Mark 4:35-5:20 “Sea-Storm and the Man of the Tombs”
(CTK, Raleigh, N.C. March 8, 2009)
Two summers ago my wife Jenn and I got to take our oldest daughter Naomi to the Busch Gardens Theme Park which is not far from Jenn’s parents’ house in Williamsburg,VA.
If you’ve ever been to Busch Gardens you know that the Park is made up of little Old World themed villages that have stores and restaurants and interspersed around these villages are rides for children as well as some pretty serious roller coasters.
As we entered the park, it was clear that Naomi was pretty excited. She had never been to a theme park and it is not something you can really explain to a 3-year-old, but she could sense that something big was happening.
Now we entered in one of these German hamlets, and right in front of us was a souvenir shop that specialized in funny hats made out of foam and ribbon and other vibrant fibers: 10 gallon hats, kings crowns, firemen’s hats, all bright colors and right up a 3-year-old's alley. Naomi ran into this store and began trying things on.
Five minutes later we are still at the store, and Naomi comes up to Jenn smiling and says,
“Oh Mommy Bush Gardens is so much fun!”
“Oh Mommy Bush Gardens is so much fun!”
Jenn said, “Honey there is a lot more to see so we should go now and see it.”
So we moved on to the next village where there was a boat ride in which the little children float on a watery circular track that is a full thirty feet around. There is one 6 inch bump on the far end of the track to add to the excitement.
Naomi rode that ride three times. Around and around. White-knuckling over the bump. At the end of each time she would ask if she could do it again.
I explained, “Honey, there is a lot more to see.”
The whole visit was like this. Each new ride, or souvenir store, or funnel cake kiosk, upped the ante. Each thing was something Naomi had never seen before. Each ride was in itself a memorable event. Each new thing made the whole trip worthwhile her. But they kept coming, and Naomi’s excitement kept intensifying.
By the time we got off the Red Baron plane ride, Naomi gave in to the overstimulation and fell asleep on my shoulder while I ate Wiener schnitzel in the Festival House.
Have you ever experienced that? Have you ever been faced with something that starts of great and keeps getting better? I think it is an experience most often had by the young, those for whom life is a series of constantly new experiences.
But I also think it is pretty close to what we see happening in the Gospel of Mark. And it gets to the newness of Jesus.
“Who is Jesus?” It’s the question that the characters in this gospel keep asking, and it is implicitly the same question that Mark poses to his readers, including us.
Who is Jesus? He is a teacher who talks about God with utter and complete confidence and perfect logic. Who has heard a teacher like this before?
No wait? He is a miracle worker who heals the sick, makes the crippled walk, and casts out demons. He is a teacher and miracle worker like the prophets of the Old Testament, like Elijah and Elisha. Who has seen a man with such power and integrity?
No wait? He claims to forgive sins on his own authority. He is like a priest, but who has seen a priest who simply declares sins forgiven?
With each story, Mark ups the ante about Jesus. Just when the crowds think they have got him pinned down, he shows himself to be so much more.
And with each new disclosure, he complicates the question. Here’s how:
If Jesus is more than mere Rabbi, a mere teacher, more than a mere miracle worker, more than a mere priest, than what claims should he make on our lives. What do we have to do in response to this extraordinary individual, Jesus of Nazereth?
In Mark 4, Jesus is about to up the ante again. He is about to do something that further complicates the question of his identity.
Jesus Ups the Ante and Two Different Stories about the Same Thing
He is about to up the ante, and in doing so we learn something more about his authority. In fact we learn two things about his authority.
Here they are:
Jesus’ own, personal authority is overwhelmingly global and it is imminently local.
GLOBAL: By calming the sea-storm, Jesus shows that his authority has overwhelmingly global ramifications, overwhelmingly global reach, and overwhelmingly global jurisdiction. This authority includes even the forces of nature.
