Just As He Was

Mark 4: 35-41

Have you ever been on a rollercoaster? There are lots of different kinds. Josiah’s first coaster was a small one in the kiddie rides at the Texas State Fair, and it was no more than maybe 8 feet high, and went around in a circle three times that had 4 sharp turns and a few humps. There are also the ones like the old wooden ones like they have a Knoebels, much higher, faster and they rattle excitingly, and when you finish, it feels a little bit like you’ve escaped the coaster collapsing.

The steel track coasters are much smoother in their rides, but they do much more intense things, like corkscrews and loops. Then there are those coasters for the ones who are bored with that, and the designers figure out how to change your position for the ride, and the one that looks the most interesting to me is the one that is themed for Superman, and the ride actually lifts you into a position where you are on your belly, and then it seeks to simulate a joyride flight with loops and turns and corkscrews.

Some folks are comfortable only in that type of extreme coaster, others are more comfortable in the old wooden ones. Some never want to leave the little kiddie coaster, and some are just fine on the carousel.

It’s probably the same way with storms. When you are on a boat in the sea, wind is a good thing. It is what gets you to the other side, even if you have to put down a keel and tack, or zigzag, back and forth. But there can be too much wind, and what is strong enough to push you through the water can also be strong enough to push you over and capsize. The phenomenon of seeing racing sloops heeling over almost to a 45 degree angle, crew strapped to the upper side as a counterbalance, I’m sure is a phenomenon foreign to 1st century fishermen.

Jesus, just as he was, was sleeping through a heavy wind. Who knows, he was comfortable with the amount of wind because it was getting them to the other side faster. But he’s just come off preaching to large crowds, for hours, and he’s tired. So, just as he is, with no bathing or washing his face and maybe even with no food, he suggests that they go to the other side of the lake, the pagan side, and preach some over there. The disciples are faithful enough to say OK, even though they know they are headed into something unclean, and seek to get him there. And a wind comes up, and it’s a little too much wind, because the boat is being swamped. Jesus, though, after preaching for hours, is sleeping in the back of the boat, and nothing is bothering him. The man needs sleep, and he’s got complete trust in God, and the guys sailing the ship.

They however, are new to this God-among-us thing. Rather than figure out a way to use the wind to get them to the other side, rather than assign people to bail, they run to Jesus, because the trip is just a little too exciting. They’ve had enough of the ride, it’s time to dial it back. So even though Jesus was comfortable enough with the storm to be sleeping through it, and though the disciples merely needed to notice that in the midst of the storm, Jesus was sleeping, and so it must have been ok, Jesus does still the storm. He dials it all the way back, back to where they now have to row the rest of the way across; the story says he stilled the wind, and there was a dead calm. Which means there is now no way to move the boat except for breaking out the oars and rowing it. But a rowed boat, I assume is a great place to sleep—cool sea breeze, rhythmic swooshing noises, and the whole crew silent and thoughtful as they row, thinking about what they’ve just seen.

Which is fine, I bet, for Jesus, who I would guess lays back down in the stern of the boat and goes back to sleep. Mark doesn’t tell us. After all, the next day is the day they go to the pagans and preach to them, and Jesus needs to be ready for that. So I think Jesus, exhausted, lays back down. Jesus, in the boat, just as he is, his full humanity being weary.

There are times when we all panic. Times when we forget that Jesus is with us, and the events of our lives get a little too rambunctious, and we cry to Jesus to still the storm for us. It may have been that the storm was moving us towards God’s goal for us quickly, like a sailboat before a strong wind, but it’s too much for us. We need to slow down. Considering the alternative, we’re ok with doing it under our own power, breaking out the oars, which are slow, and cause blisters and sore muscles. Sometimes we prefer pain and delay so that we can maintain our own control over situations.

Jesus, just as he is, loves us even though we still demand control. Jesus loves us, seeks, us, leads us, just as we are. Incomplete, stubborn, without a clue half the time, holding on to the wrong things in the high winds that surround us. Too much of the pain that is caused in our lives is because we are pushed beyond what we though we knew to be truth, and the Holy Spirit blows us into the uncharted part of the sea, where our truths are too small, now. And Jesus is comfortable enough to sleep through it.

Let go of what you see as truth. Take it out and compare it to the love of God as seen in Christ. The radical love of everyone, and the radical expectation that we are to treat each other with the same love that we assure ourselves God loves us with.

And then hang on for the ride.

The Round Up Just Doesn’t Work

Mark 4: 26-34

If you go to California in the summer, don’t expect it to rain. The weather pattern of that part of North America is solidly stated, almost as if it was written in a book somewhere. There’s no rain in the summers, that’s why the hills turn such a golden brown—lots of folks think its pretty, Golden California, and all that, but natives and firefighters know just how close they are to devastating grassfires for 4 months out of the year.

