Sunday Worship
Welcome to our Worship on the second Sunday after Trinity Sunday. Our Parish Eucharist is at 10 am at St Thomas' Church, and Revd Richard Hawkins will be preaching and presiding. If you can't be with us in person, you'll find everything you need to worship from home here on this page.
Our first hymn this morning is "Dear Lord and Father of Mankind"
Today's Gospel
Mark 4: v35 - 41 “Who then is this”
When evening had come, Jesus said to his disciples, “Let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But 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?” He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”
Reflection
J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic novel The Lord of the Rings tells the story of a quest to destroy a magic ring before an evil Dark Lord can find it and rule the world. The companions on the quest must take the ring to the Dark Lord’s stronghold and throw it into the furnace in which it was made. Their journey is beset by dangers, as the forces of evil try to stop them, but they have the wisdom and guidance of the wizard Gandalf to help them. Running from an attack, they take a road under the mountains, but that too takes them into the path of creatures who try to destroy them. They are faced by a terrible fiery monster, and in the battle that follows Gandalf falls into a fiery ravine.
Later on their travels some of the companions meet an old man disguised in a cloak and hat. They sense danger and are afraid. Who is this? But when he speaks, one of them feels something other than fear, “like the sudden bite of a keen air, or the slap of a cold rain that wakes an uneasy sleeper”. His instincts are right; the old man is Gandalf, returned as if from the dead. He is indeed now dangerous and terrible — but he is also still their friend and leader. There is new hope for the success of the quest.
The disciples know Jesus. He is their friend. They have travelled with him and listened to his stories. They have seen people healed. They have begun to understand something of his mission. But they have not even begun to grasp the miracle of who he is. It takes an episode of extreme danger to make them ask the question.
They are with Jesus in a boat crossing the lake when a storm blows up. Waves crash over the small boat. The disciples bail frantically, but nothing works. Jesus, meanwhile, is asleep. His friends wake him up, needing his help.
Calmly, he speaks to the wind and the water, and they subside. “Who then is this?” they ask one another. It is the right question. Who is it that can control watery chaos with a word? The disciples have read their scriptures and know that the universe was brought into being with a word from the creator God dividing the waters. They have sung the psalm that says to God, “the waters stood above the mountains. At your rebuke they flee; at the sound of your thunder, they take to flight” (Psalm 104:6-7). They have read the book of Job and heard God claim power over the created order: “who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb... and said... ‘here shall your proud waves be stopped’?” They know the story of the Red Sea, which God parted to let their ancestors cross on dry land.
Now Jesus speaks to raging water and it obeys. He reveals himself as more than a teacher, more than a healer. His friends have seen his divine power and they are in awe of him. “Who then is this?” He is still their friend and teacher, but like Gandalf’s companions, they have seen him as he truly is, as he will be on the other side of death.
When Mark included this story in his Gospel, he was talking to us. He tells us that we are not reading a biography of a good man. We are not hearing nice stories about farming and fishing. We are not even admiring the skill of a healer.
We are reading about God’s purpose for the world, brought to fruition through the ministry of Jesus. When Jesus stands in the boat and speaks to the waves, he acts with the authority of the one in whose Hands rests the entire universe. As we read on, this episode sheds its light over everything we read. And when we reach the end of the story, the defeat of death itself seems almost inevitable, because how can death hold on to one who can still the deathly power of the raging waters with a word?