Jesus has the power and authority to create and re-create the heavens and earth. It is expansive, extensive, cosmic, international, and universal. In other words, God created the entire natural world and through Jesus means to redeem the entire natural world as well, setting it to rights.
LOCAL
However, Jesus authority is also imminently local. By restoring the demoniac, Jesus shows that his authority has imminently local ramifications; it is local to region, to city, to family, all the way down to the ultimate locality, to the level of the individual and the personal.
In addition to having the power and authority to create and restore the heavens and earth, Jesus also has the power and authority to create and redeem individual souls. And not only does he create and redeem them, he knows them. He enters into a real, personal relationship with him.
By putting these two stories together, Mark (as well as the other gospel writer Matthew and Luke) opens up for us the wonderful idea that the God of the universe knows, loves, and restores individual humans.
Global Power
The story of the sea-storm picks up where we left off last week. Jesus has just preached on the seashore to a crowd so large that he had to speak from a boat pushed just a short distance into the water.
It seems that immediately following his lesson, Jesus and the disciples slip off into the sea. We don’t know where he is going but we can infer from the events that follow that he might be looking for a moment’s rest. We know that Jesus takes breaks from the crowds sometimes, disappearing in the wilderness with his close disciples just to get away.
And this seems to be the reasoning for the boat trip.
That also explains why Jesus is sleeping in the boat when the storm rises up.
Look: there is a bit of disagreement among interpreters over why Jesus is sleeping in the boat. It is a salient element to the story, but it isn’t clear why he is sleeping. Why does Mark include this little piece of information? There are 3 options that we have to work with:
1. Mark tells us that Jesus is sleeping in order to link this story about the Jesus to the story about Jonah. The story of Jonah is probably one of the better know Bible stories, so I won’t retell it in full here: God tells Jonah to go preach to the much hated citizens of the Assyrian city of Nineveh. Jonah refuses, boards a boat for some far off place, the boat gets caught in a squall, nearly sinks, Jonah sleeping in the hull is roused by the Captain and thrown overboard, the sea-storm immediately dissipates and Jonah is swallowed by a large fish. Got it?
The story is similar to the one we have today, and some interpreters believe that Mark wants us to think about Jonah when we read here what happens to Jesus. In order to help us along, Mark includes this bit about Jesus sleeping, hey just like Jonah.
2. Mark tells us that Jesus is sleeping in order to give us a clue about Jesus’ humanity. Jesus is fully human, he works hard, he does a lot of public speaking, has to deal with many different people all of whom want something from him. It’s exhausting. So much so that he falls asleep in the boat and even a storm cannot keep him awake.
3. Mark tells us that Jesus is sleeping in order to give us a clue about Jesus’ divinity. Though Jesus is a human, he has a full, complete confidence in his own divine identity. He sleeps like a baby because he knows he is one with God, his time has not come, and he is secure in this divine insight. He knows he is not going to die tonight.
So which is it? Is fact that Jesus sleeps meant to connect this story to Jonah? Is it a clue to the human side of Jesus? Or is it a clue to the divine side of Jesus? Okay, trick question, because it is all of the above.
The sleeping Jesus is supposed to make you think about the story of Jonah. In that story, a suspicious storm strikes up, it is quieted by God and all of the witnesses are left terrified. Mark wants us to think about Jonah because of the part in both stories when the wind and the wind and the waves are made calm.
Who does it? Who calms the wind and the water in the story of Jonah? Remember the sailors cast lots: who has brought this storm on us? The lot falls to Jonah. The begrudgingly throw Jonah overboard and the storm immediately dissipates.
Who calms the winds and the waves? God does. The Lord.
Even the pagan sailors get it. They know what they have just seen, that it is the hand of God, the authority of God, and God alone, over the storm. You can tell by how they respond:
Do they slap their hands together and say, wow, good thing we figured out that problem. “Close call, Matey!”
No, Jonah 1:16 says that the sailors “feared the Lord exceedingly.”
What kind of God does such a thing as this? Who is this cosmic God who cares about the rebellion of a single man.
