Mark 4:35-41(NRSV), Galatians 5:22
Intro self. Recap series.
So far, we’ve looked at (SLIDE) Love and Joy and today we’re exploring: Peace
Our executive pastor, Jen, told me a story about a congregant in a church that she used to serve. And this church was pretty liturgical in its worship style, so they did something that's called the passing of the peace. Maybe some of you have done this before. In our context, it’s the time at the top of the service called the turn and greet, or what I like to refer to as every introvert’s least favorite part of the service.
And so the passing of the peace is similar to that, but instead of trying to figure out how to make small talk in a span of 30 seconds (side note: I’m an extravert so I’m still out in the Gathering Area talking during this part of the service), you have a standard greeting that you say to each other. Something like, “Peace of Christ,” or “Peace be with you.” And you kind of make your way around your little section of seats and do the thing. But there was this one woman in Pastor Jen's former congregation, who every time they did the passing of the peace, just did it a little 2
differently. She would take your hands, sort of clasp them between her own, look you right in the eye and say, “Peace is yours.”
And sometimes she’d repeat it, like if you weren’t buying it, you weren’t moving on! “PEACE IS YOURS!” she would say.
You know I love someone who just goes all in on a church moment. So I love this story. But more than that, the thing that stuck with me about this woman and her really intense peace passing is that peace is in no way passive here. It’s DETERMINED. It’s ACTIVE. There’s almost a fierceness to it.
And as I thought about the topic at hand today, it made me wonder if those kinds of words--Determined, Active, and Fierce—it made me wonder if those are words that typically come to mind for us when we think about what peace is.
My guess is that those kinds of descriptions have a little more edge to them than where we usually would go when talking about peace. We might more automatically think of things like tranquility, quiet, harmony, something like that.
But what if there’s more to peace than that? What if peace is deeper than just going with the flow or feeling a sense of calm?
What if peace IS ours...and what if peace wants to transform everything about us? What if peace wants to get it hands on 3
everything in our lives, from our individual relationships to the wider world we find ourselves in? (SLIDE) What do we believe is possible when it comes to peace?
Today we’re looking at a story that appears a couple of times throughout the Gospels, and we’re specifically reading Mark’s account of the whole thing. This is the story of Jesus calming the storm. Now, this is a story that we often use when we want to preach about peace, so maybe on the surface this is nothing new and you’re not very surprised that you heard this story on a week where peace is the topic.
BUT—I think if we look a little closer, we might discover some unique things that we can learn about peace, from Jesus’ perspective and from the experiences that his friends have on that boat. We might see how there are a couple of different aspects to peace. And what challenges me about this story is that it pushes me to remember that two seemingly opposing thoughts can be true here: (SLIDE)
We find our peace in Jesus
AND
Sometimes Jesus meets us in the storm
Now, Mark tells this story in an interesting way. He starts his account by saying, “On that day, when evening had come...” I always love when the Bible does this because you try to 4
read a certain set of verses, and when you see this kind of lead in and it’s always a hint that something has happened before this particular part of the story that probably matters. Mark wants to draw our attention to what’s been going on in Jesus’ world before this very moment.
And let me tell you, if you read through Mark 3 and 4, there is a LOT happening for Jesus in the time preceding this storm-calming incident. He has been teaching and preaching and healing. And he’s also had a lot of conflict with a lot of different people. I mean, Jesus is kind of on a conflict roll here. He’s had tension in his own family, he’s had problems with the townspeople, he’s had disagreements with the religious leaders. He’s even had a moment where a bunch of people start a rumor that he’s got a demon in him.
So it’s been a DAY for Jesus. And I think it’s safe to say that Jesus was probably not feeling particularly peaceful when he gets in this boat and starts journeying across the Sea of Galilee. He was honestly probably really worn out. And so it’s not surprising that he gets in the boat and he falls asleep. I mean, the man needs a nap at this point in the day!
And it would seem like getting onto the water and away from all the drama would be the gateway to peace in this story. But that’s not what happens. Instead of a nice little night sail 5
to the other side of the shore, Jesus and his group get a violent and unexpected storm.
Now, Jesus is on this boat ride with his disciples. And do you remember what at least 4 of them did as their full-time jobs before they met and started following Jesus? They were fishermen! So it’s not like what we’re reading about here is their first storm. If I was out there, and the wind picked up and thunder started rumbling...I mean, I barely made it through whale watching on a calm day once. It would have been a bad situation.
But not these guys. They had been through storms, they knew how to navigate a boat through tricky conditions. They were professionals. But there was something about this storm that was different. This particular storm felt more chaotic than normal. This storm made them afraid. And this storm made peace seem completely out of reach.
I bet we could all point to that kind of storm in our own stories. It probably didn’t take place on a boat, but we’ve all lived through something like that. Some conflict, some illness, some trauma, some situation where we’ve thought...this is different. I don’t really know how to navigate this one. I don’t know what it would like to have peace right now. 6
I wonder if because of that, if that’s why the disciples’ first reaction and the first thing they say to Jesus lands so deeply with me when I read it. Because they don’t exactly go to him for help. They don’t quite wake him up looking for a solution. What they actually do, is they wake him up and they say to him, probably with fear AND anger in their voices:
“Don’t you care?”
Don’t you care, Jesus, what we’re going through? Don’t you care, Jesus, that our lives are in danger? Don’t you care, Jesus, that everything seems out of control? Don’t you care, Jesus, that we are disturbed and frightened and don’t know what to do next?\
Don’t you care?
What a question.
What an honest question when we find ourselves seeking peace. Because when our peace is disturbed, when we feel like we’re being tossed around and we’re just looking for Jesus to bring some stability and calm to the situation...it can feel like we’re all along and it can feel like we’re in that storm for an awfully long time.
