³⁵On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” ³⁶And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. ³⁷A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. ³⁸But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” ³⁹He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. ⁴⁰He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” ⁴¹And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

Peace is the second word of Advent.  It is an essential partner to the first word of Advent – Hope.  In order to have a pure hope it must be accompanied with an unflappable peace, a permanent peace.  But our peace is so fickle.  It must have been over twenty years ago when I was on my way to a funeral that I was officiating.  I was glancing down at my notes every now and then.  At this particular time in my preparation I was reciting one of my favorite verses, John 14:27, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”  Somewhere in the middle of that verse a semi truck raced up beside me on my left in the one lane on-ramp to the freeway and subsequently ran me off the road.   So it went something like this, ““Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world …’ Hey, what in the world are you doing, you idiot!  Do you want to kill me? Can’t you see me?” My blood was racing, my fist my pumping, and I was stopped in the grass on the side of the road.  I righted my path and got back on the road and glanced down at my notes, “Peace I give to you…”

Isn’t that how it goes?  We can move from a place where we are almost tranquil to a place where we are completely out of sorts in the blink of an eye.  This candle lights the way to a permanent peace that cannot be so easily shaken.  This peace can be found in the manger, but I want to invite you to the other side of Christmas, to the place where the baby is all grown up.  Let us go across to other side.
 

Over here you can see that his very presence offers peace

It must have been an amazing day.  Mark begins this story with the words, “On that day…”  So I started looking backwards in the scripture to see where that day began.  Mark’s characteristic writing is that the days are packed.  He goes from one story to the next so quickly that one gets the impression of Jesus in tennis shoes racing from one miracle to the next; from one teaching encounter to the next. This day seems to have started like many days, with an argument with the Pharisees and scribes, included a brief encounter with his family who was trying to get him to come home, and a full day of teaching parable after parable.  Then as the sun began to set, he said, “Let us go across to the other side.”  They must have felt completely confident in the request.  Between their skill as sailors and his sense of direction, what could possibly go wrong?

The Sea of Galilee is actually a lake seven miles wide and thirteen miles long.  It sits in a sort of basin 700 feet below sea level surrounded by mountains.  It can become a wind tunnel when the wind gusts from the southwest.  The windstorm happened without warning.  The waves beat against the boat and over the boat threatening to sink it.  Now I am not sure what it would take to rattle experienced fishermen, but I am sure that whatever that limit was it had been surpassed greatly.  Whatever peace the disciples had when they pushed off from shore had been blown away as quickly as the storm emerged.

That is how it often works in my life.  I can leave worship on Sunday and be whistling the closing hymn in peace, when something happens.  The waiter brought me out a salmon salad when I had ordered fried shrimp and now I don’t have time to wait on the right order, because I have a meeting that afternoon.  I know it sounds silly, but sometimes my wave of peace is so fragile.

Then I look to other side of Christmas and I see Jesus asleep on a cushion in the stern of the boat.  I am sure that Mary and Joseph frequently looked at their little baby sleeping and remarked, “He looks so peaceful?  What do you think he will be like when he grows up?”  Now we know.  He still sleeps peacefully and if he is all we see then all we see is peace.  We don’t see the fear of the fishermen, the rage of the sea, or the smallness of the boat.  All we see is peace.  Brother Lawrence, a 17^th century dishwasher in a French Carmelite Monastery once wrote, “Those who have the gale of the Holy Spirit go forward even in their sleep.”  What a fantastic thought that we can almost see taking place in the stern of a storm tossed boat.  His very presence offers peace.  This candle lights the way to permanent peace that cannot easily be shaken.  Its light leads all the way to the other side of Christmas.
 

Over here you can see that his power offers peace

The disciples did not have the luxury or at least the ability to see to the other side of this story.  All they could see was their imminent demise and the one person who might have an answer sleeping peacefully in the midst of the storm.  They woke him up and did the only thing they do in this story – they asked him a question, “Don’t you care that we are perishing?”  Finally, Jesus woke up, rebuked the wind as he had already done to the powers of darkness manifested in the demoniacs he had encountered, and spoke to the sea, “Peace! Be still!”  Mark wrote, “Then the wind ceased and there was a dead calm.”

I am not sure how well the disciples knew the scriptures, but I am guessing they knew the Psalms better than I do.  Then I started to look at some of them.  Psalm 65:7 states, “You silence the roaring of the seas, the roaring of their waves, the tumult of the peoples.” Psalm 89:9 proclaims, “You rule the raging of the sea; when its waves rise, you still them.” Psalm 107:26-29 reads, “They mounted up to heaven, they went down to the depths; their courage melted away in their calamity; they reeled and staggered like drunkards, and were at their wits’ end.  Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he brought them out from their distress; he made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed.”  The elements had found their master.

Jesus revealed himself as powerful enough to offer peace in the midst of the storms.  He is capable of addressing the chaos around us with just three words, “Peace! Be still!”  Have you been there? His power offers peace.  This candle lights the way to permanent peace that cannot easily be shaken.  Its light leads all the way to the other side of Christmas.
 

Over here you can see that his correction offers peace

I wish I could tell you that this Jesus’ power put an end to their fears, but that would not be true.  Even though Jesus asked them in a corrective sort of way, “Why are you afraid?  Have you still no faith?”  The first thing we discover about them is that they were overwhelmed with a new fear.  Our translation said they were filled with awe, but the Greek text literally reads, “they feared a great fear”.  This is the same phrase that Luke’s Christmas story includes when talking about the shepherds who were, “sore afraid”.  R. Alan Cole wrote about the disciples, “A familiar, friendly, human Jesus they wanted; not a supernatural Son of God.”

 R. C. Tannehill saw this as a “paraenetic  method adopted by Mark, attempting to make us identify ourselves with the erring disciples and so come to a better frame of mind.”  Rembrandt took this to a whole new level in 1633 when he painted the famous, “The Storm on the Sea of Galilee”.  I want you to look at this painting that unfortunately was stolen from Boston in 1990.  In it you find the scene described in Mark 4, but there is one curious addition.  There are the twelve disciples trying all that they can do to save the ship and themselves, and a couple of them are waking up Jesus.  Then there is an extra person, holding onto a line and facing us, with his hand on his head.  It is Rembrandt himself.  He painted himself in the picture.  That means he was there when Jesus asked, “Why are you afraid?  Do you still have no faith?”

The very question seems to imply that faith and fear are mutually exclusive.  In fact, the mostfrequently expressed command in the Bible is, “Do not fear!”  What this means is that if we take to heart what Jesus is saying through his questions we begin to see that permanent peace is possible.  Even his correction offers peace.  This candle lights the way to permanent peace that cannot easily be shaken.  Its light leads all the way to the other side of Christmas.

The Gospel writer Mark and the artist Rembrandt have helped me to see that there is no such thing as a hypothetical storm.  The only way we truly get what a raging storm feels like is to put ourselves in the boat.  I am sure that you have been there.  It may have been something as sudden as getting run off the road by a negligent semi truck driver.  It may have been much more profound than that.  Today, weeks before Christmas, let us cross over to the other side of Christmas and discover that permanent peace is possible through the presence, the power and even the correction of Jesus.  Amen.