Now, fast forward to this story in Mark. Jesus sleeps, the apostles wake him for fear of their lives and the wind and the waves are calmed. Okay, Mark is asking, do you see who calmed the wind and the waves this time? Can you see the difference in the stories amidst their similarities?
It’s Jesus. Jesus is to the storm in Mark 4 what the Lord is to the storm in Jonah 1.
And look how the disciples respond to the authority of God in Christ. Do they cheer: Three cheers for Jesus.
No Mark 4:41 says they were filled with “great fear” which in Greek is almost the exact phrase found in the Jonah story in reference to the pagan sailors.
What kind of man wields this power?
This is what the authority of God inspires in those who see it firsthand.
But option 2 works as well. Jesus’ sleep is also a reminder of his humanity. It is a fascinating idea that Jesus slept. Think about it, the Lord of the universe, lies down, ponders some random thoughts, and then unconsciousness overtakes him. Do you know how unique that really is? Jesus was fully man, he could get tired, he could become exhausted.
So he gets in the boat, and he lies back like a businessman on a red-eye flight, trying to fit in sleep wherever he can. We should be able to identify with Jesus’ humanity.
But option 3 works as well. Just the fact that Jesus sleeps is a clue to his divinity. No matter how physically tired you are, the fear of imminent death will almost always keep you awake. I have been exhausted in mind and body after a day of work, but lie awake in bed because of a crying baby or dripping sink. Not to mention a deadly sea-storm.
Have you ever thought about this? We can’t know how Jesus’ mind grappled with and understood his own divinity.
I mean what does that look like, to be fully man, with neural synapses firing, and all of the other complex physiological workings of a fully human mind, and then to know without a doubt that one’s self is actually the true, God of the universe. We will never be able to comprehend the mind of an individual in whom full humanity and full divinity dwell, but we can get a glimpse here.
We see here that Jesus did not fear the wind and the waves or anything that they could do to him.
This is because the Creator need not be restless due to the dangers of creation. When Jonah secretly slept below the decks, it was out of fatalism. When Jesus sleeps in the hull of the boat, it is out of confidence. The Creator is not afraid of the creation.
And that is what is being signaled here. This is the trajectory that Mark’s gospel is tracing.
Jesus is always upping the ante. Jesus is more than a teacher, he is a miracle worker. Now once you swallow that, he ups the ante. Jesus is more than a teacher and a miracle-worker, he has the authority of the Creator.
Only the Creator can subjugate the wind and waves in such a way.
You have to understand this, that to the ancient mind, the sea was bulletproof evidence of existence of the gods. It was the unformed realm, it was chaos objectified, it was volatile, it was a place of death.
When Jonah’s prays from the belly of the fish that swallows him, he describes his descent down into the sea, first he is in the waves, then tangled in the seaweed on the sea floor, finally ending in Sheol, the dark netherworld of the dead.
We see this also in the book of Revelation, in chapter 20, when the dead rise to be judged before Jesus, it says,
And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. Rev. 21:13
The sea was the great untouchable region. No human in history could quiet it or calm it, because it represented something that existed beyond humanity.
The sea is God’s domain. He alone can manage its volatility. Psalm 107 is a Psalm of Praise that focuses in on God’s role as Creator and sole proprietor of the sea. In it the Psalmist writes,
Psalm 107:23-29 23 Some went down to the sea in ships, doing business on the great waters; 24 they saw the deeds of the LORD, his wondrous works in the deep. 25 For he commanded and raised the stormy wind, which lifted up the waves of the sea. 26 They mounted up to heaven; they went down to the depths; their courage melted away in their misery [my gloss]; 27 they reeled and staggered like drunken men and were at their wits' end. 28 Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. 29 He made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed.
The Psalmist is painting a picture of the best efforts of men to harness the sea. They can’t do it. It’s a failed endeavo. By setting sail they are subjecting themselves to its dangers, and ultimately throwing themselves on God’s mercy.
