You probably know this already, but just in case you don’t, let me break some bad news top you:  That Magic 8 ball you had as a kid?  It didn’t really work.  Sorry.  Crystal balls, fortune tellers, tarot cards?  They don’t work either.  I’m sorry.  They don’t.

There are so many ways that humans try to predict…and understand the future.  Because we want to know what’s going to happen.  We don’t like the unknown…we don’t like things that feel mysterious, and out of our control.  

We try and predict the weather…but as we all know from recent experience, that is often a mixed success.  

I take a strange delight in watching the sports experts and analysts swing and miss when predicting what’s going to happen in a game…or a tournament…or even an entire season.  I’m not proud of this, but I actually love it when Joe Buck and Troy Aikman are wrong. 

And why do we keep paying attention to political polls.  If the last 20 years have taught us nothing else, they’ve taught us that the polls have margins of error way beyond their value.

But…we keep trying.  In these areas and many, many more, we keep looking forward.  We keep trying to predict the future.

I was speaking to a nurse at the Owatonna Hospice House once.  We had a member there who was approaching the end of their life.  I was already thinking ahead to meetings with the family…to visitations…to a funeral.  I asked the hospice nurse “do you have a sense of timing?  Do you know how much time this person has?”  

She smiled and said something I’ll never forget.  She just said: “It will unfold.”  And then she went back to her work.  I love those words.  I have stolen and used them in other settings: “It will unfold.”  Those three simple words imply that we may not be able to control or predict how things will play out…but we have to accept them.  And we accept that we are not in control.

Jesus’ disciples…they were fishermen who understood the power and the fickleness of the sea.  But they could not predict the future either.  So, when Jesus said, “let us go across to the other side of the lake,” it was late and it was getting dark.  But it had been a beautiful day, the sea was calm, so it didn’t seem like a big deal. The disciples were confident they could handle it.  “Let’s go.”  They took Jesus into the boat.  The scriptures say they took him “Just as he was.”  

When they were out to sea, suddenly…unexpectedly…a great gale arose, and the waves beat the boat and it began to fill with water.  But Jesus… he was in the stern.  Asleep.  On the cushion.  The disciples woke him and said “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”  Jesus woke up.  He looked out at the storm and held out his hand and rebuked the wind.  And he said to the sea, “Peace, be still.”  Then the wind ceased.  And there was a dead calm.  

Jesus turned and said to them, “Why are you afraid?  Have you still no faith?”  And the disciples were filled with a great awe, and they said to one another, “Who is this?  That even the wind and the sea obey him?”  

What has always stuck out to me in this story is that Jesus boarded the boat, “Just as he was.”  It says “just as he was.”  What exactly do these words mean?  Do the disciples even know just who Jesus was, really?  

This story takes place early in Mark’s Gospel.  So far, Jesus has called the disciples…and he’s healed the man with the withered hand.  But mainly he’s just been teaching and preaching.  For all these naïve fishermen know, Jesus is a captivating teacher, with an unusual ability to connect with people.  But nothing more.  They have no idea yet just who he was.  

So, when the waves come and threaten to swamp the boat, the disciples expect him to react as they did.  In verse 38, they don’t ask him to calm the storm.  What they say is: “Do you not care?  We are going to die!  How can you sleep at a time like this?”  

Mark’s Gospel says Jesus boarded the boat “just as he was,”  because “who Jesus was,” and “who the disciples thought Jesus was,” at that point were two very different things. The disciples did not yet understand the depth of Jesus’ power.  They didn’t realize that he is God’s own flesh…capable of scolding the wind into silence…able to speak a Word of peace into the very depths of the sea…which is exactly what he does.  

Mark tells us that after Jesus’ stunning rebuke of the wind, and the rain, and the sea…there was a dead calm.  

It’s probably not just the sea that is stark still.  I picture the disciples frozen in shock and maybe fear, looking at each other, the sea and then at Jesus, saying “What just happened here?  What have we done?  Who is this?  Who have we brought on board our boat?”

The disciples arrive at the end of today’s story with their faces pale and their voices shaky, asking themselves “Who is this…who doesn’t even panic when the wind threatens to shred our sail and the waves try to beat our boat into toothpicks.  Who is this…that the wind and the sea obey him?”

Well, he’s Jesus; “Just as he is.” And Jesus has the power to change the world.  He can take what is…and he can change it into what will be. 

• He can take chaos…and create calm.
• He can take sorrow…and create joy.
• He can take pain…and bring healing.
• He can take scarcity…and create abundance.