And as we look to what Jesus does next, we know where this goes. He gets up, he says to the storm: PEACE! Be Still! Stop! 7
And at the simple act of his words, chaos turns into peace. The storm is calm, and they keep going in their journey across the lake.
And when I look at the way that Jesus navigates that whole situation, as I look at the way he’s able to rest and respond and perform this miracle of creating peace where peace seems impossible, I wonder if maybe Jesus is holding on to a deeper kind of peace in his own soul.
It reminds me of the kind of peace that we read about in Psalm 3, where the Psalmist says (SLIDE):
I lie down and sleep; I wake again, for the LORD sustains me. 6 I am not afraid of ten thousands of people who have set themselves against me all around. (Psalm 3:5-6)
The chaos is happening...but so is the work of God’s Spirit. With this kind of peace, there’s something deeper and holier at work that we can hang on to. And when I look at the way Jesus is able to draw from peace here in this situation, it’s not happening because Jesus has been doing his box breathing (my favorite of the calming breathing exercises) or that he's mastered some kind of detached state where he can just be chill. No, it’s happening because he's got this deep, trusting connection to the Spirit. It’s because he 8
knows that whatever conflict is going on, whatever there might be to rightly fear...God is still at work. And God WILL BE at work even in the middle of the most challenging storm.
The truth is, sometimes it’s IN the storm where we actually get our deepest understanding of what peace is and what it means for us to be peace creators. And that’s the tension here. We probably don’t experience REAL peace until we’ve been through a storm or two. We might experience calm, equilibrium, and absence of conflict, yes. But I’m not sure we can claim to know real, true, transforming peace without some kind of stormy story attached to it.
I’m not going to tell you that the disciples wouldn’t have found reasons to be in awe of Jesus and have a better glimpse into who he actually was if they didn’t have this storm. There would have been other chances for that. But I will say that this storm absolutely changes their perspective on this person they are spending so much time with. Up until now, they’ve heard him teach and witnessed him heal, but this is something different. This is something more miraculous and mighty, this is a peace that only could happen with some kind of divine intervention.
And when the peace arrives for them on the boat, when the sea is finally calm and they look around, really ok and on the 9
other side of it...they know they could have only gotten here because of what Jesus did.
In this storm, Jesus shows them what can be possible. Because before they got on those boats, before that storm, if you had asked any of these people who were following Jesus, “could someone to calm a storm and change the weather, just with a word?” They probably would have been incredibly confused at what you were even talking about. Because, of course not. That doesn’t happen. That’s how things work.
But, after this moment...now it suddenly is.
I think part of walking into the different storms of our lives as people who are seeking to create and experience peace is that (SLIDE) we have to believe something better is possible. And I know that’s not exactly easy right now. I’ve watched the headlines all week, and I would say 9 out of 10 have made me feel pretty defeated. There are some places in our world right now, even some of my own, your own, relationships, where the idea that there could be transforming peace or that we could be the ones who create peace in those situations...it feels almost as impossible as guy taking a nap in boat somehow being able to stop a storm. 10
Sometimes it feels like we only have two choices, when we’re looking at our world, and it feels like we’re choosing between two pretty undesirable options: despair or bitterness. We can despair over what’s wrong and almost just get stuck in this neutral, numb state where we just feel overwhelmed and helpless. OR we can become really angry and bitter and the fruit that starts coming out of us starts to be hateful and harmful. Storms can do that to us.
But I’m grateful that those aren’t the only two options and that Jesus gives us another way. That Jesus invites us to look at what it means to experience and create real peace even in the worst situations. Not just because he taught about it, but because he DID IT. Because he LIVED it. This isn’t hypothetical or impossible—it's hard, but it’s also such a powerful middle way to live in our world.
And I am really grateful that we’re talking about the challenges of experiencing and creating peace on this particular weekend, where we remember and celebrate the life and legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Because when I think about Dr. King’s life, I think he was someone, for all that he experienced, was miraculously committed to peace. The deep, hard-won, sometimes painful work of peace. And for all he saw, for all the heartbreak that he lived though...he still believed it was possible. 11
He said this in a 1965 article for Ebony Magazine: (SLIDE)
“World peace through nonviolent means is neither absurd nor unattainable. All other methods have failed. Thus we must begin anew… Those of us who believe in this method can be voices of reason, sanity, and understanding amid the voices of violence, hatred and emotion. We can very well set a mood of peace out of which a system of peace can be built.” – Dreams of Brighter Tomorrows in Ebony Magazine, March 1965.
We can set a mood that can be the foundations for systems. The individual actions we take create a climate where wider-reaching peace can be created. Peace Learning Center (SLIDE) is an organization on the west side of Indianapolis that fosters all kinds of peacemaking programs. And one of the things about their mission that I think really speaks to this is that they believe that every single person can be a peacemaker. Wherever we are, whatever the situation, whatever our background, we each have a role to play. So in their work, which has a really broad reach and covers lots of large-scale justice issues like equity, climate change, power dynamics...they also focus on deeply personal, individual things like genuine apology and reconciliation in relationships. Things that seem so micro...but actually make a significant difference in our ability to be about peace. 12
Because it’s all part of it. It all matters. Peace is big and small. Peace is individual and collective. Peace is as dramatic as a storm stopping word and as under the radar as a real, healing talk over a cup of coffee.
Sometimes we find our peace in the middle of the storm, sometimes we have to wait until we’re all the way through it, sometimes we are the ones who have to create even when we don’t quite know what we’re doing or how we’ll do it.
But in the middle of the chaos. In the middle of the conflict. In the middle of the unknown...even in those places, Jesus can give us peace. Even in those places, we can people who reflect Jesus by creating peace.
And even in those places, peace is ours.
Let’s pray. 13