But in the winter, the rains do come. The hills turn green again, and where I was born, the true beauty of the land comes forward. Constantly changing clouds and light, days and days of rain, with peek-a-boo bits of sun poking through the quick moving grayness, and the constant presence of the colors of green and yellow. Gray, green and yellow. Gray from the clouds, green from the grass and the trees, and yellow from the mustard that sprouts up in between the dormant vines. It happens every year, and to those who are wishing to control every aspect of their fields, it is a nuisance. There is no reason for a weed to grow in a modern agricultural field, To many it shows a certain laziness of character.

But the wise ones know that mustard in a field, when plowed under in early spring as the vines come out of their winter dormancy, are a very good source of nutrients and minerals that don’t have to be added to the fields chemically.

Some folks in Napa have even figured out that mustard is a great moneymaker on its own, and there is now a mustard festival, where I am sure someone has figured out a way to charge $20 for a jar. There is also a restaurant called “Mustards”, which, when I lived there, was about the only place you can get a decent plate of ribs in the whole valley.

Those wise ones, the ones who leave the mustard alone in the winters, also know the value of simply having beauty present in bright colors in an otherwise drab season. They know the value of a weed.

That’s what mustard really is, you know. It’s something that, when left to grow, spreads quickly and grows quickly. It’s not a great big thing, but when left to grow is still just a bush, maybe 4 feet high for the most ambitious ones. It certainly is not a great big powerful tree, unmovable and powerful. Well, not powerful in the way that empires and governments love to be seen—impenetrable, glorious, ever present.

There is power in mustard, however, and it is the power that every weed has—spreads quickly, grows quickly. You just can’t kill it. Round Up, that powerful herbicide, just doesn’t work on it. Yes, you might have killed the individual plant, but the seeds have been spread far and wide, and the plant will show up again, somewhere.

Diana Butler Bass, a recent favorite author of mine, has written a book called A People’s History of Christianity, and in it she writes that there is an alternative story of how the Christian church we know came to be. Let me read to you what she writes as the thumbnail history we were all taught about our faith, and you tell me how familiar it feels:

Jesus came to earth to save us, but he founded the church instead. That church suffered under Roman persecution until the emperor Constantine made Christianity legal. With it’s new status, the Christian religion spread throughout Europe, where popes and kings formed a society called Christendom, which was run by the Catholic church and was constantly threatened by Muslims, witches and heretics. There were wars and inquisitions. When people had had enough, they rebelled and became Protestants . . . eventually the puritans left Europe to set up a Christian society in the new world. The United States of America then became the most important Christian nation on the world, a beacon of faith and democracy.

This is a story of the faith as seen as the growth of one of those mighty trees. In her book, she proceeds to write stories of examples of how this didn’t work, and how there are always these little exceptions to that story that nonetheless lift up the Christian faith, often even while allowing other religions and beliefs to co-exist.

So it is also when we look at Jesus’ words in Mark. What we see as his example for the model of faith isn’t a great and mighty tree, but a shrub. A weed. Mustard.

There’s value in the traditional view of this parable as needing only a little faith, but it being enough to do great things, the scriptural version of the ant and the rubber tree plant in that old song High Hopes. But I invite you to think of it a slightly different way today, a way that is less big tree, and more quickly spreading weed.

The mustard seed is indeed the smallest of the seeds. But that allows it to be blown in the winds, eaten and deposited by birds, and caught into the mud that cakes on hooves and boots and carried all over the land. One way or another, the mustard seed, like other weeds, spreads. It lands, it gets into the ground, it germinates, it sprouts, it grows, and the first thing it does is produce flowers and heads that are nothing but more seeds. When it grows to fullness, as I mentioned above, it isn’t the tallest ever, but it is a full shrub, and is enough to provide cover for birds and other critters.

There’s two things here that Jesus, I think are highlighting to the large crowd that gathered by the sea that day. The first is that the kingdom of God is valuable only in what it can do for the people who live in it. When the mustard seed grows into a plant, he says, it doesn’t matter how large it is, how strong it is. Its appearance isn’t its value. As far as Jesus is concerned, it’s value is how the birds of the air can make a home in its branches.

Now, if that was Jesus’ intention, he could have told that story with an acorn or a pinecone, which, while bigger, is still proportionally small compared to the fully grown tree. But he didn’t; he used the example of a weed. So, he’s also saying that the kingdom of God should be easily spread, and easily grown.

So, what about the faith is easily spread? What about what you believe is simply stated, but true even to the deepest and most critical, most skeptical examination?
For me, it is the love of God. Simply stated, true all he way to the bottom, unable to be picked apart by the literalists of both the Biblical and secular sort. That is where we should live as Christians. You may wrestle with the concept of the Trinity, you may want to understand just how the Holy Spirit came and made Mary with child, you may want to know exactly where heaven is. All interesting theological and intellectual exercises, but by Jesus’ words, the true value is how easily you spread the word, and how well you provide large branches and shade for the birds of the air.

What about your life is sheltering to others? What about what you believe about your faith is wise and practical, and easily spread? Wherever that is, there is where you should live in your faith, and that is what others will see your faith as. How do you think the people around you see your faith? Do they see it at all?

I pray that for you, it can be said that if your faith is like a mustard seed, the Round Up just doesn’t work.