Now in this story in Mark, it is telling that Jesus does not calm the sea in name of the Lord. He does not act as a mediator between the sea and its Creator. That is what we would expect of a prophet and miracle worker.
When another teacher/miracle worker, named Elijah called down lightening from heaven, he had to do it on God’s authority, and so he prays:
O LORD, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel, and that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your word. 1 Kings 18:36
That is how it is done, because no mere human would assume power over creation.
So it is telling that Jesus offers no such prayer. He is showing his superiority over all others. He does not say, “Peace. Be still in the name of the Lord.” He just says, “Peace. Be Still.” Jesus is the authority. He directly controls to the storm just as the Lord does in Psalm 107.
And so you see the, Jesus is complicating the question: “Who is he?” and as if on cue in v.41, that is exactly the question that the disciples ask.
Local Power
And the question should still ring in our ears as the next story begins.
So Jesus’ authority is overwhelmingly global in reach, it’s jurisdiction spreads to include the forces of nature even the power of the wind and the waves. But, as the next story shows us, it is also imminently local.
Just to be clear: the man that Mark describes in chapter 5 suffers from real life demonic possession. The demons are self-conscious, they speak of themselves in first person, they recognize that they are many in number. They have knowledge about Jesus that a Gentile man walking the shore could not have. They recognize that they inhabit a host body (as seen by the fact that they beg to be cast transferred to the herd of pigs).
This man is not suffering from a clinically treatable behavioral disorder. He has actual foreign and wicked spirits living in his body. Deal with it.
Also, I should add, we know very little about the details of demon possession. This is the longest passage in the Bible about an exorcism, and even here there is a sense that much more is going on than we have access too. Why do the demons ask not to be sent out of the region? Why do they prefer the pigs? We don’t know.
What we do see is the effect the demons have on the man. The demons had effectively made the man feral. They had animalized him. He lived among the scavenging animals that frequent burial grounds. He had become a thing of horror to those around him as much as to himself, breaking any sort of restraints put on him and savaging himself with stones.
His name is omitted, probably forgotten. His family had given up on him. His friends and neighbors fear him. There is perhaps no more isolated, alone, wasted human in the whole Bible, than this man.
I don’t watch a lot of horror movies, but most of the ones I have seen seem to be to get it all wrong. There’s just something to neat about them. The vampires are too well dressed. The evil being just wants to scare the victim, or kill them. But that sort of horror is almost completely absent from the Bible. That’s not how true evil works.
True evil seeks to turn back God’s work of creation. True evil seeks to unravel the work that God has done. True evil seeks to make chaos out of ordered life.
Here it is on display. True evil like that which would ravage a man made in the image of God, until he becomes little more than the walking dead, or a rabid dog.
That force is much more obvious in our world. Sin, disobedience to God, is ultimately dehumanizing. It seeks to unmake what God has made.
Look when God made humanity, he made it in his image, and in doing so, bestowed on it an honor that was not bestowed on any other part of his creation. To be in the image of God is to be fully human. Sin is the rejection of that status. Sin is the willing desire to no longer be fully human.
It is an attempt to break the relationship between the image-bearer and the image he bears.
In the man of the tombs we see the effect of that evil taken to the extreme.
But we miss the point if we don’t identify with the demon-possessed man. We have to identify with him. What he represents is a man who is farther down a road that all of us are on unless or until we meet Jesus.
Note that, unlike those who ask “who is this man?”, the demons immediately recognize Jesus for who he is.
Mark 5:7 "What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me."
By naming Jesus and attempting to call on God to protect them from him, the demons are at once completely subservient and manipulative. This is not true worship, but rather a vain attempt to escape Jesus power by some sort of reverse exorcism: the demon trying to exorcise the exorcist.
However, as with the sea-storm, Jesus effortlessly overcomes them with a word, allowing them to enter the pigs and thus be destroyed.
