Stormy Weather

Photo of the Rev. Canon Sue Sommer by The Rev. Canon Susan Sommer

Tuesday nights this time of year generally find me planted in front of the television watching the Discovery Channel’s program, Deadliest Catch. Now in its fourth season, this reality show follows the exploits of a fleet of crab fishermen who fish in the Bering Sea off the Aleutian Islands of Alaska. Each episode features a bunch of foul-mouthed fishermen working insanely long hours hauling tons of crab out of what is arguably the most dangerous sea on the planet.

Why do they do it? Certainly the money is good. The deckhands can earn what would amount to a year’s salary in just a couple of weeks. But the working conditions during those couple of weeks are, to put it mildly, horrendous. What compels them to put their lives in jeopardy year after year? Simply put, it’s what they do. If you want to play it safe, get a job onshore. But if your job is to catch crab, then you suit up and put out to sea, stormy weather notwithstanding.

In our gospel passage for today, Jesus has been preaching, teaching, and healing his way through Galilee. Already he has attracted the attention of the Pharisees, and not in a good way. Clearly, by his actions, Jesus poses a threat to the status quo, to those to mediate the sacred, to those whose interests are best served by having no boats rocking in their harbor.

So given this increasing tension, it makes sense for Jesus and the disciples to put some distance between themselves and an increasingly hostile environment by getting into a boat and sailing off. But Mark’s original audience would likely have seen other significance in Jesus and the disciples sailing eastward toward Gentile country. By the time Mark’s gospel was written, the Church’s mission to the Gentiles was well underway. And it wasn’t exactly smooth sailing. As we know, Christianity began as a movement within Judaism. The earliest of Christian gatherings outside of Jerusalem probably took place in the context of synagogue worship in the cities of the Diaspora. Without the centuries of priestly tradition behind them, the synagogues attracted Gentile seekers – people who were attracted to the teachings and ethical norms of Judaism, but who did not formally undergo conversion to Judaism. With this model in place, apostles such as Paul were able to establish a body of followers who were more likely to have been Gentile than Jew.

Not surprisingly, this posed a problem. Staying separate from the Gentiles was one of the defining characteristics of Judaism for most of its sacred history. Today’s reading from 1 Samuel is but one example. When Israel is threatened, it is threatened by Gentiles. When Israel falls away from the path of righteousness, it is because they were seduced by Gentile worship and ways. For the infant Church, who had yet to separate itself completely from Judaism, a mission to the Gentiles was nothing short of dangerous. Nothing good had ever come from mixing it up with foreigners. Why on earth should a mission to the Gentiles be any different?

These were the questions that Mark’s audience would have been asking and which Mark seeks to address in shaping his gospel the way he does. Jesus begins his ministry in the homeland, but in fairly short order, gets in a boat and heads eastward. And a storm blows up, fierce enough to swamp the boat. Well, yeah. They’re heading toward Gentile Country. Of course disaster is going to befall them. What was Jesus thinking?

Mark suggests that Jesus was thinking about how God seeks to draw into his loving embrace all whom God made, Jew and Gentile alike. For Mark, Christ followers are identified not by their religious pedigree, but rather by the capacity to recognize Jesus as the Son of God and to respond in faith.

Whenever the Church reaches out beyond its borders, not in a spirit of conquest but in a spirit of brotherhood, the Church runs into stormy weather. The waters get riled, the players get anxious, and the leaders get called out on their supposedly recklessness. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. observed this phenomenon in 1963 when he wrote a letter from a Birmingham jail cell to a number of clergymen, (including the Episcopal Bishop of Alabama, by the way), who criticized King and his supporters for asking for too much, too soon. Following the General Convention action in 1976 which permitted women to be ordained in the Episcopal Church, women found that a great many dioceses continued to shut them out of the process. And, of course, following the consent to ordain Bishop Gene Robinson in 2003, both houses of General Convention in 2006 approved Resolution BO33 which called for a period of self-restraint on the part of dioceses electing bishops, lest another partnered gay candidate for the episcopacy be elected.

And those are just examples from the last 40 years or so in this country alone. In response to the summons of the gospel, the Church reaches out beyond its borders to whoever is the equivalent of Gentiles at that moment, and storms blow up. No surprise. Systems are inherently static; any change made in the system will precipitate reactivity in the system. The mistake we make is the mistake the disciples made in today’s gospel – assuming that the storm is somehow a sign of divine disfavor, or worse, disregard. Certainly the Church in every age must decide for itself how it will respond when the clouds gather and the waves begin to crash over the bow. But whenever the Church assumes that conflict or disputation is evidence that Church is necessarily doomed, it might be prudent to remember today’s Gospel. Jesus did not order the boat to come about and make for home. Nor did he choose that moment to ascend into heaven and leave the hapless disciples to founder. He bade the storm, “Peace. Be still,” and asked the disciples, “Why are you afraid?”

Why are you afraid?

It’s a question that remains relevant for the Church in 2009. And it is one that brings me back to Deadliest Catch. I have no doubt that some of the crab fishermen on the show are adrenaline junkies. But I suspect that those who last more than 1 or 2 fishing seasons are men who learn to contain their anxiety in order to do their job. They learn to focus on the task at hand. They each learn to trust that the other is doing what he is supposed to do when he is supposed to do it. Their fear does not lead to them to panic; it leads them to alertness.

Stormy weather, be it meterological or metaphorical, is a fact of life whenever the ship leaves the safety of the harbor. Thanks be to God for the presence of Christ on board amid the occasionally wildly pitching deck and icy waves crashing over us. In his gracious presence alone we, and the storms around us, can be stilled.