June 21, 2015

Bishop John Bluck

Ordinary Sunday 12     Mark 4:35-41

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

In Porirua Jerry Collins was a hero and will continue to be so, perhaps more so, after his funeral there this week. I’m told he was a great All Black, though if you’d been on the receiving end of his smashing runs, you might not agree. He’s been given a hero’s farewell. TV One news devoted the first eight minutes of its 6pm show to his tragic death, the next most important item to the weather. I don’t understand it. But then I don’t understand why a sport that is only played well in half a dozen countries continues to define us. May Jerry and Alana rest in peace.

And I don’t understand this morning’s gospel either, all about another hero who can stop a storm in its tracks. I wish I didn’t have to preach on it, especially to a congregation like this one, full of critical and discerning people who pride themselves on not having religious wool pulled over their eyes. But even smart people need heroes. And this is very clearly a hero story.

The closest parallel I can think of from Aotearoa is not Jerry Collins but Hipa Te Maiharoa, a Ngai Tahu prophet who in 1879 led a hikoi down the Waitaki Valley to protest the fraudulent land grab of the New Zealand Company. In the course of that hikoi, Te Maiharoa was reported to have stopped a steam train in its tracks as it crossed the Waitaki road rail bridge. The Oamaru Mail, which at the time was at least as reliable a source as the New Zealand Herald is today, covered the story. You may have questions about this piece of our history but the way Te Maiharoa’s epic life has been immortalised is nothing compared to what we have done with Jesus, in our attempts as a church from the very beginning to decide who this man is for us.

We can call him the Son of God, and for many Christians, then and now, that was enough. Even though the title is a metaphor, the easiest way to deal with metaphors is to nail them down, give them a literal meaning, preferably only one and get on with your life. No more questions asked. So much for the magic of poetry. Or the mystery of faith. Once you allow metaphors to open up meaning rather than close it down, to provoke more questions than answers, you have to deal with the floodgate you’ve opened. And in this case its more than a flood, it’s a whole storm at sea.

Storms on the sea of Galilee were violent affairs, just as scary as the ones off the Mediterranean coast, and in both places the same demons were at work, as they had been since the first morning of creation. The waters of the deep held the spirits of evil and chaos that only God could control. When Jesus says be still to the storm, his words literally mean, be muzzled, you demons.

So the Old Testament, especially the psalms, are full of references to water management on a divine and cosmic scale. “Save me O God for the waters have come up to my neck,” says Psalm 69.

“Don’t let the deep swallow me up, or the Pit (of Hell) close its mouth over me.” In the Exodus story, Moses invokes God to perform the ultimate miracle which is to turn the angry sea into a safe bridge that the redeemed can walk across with dry feet. And the greatest blessing a person can enjoy is “to lie down in peace and take my rest, for it is you alone O God, who can let me lie down in safety.”

That’s exactly what Jesus does in this story. He himself is sleeping, yes even in the midst of a storm. And when he’s woken, he calms the storm, and no doubt his disciples sleep well that night. For a first century audience, you couldn’t find a story more compelling than this one to reassure that God is still in charge of the world, and this representative of God – son, prophet, rabbi, healer call him what you will – is authentic. But does it work for us, we who still seek reassurance of a God who is present and alive and active in our midst?

Miracles that change the weather in an instant and stop trains in their tracks don’t have the same resonance for post modern urbanites and technocrats. We can do things on our cellphones that would make us godlike to the audience Jesus first addressed. But our need for evidence of God’s presence and action is as strong as ever, the hunger for reassurance gnaws away. Especially as a church.

Because this is a story about church. From the start it’s been read like that – the boat is early symbol of Christian community which is why the ecumenical movement adopted the sail boat as its logo, with the cross as a mast, and it’s why we sit inside buildings like this one in the nave, inside the hull of an upturned boat. Tip a church like this over and can sail away aboard it.

And the church in this story is very anxious about its future. The followers inside are scared they can’t cope, they’re getting old and tired, they don’t have the resources to manage, the task before them is overwhelming, they are about to be swamped and no one is taking any notice of them, and God doesn’t seem to care enough to intervene.

Now where have you heard that before. Maybe this story isn’t so quaint and out of date. We worry a lot about the future of the church. We look at the average age of our congregations, our declining market share, the way we are distorted or worse still ignored by the media and wonder whether we’ll be around in 50 years or swamped by the sea of modernity. The first disciples were just as anxious. But they knew who to trust.

The roles they expected him to play were varied and confusing. For some they wanted a Jesus who would do everything for them. For others it was a political leader, a revolutionary Zealot who would get rid of the Romans, a nationalist freedom fighter. For others it was a guru they needed, a seer in the Wisdom tradition. For others it was a code maker and breaker, a man with the passwords for health and healing who would unlock the secrets of the sort that Dan Brown writes novels about. And for others, an old fashioned miracle worker was enough, bigger and brighter than all the other miracle workers around. Who could instantly feed not five but five thousand, and calm a whole sea with a word.

We too dress Jesus in the clothing of our need. We transform him from judge and general to therapist and friend of little children above the bright blue sky, we sing about him as scarred victim and scapegoat on a cross. We portray him as a Maori chief walking on the water of Lake Rotorua, as a blond blue eyed Lutheran who could play quarterback in American College football, a Samoan All Black, or on the cover of a book of feminist essays published in Christchurch in the 1990’s, as a crucified woman.

We know how to make a Jesus in our own image. And every time we do that, we bring him closer to us, we incarnate him in the world we know, as we need to do, to meet him close up and personal. But at the very same time, we run the risk of distancing Jesus if the language and image doesn’t fit, if we don’t play football for instance. And getting captured by some of the roles, the miracle worker role for example, we may well end up reducing Jesus. Closing him down rather than opening him up and allowing ourselves to be open to him.

The church’s job is not only to retell these old stories but to keep reframing and translating them to tap their potency and power. If Jesus calming storms works for you, good on you, if it helps to lead you into the mystery and love of God, go for it. If it doesn’t, then look elsewhere for different expressions of the same figure playing different roles, revealing different faces of God’s mystery and love. We’ve got plenty to choose from in our own New Zealand heritage of faith.

James K Baxter was a fine theologian as well as one of our greatest poets. He designed his metaphors not to be tied down but to explode in a kaleidoscope of meaning and provocation. Jesus for Baxter was not a figure defined by some magical action, some one off miracle however awesomely performed. He was not a hero for Baxter, certainly not in any All Black mold.

Jesus for him was a poor man who took the form of a swagger and an outcast, a wanderer blowing like the Spirit across a thousand paddocks, singing his song in the hearts of the poor, guiding us, wounding us, healing us.

“A fire who does not cease to burn.

Consuming us with flames of love and peace.

Driving us out like sparks to set the world on fire.

Like the sun in the sky,

The light shining in our darkness.

So that we ourselves can become the light.”

That’s a Jesus I can follow.

That’s a Jesus who will lead me into the heart of God.

Whatever image of him you choose to trust, don’t settle for anything less.