The Tempest

Delivered June 5, 2011

Psalm 107:23-32; Matthew 8:23-34

         I have been pondering what I am going to preach about during this summer. I considered different ideas. I thought about doing a series on the life of the OT patriarch Jacob or a series on the Holy Spirit. I might do those later, but I have decided that this summer I am going to preach on the “Stories of Jesus” - not stories that Jesus told, but stories about Jesus. So for the next three months I am going to be picking out some stories in the gospels from the life of Christ.

Today I am going to tell two stories. Many of the stories of Jesus come in pairs or threes in the gospels. These stories about Jesus are told by the gospel writers who are themselves storytellers. They group certain stories together for a reason. The stories found together often complement each other. They often illustrate and interpret each other. This is the case with the two stories we will look at today. One is about stilling a storm on the Sea of Galilee; the other is about Jesus healing two demoniacs – demon possessed men. In both cases Jesus uses his authority to bring peace and calm into the lives of people. They are two tempests, if you will – one meteorological and the other psychological – but both spiritual.

I. First is the Physical Tempest – the outer tempest - the stilling of the storm found in Matthew 8:23-27. There are different forms of this story in the gospels, but we are looking at Matthew’s account here today. Jesus got into a boat with his disciples and set out from Capernaum on the northwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee and set out for Gergesa on the eastern shore. Jesus used the journey to take a nap. The verses immediately preceding this tell us that Jesus had been surrounded by “great multitudes” (v. 18) coming for healing and for teaching.  Jesus was exhausted and used the time in the boat to take a power nap.

While he was sleeping, a storm arose on the Sea of Galilee. Weather came into Galille from the Mediterranean in the west and blew through a narrow pass (called the Horns of Hattin where a great battle took place between the Crusaders and Saladin in the 12^th century) in the mountains that bordered the Sea of Galilee, picking up velocity in the process. So storms can arise very quickly and powerfully.

Our passage says that the boat was quickly covered with waves. The disciples panicked and cried out to Jesus, waking him up, saying, “Lord, save us. We are perishing!” Jesus responds, “Why are you fearful, O you of little faith?” Then He arose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. ²⁷ So the men marveled, saying, “Who can this be, that even the winds and the sea obey Him?” That is the story. What does it teach us?

It tells us of the peace of Christ. Jesus was sleeping during the storm, and it seems like he would have slept right through it if he hadn’t been woken up. This picture of Jesus sleeping peacefully in the middle of a tempest is symbolic. It communicates the peace of God, which is with us in all the storms of life. There is a hymn that says: “There is a place of quiet rest, Near to the heart of God, A place where sin cannot molest, Near to the heart of God. O Jesus, blest Redeemer, Sent from the heart of God, Hold us, who wait before Thee, Near to the heart of God.” As Christians we believe that the Holy Spirit of God dwells within us. The divine Spirit of peace is at the very heart of us. As I said in my sermon last Sunday, I picture the human spirit as a space at the center of our being in which dwells the Spirit of God, who is also called in the NT the Spirit of Jesus. No matter what is happening on the outside, there is a place of quiet rest in our innermost being near to the heart of God.

In the story Jesus awakes and calms the storm. The peace which was inside Christ – which is Christ – came to the outside. “Then He arose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm.” Inner peace is externalized in outer peace in the stilling of the storm in the story. Contrast this peace with the attitude of the disciples. In the words of Jesus, they were fearful and faithless. He says to them, “Why are you fearful, O you of little faith?” He seems to be saying that peace comes from faith, which in turn dispels fear.

The key is faith. Unfortunately faith is one of the most misunderstood concepts in Christianity. Faith is not believing something against available evidence. It is not ignoring the facts. It is not “blind faith,” as it is so often labeled. Faith is seeing clearly. It is seeing the world, the universe and our lives the way they really are. It is peeling back the veneer of appearances to see the presence of God – the Kingdom of God - in our midst in all circumstances. Faith is seeing, and seeing is believing.

In this situation Jesus had complete faith. He knows that God is in control. That is why he could sleep in the boat and why he was not afraid when he awoke and saw the storm. Faith is not ignoring the storm or saying it doesn’t exist. It is not Pollyannaish optimism. It is not thinking the storm is not dangerous. It is trusting in the power of God who is greater than the storm. It is knowing that you are in God’s hands, and therefore all is well. Even if the storm resulted in the boat sinking and the death of all on board. When it comes to faith in God it is not thinking that we are never going to die. I have news for you: we are all going to die. Faith is trusting that our life in Christ is more powerful than death. That we will not perish even in death. Faith is seeing storms in a wider context. It is viewing a whole different dimension of reality. It is seeing the kingdom of God in our midst, even in a tempest.

And Jesus was perfectly one with God and dramatically exercised the creative power of God to clam the storm. That is why the disciples exclaimed, “What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obeys him?”  

II. Let’s go on to the second story – the story of the healing of the two demoniacs. This is a story of the inner tempest raging within human beings. There are connections between the two stories. In the first story, the storm on the sea is primary - echoed in the restless hearts of the disciples who are fearful and faithless. In the second story, the inner storm that can exist in the human soul is emphasized. The story says that after the storm on the sea was stilled, Jesus and the disciples arrived at the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee. There they are immediately greeted by two demon-possessed men. “When He had come to the other side, to the country of the Gergesenes, there met Him two demon-possessed men, coming out of the tombs, exceedingly fierce, so that no one could pass that way.”