Jesus is the one who transforms the world.

Jesus can also do the reverse.  While he can command the waves into silence… he also has the power to stir them up.  

If Jesus can take the chaos of our lives and tame it, then Jesus can also take what’s tame in our lives and make it chaotic.  That’s what Jesus did with the disciples that day.  They thought they understood the world around them; they thought they knew this Jesus…this teacher.  Jesus may have calmed the sea, but he turned their world upside down.  

Real transformation in our lives is impossible without a little bit of chaos.  Change is almost unheard of without a period of spiritual sea-sickness.  Our lives are full of unexpected twists and turns and waves of change.  The Jesus who can calm the seas can also stir them up again.  Author Mary Ann McKibben Dana has written that “…the God in this story is wild, powerful and unpredictable.  ‘Just as I am’ is far beyond our comprehension.  God can calm the seas…but God can stir them up too.”

For me, the moments of greatest challenge…the times of most powerful transformation…the times when I have truly stepped into something new have also been times that have created the most fear and anxiety in my life.  

Graduating…getting married…losing a parent…then becoming a parent…taking a new job…moving our family…sending a kid off to college…accepting change is always risky.  You’ve all felt this, I know.

It is one thing to realize this when standing here…safe where we are…safe on solid ground.  But it is another thing entirely to glimpse it on those days when nothing but a few wooden boards stand between us…and countless fathoms of deep, blue mystery. 

“Just as He was.”  That’s always been the phrase that’s grabbed me in this story. But I’m always amazed at the layers of God’s Word that we miss the first time through it.  What I am drawn to today is another little detail that I’d never noticed in the years I’ve been reading and studying this story. 

“Other boats were with them.”  Think about that for a moment.  I’ve always visualized this story with this lone boat out there…fighting the storm, throwing water overboard with buckets…but there wasn’t just one boat.  

Many boats were there.  But only one of those boats had Jesus on it.  The other boats are fighting for their lives and they have no savior nearby to call on.  And so, the disciples who wake up Jesus and appeal to him, they aren’t just doing it to save their own skins.  Other boats are in danger too.  

Here is a truth that I am taking away from this story today:  We are all in our own boats.  And like the disciples…we all experience the storms.  We experience the challenges.  

In Owatonna, we’ve had a rough couple of months.  It’s been…well… stormy.  Sure, we’ve experienced storms of the wind and rain variety.  We’ve had enough rain and wind in the last few weeks to flood the river, take down trees, put water in basements and put the farmer’s crops (and their livelihood) at risk.  

We’ve also experienced social and spiritual storms as well.  

• The country remains divided as we head towards the next set of elections.  And the anxiety about what might come of that goes up every day.  This last Thursday’s debate didn’t help, did it?
• Tension around social issues like immigration, poverty, race and human sexuality continues to take its toll.
• And deaths.  We’ve experienced a lot of death in our community.  Here at Trinity, just in the last two months, we’ve experienced the deaths of Danika Hinz Larsen, Edith Sellner-Osborne, Olivia Flores, Jackie Ostlund, Joan Dalen and Maggie Klaus. I’ve lost friends too:  Peder Eide, and Kimberly Devine Johnson.  These deaths…for family and friends, they were all tragic; and they affected so many people…so many boats.
  

It has been a stormy season, for all of us.  And there were days, I know for many of us…when it felt like the wind was blowing…and the water was up to here.

But our Gospel story for today reminds us that like the disciples…we are not alone in our boat.  Jesus promises to be with us.  And whenever I wonder if I can…or cannot survive the storm…Jesus looks at me and like he did with the disciples, says “Todd, where is your faith.”  And I’m reminded that Jesus has the power with just a Word, to calm the seas…dead calm.

And I am encouraged knowing that even if we are not together in the same boat all of the time, we are all out there, navigating the stormy waters…and the calm waters…together.  

No, we cannot predict the future.  No Magic 8 Ball is going to help us.  We don’t know what tomorrow looks like.  But we are all out there together.  We are the disciples in that small little fleet of boats.  And we look to Jesus to calm the waters.  Because of him, we are connected to each other.  We are not alone.

Trust in the Savior.  He is the one who calms the seas.  He is the one who is with us.  He is the one who looks at our lives and our hearts and says “Peace, be still.”  And with that word…our lives change.  And together, we land safely, on the other side.

Thanks be to God!

Amen.

Note: This sermon was significantly influenced by the work and the writing of author and teacher, Mary Ann McKibben Dana. I am grateful for her wisdom.