of transcendent import as his own coming crucifixion. Of course Jesus knew, as did Mark, that there are disasters which cannot be stopped and losses which must be suffered. God does not intervene to prevent earthquakes nor stop death in its tracks for us. He did not prevent the death of Jesus. The Gospel of Mark was written, as were those of the other evangelists, to assure believers that their losses and grief, their sorrows and anguish, were not the last word. That must be why Jesus could snore through the storm because he knew and trusted that glorious surmise like no one else in the world. When awakened, Jesus commanded the wind to be quiet and the waves to be still. Then he had the audacity to ask his disciples why they were afraid. His soaked-to-the-skin companions could only marvel and ask that most crucial question, "Who is this man, that even the wind and the waves obey him?" These men in the boat were amazed indeed by the one who had managed the very waters and winds by which several of them had to live as fishermen. That Jesus could command the natural elements was to them a propitious sign that things which had and could yet overcome them had and could be overcome. That hope foreshadowed Jesus' beautiful statement to them a bit later: IN THE WORLD, YOU SHALL HAVE TRIBULATION; BUT BE OF GOOD CHEER…I HAVE OVERCOME THE WORLD!" (John l6:33) I hope Community Church will continue on that true course of faith and trust in the sovereignty of God and with Christ as our anchor in all tribulation. If you do, you will remain relevant and useful to God's purposes. Satan will certainly hate you for such faith; and many in the world will also scorn you. But the ship and anchor of faith are more reliable in troubled waters than all the cunning wisdom and self-rationalization of worldly thinkers. Jesus is the anchor of our salvation, and he is also our close, storm-proof companion, our fellow traveler. Like all who follow him, he has been through the storms and bears the marks and scars of the journey. They are part of his beauty and they attest to his authority.. And such marks from the storms of life we have, too, and Jesus loves us for them and bids us to stay our course with him.
Pastor Gene Preston
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The Rev. Gene R.Preston14th Floor, Blk 36, Lower Baguio Villa Tel : 25516161 Fax: 25512114E-mail : gpreston@netvigator.com |
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