There are different ways to interpret demon possession in the Bible. Some see it as an ancient explanation for mental and emotional illness. Others see it as literal spiritual beings – fallen angels – that can actually enter into humans. I am not going to get into that discussion in a sermon. We can tackle issues like that in a Bible study, but it more than can be dealt with in this sermon. It is sufficient here to say that these men were in agony; they were in mental, emotional, spiritual turmoil. A tempest was raging in their hearts and souls and they were out of control.

In Mark’s telling of this story there was only one demon possessed man. It says of him, “And when He had come out of the boat, immediately there met Him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit, ³ who had his dwelling among the tombs; and no one could bind him,^[b] not even with chains, ⁴ because he had often been bound with shackles and chains. And the chains had been pulled apart by him, and the shackles broken in pieces; neither could anyone tame him. ⁵ And always, night and day, he was in the mountains and in the tombs, crying out and cutting himself with stones.” In Luke’s retelling of the story, it is also one man, but he has a legion of demons. A Roman legion was a military unit of 6000 soldiers. This guy was being pulled in 6000 different directions. In our story in Matthew’s gospel there are two men, but when the evil spirits are cast out, they are cast into a herd of swine (Mark’s gospel says 2000 swine), which immediately run headlong into the sea.

This story is symbolic of the emotional, psychological, spiritual turmoil that human beings can go through. It is speaking about the self-destructiveness that is the heart of so many of our addictive behaviors. It is speaking about inner confusion. It speaks about every type of psychological and spiritual problem you can think of. We don’t have to be over the edge and out of control for this to apply to us. Our case might not be as extreme as these poor fellows, but we can still identify with them. Anyone who has been through depression or mental and emotional problems, or who has had loved ones who suffered these conditions, knows what I am talking about. This story is about us.

Jesus crosses over the sea through a storm and arrives at Gergesa, which sounds like the Land of the Lost. It almost feels mythological like going over the River Styx and entering Hades. For a Jew to go the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee was like going to a different country. The country of the Gergesenes (or the Gadarenes, depending on your translation) was a land of foreigners on the far side of the sea outside of the Holy Land. There they raised pigs, unclean animals that no Jew would have anything to do with. Jesus and his disciples descend into these men’s personal hell, where no Jew would go, to men living among the tombs, another unclean place. Jesus comes into hell and brings peace to these troubled souls.

He does it with a single word. He simply says, “Go!” and the spirits flee from their hosts into the herd of swine. The great Protestant Reformer Martin Luther was a man who believed in demons. There is a famous story about when he was beginning this translation of the Bible into German. A demon appeared to him and it was so real to him that Luther threw his inkwell at the evil spirit. The ink stain can still be viewed today on the wall where he stayed in Wartburg Castle in Germany. Luther wrote the famous hymn “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.” In it he says, “And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us, we will not fear, for God hath willed his truth to triumph through us.  The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him; his rage we can endure,           for lo, his doom is sure; one little word shall fell him.”

In the gospel story Jesus uttered one little word, “Go.” And the devils fled from his presence “into the herd of swine. And suddenly the whole herd of swine ran violently down the steep place into the sea, and perished in the water.” Into the same waters of the Sea of Galilee that Jesus had traveled and calmed just a short time before.

The death of the swine reveals the spiritual meaning of these demonic forces. They are dark forces of self-destruction. There are forces of destruction in us. You look at some people’s lives and these forces seem to be close to the surface. Some people seem bent on self-destruction and the destruction of others around them. You can read about it in the daily newspapers and on the television news. People destroy their own lives and the lives of those around them. Sometimes with physical violence. Sometimes emotionally. Sometimes spiritually. We see it in abuse of various types. We see it in bullying. We see it in so many ways in our society.

And if we are honest we can get glimpses of that dark side of ourselves, and we whisper a prayer, “There but for the grace of God, go I.” This story of the demon-possessed men is the story of how the presence of Jesus brings peace to troubled souls … if we want it.  That is the lesson of this story. See how the people of that area who saw this healing respond to Jesus.  Do they invite him into their homes and lives? No, listen to the end of the story: “³³ Then those who kept them fled; and they went away into the city and told everything, including what had happened to the demon-possessed men. ³⁴ And behold, the whole city came out to meet Jesus. And when they saw Him, they begged Him to depart from their region.”

This is hard to comprehend. Why would they beg Jesus to leave? The obvious answer is that Jesus was responsible for the destruction of a herd of 2000 pigs, which was probably the town herd – the vast majority of the whole town’s wealth. They did not want Jesus destroying any more of their economy. But surely they saw how Jesus healed the two men. Wouldn’t they want him to do more healings in their city? Apparently not. At least not at that price. And that is what it comes down to once again, as we see so many times in the stories of Jesus. There is always a price to pay to have the peace of God and the power of God in your midst. And these people were not willing to pay the price.

The question then is whether we are willing to pay the price. We get so used to the way our lives are – comfortable with our darkness and sin – that we don’t want the change that would come if Christ really came into our lives with power. So we play at religion, and dabble at the spiritual life. We don’t mind a visit with Jesus once in a while on a Sunday. But it is a whole different matter to have him show up uninvited during the week changing our lives and costing us money. What would he do if he had free reign in our lives, our town, our homes… in our church? Who knows what it would cost us? These townspeople were not willing to pay the price. The question remains, are we?