In today’s thinking, in the age of animal rights groups and general sympathy for the humane treatment of animals, let’s be honest the pigs pose a problem.
We have to be careful how we read our own context into the ancient one. Here are few things to think about.
1. Jesus is a Jew and for a Jew, the pigs are only one piece of a problematic puzzle in this text. You see, according to Mosaic law the pigs are unclean. And Jesus is hanging out right next to a herd of them, a lot of them. 2000. Second, Jesus is in Gentile country which is thereby unclean. And he is having a conversation with man who has an unclean spirit, who has been living amongst the remains of the dead which renders him further unclean.
Jesus risks violating all of these cleanness laws in order to save this man’s life. To the Jew, the death of the pigs is not only a necessary evil, it’s good riddance.
2. To the Gentiles in the surrounding area, the loss of the pigs poses a catastrophic economic event. They’re worth a lot of money. Sure the demon possessed man is restored, but what about our lively hood. Jesus prefers the salvation of one man to the economic interests of the crowd. For Jesus, this is was a dire situation which required a drastic solution.
3. Finally the death of the herd paints a vivid picture of the destructive intent and power of the satanic forces.
And here we have the Son of God, who just wrestled the forces of nature and won, taking a moment to stop and talk to this man who no one else will talk to, and then to deliver him from his own personal oppression.
Do you see what a picture of compassion and humility Mark is drawing here? Elsewhere in the gospel of Mark, Jesus resists dealing with Gentiles (Syro-phoenecian woman, Mark 7:26), and when he does that, he does it to highlight the Gentile’s faith in contrast to the religious leaders who reject him.
But here, he leaves all that aside. Here, there is only compassion.
And look, the possessed man, now restored to his right mind gets it. He understands who it really is who has saved him.
Jesus tells him,
Mark 5:19-20 19, "Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you." 20 And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him, and everyone marveled.
For him, Jesus and the Lord are one. For the Gentile, unlike the Jew, there is no confusion about who the Messiah ought to be. Jesus is the Lord, and that is all that he needs to know.
And the Lord has authority is overwhelmingly global and imminently local. It is cosmic and worldwide, and it is intensely, compassionately, tenderly personal.
Who Do You Serve? The Creator or the Chaos
Before you answer: We live in a time of increasing uncertainty.
By all indicators the economy is in a mess. Banks are shutting down.
The Labor Department reported Friday that unemployment is at its highest level since 1983. A chief U.S. economist estimates it will hit 10% by year-end.
That is 1 in 10 people, or 15-20 people in a crowd the size of this congregation.
This isn’t new, of course. There has always been uncertainty in human life.
Our country is engaged in 2 major armed conflicts.
There is the uncertainty of September 11.
And we live in one of the safest and most secure countries of the world.
Forget about the struggles of Christians in the southern hemisphere, and in the poverty of the third world, and in countries where the rule of law is weighted, biased against them, where oppression is a present reality.
Uncertainty and chaos are a part of the post-Fall life. This isn’t new.
Furthermore, every one of us has been deconstructed by sin. Every one of us has felt our lives unravel as we chase after our own comfort, our own thrills, and our self-indulgence.
Some of you here today wonder how on earth the chaos in the world around you could every match the chaos you feel daily within yourself.
Who hasn’t lay in bed and wondered sometimes, like the disciples in that boat, “Jesus, do you care that I am perishing?”
But to ask that of Jesus means we forgot who he is. And when we forget who he is, it’s inevitable that we will begin to serve the chaos and not the Creator.
We can tell who we serve by what occupies our time, energy, thoughts, and money. As politicians like to say, “What do we talk about around our kitchen tables?”
If you sense the need for deliverance, that is a good start, but it is not the beginning of wisdom or the beginning of deliverance for that matter.
The need for deliverance is not enough. We must come to see Jesus as the Deliverer who cannot fail. He is the one who calms the sea-storm with a word, and who restores peace to the troubled spirit.
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