For the past several weeks in our series through the book of Mark, we have been hearing about Jesus’s pleas to the crowds to listen to him. To realize who it is standing in their midst so that they might believe the good news and find the freedom and peace that comes from being a citizen of God’s kingdom.
In the parable of the sower, Mark emphasizes different responses that people have to Jesus’s teaching. They are either “along the path”: hard and unbelieving. Or they are “on the rocks”: surface-y in the reception of Jesus’s word, but when things get tough, they turn away. Or they are “among the weeds”: and Jesus’s words sort of land, but really their life is consumed with other cares and pursuits, and so they never bear fruit. And finally, they might be in the good soil:
Mark 4:20 (CSB)
20 And those like seed sown on good ground hear the word, welcome it, and produce fruit thirty, sixty, and a hundred times what was sown.”
Mark emphasizes this throughout the first chapters of his gospel account: trusting Christ’s words, listening to them and doing them, setting aside every other concern or pursuit that would get in the way. Before the parables of the past few weeks, we see this short scene in Mark 3:
Mark 3:31–35 (CSB)
31 His mother and his brothers came, and standing outside, they sent word to him and called him. 32 A crowd was sitting around him and told him, “Look, your mother, your brothers, and your sisters are outside asking for you.” 33 He replied to them, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” 34 Looking at those sitting in a circle around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! 35 Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”
Here Mark is reemphasizing Jesus’s teaching that it is not simple acknowledgement of Jesus’s words as important that he is after, but a life that changes and reprioritizes and reorients around God’s words. A life that surrenders in trust of Christ.
The rest of chapter four and five from here recounts four of Jesus’s miracles, highlighting the different responses people have to him. We’ll look at two of the four today, and two next week.
First, Jesus and his disciples take a little boat ride.
Calming the storm
Mark 4:35–41
35 On that day, when evening had come, he told them, “Let’s cross over to the other side of the sea.” 36 So they left the crowd and took him along since he was in the boat. And other boats were with him.
37 A great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking over the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. 38 He was in the stern, sleeping on the cushion. So they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher! Don’t you care that we’re going to die?”
39 He got up, rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Silence! Be still!” The wind ceased, and there was a great calm. 40 Then he said to them, “Why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith?” 41 And they were terrified and asked one another, “Who then is this? Even the wind and the sea obey him!”
I don’t know how much experience you have with really bad storms. We’re a little far north from the ravages of the hurricanes in the southern United States the past couple weeks, but we are in the part of the country known as “tornado alley” here, and especially after the derecho in 2020, I imagine you have some encounter with this overwhelming force of nature.
I spent much of my childhood in Western Nebraska, and at that point the area was still reeling from “The night of the twisters”. In 1980, seven tornados ravaged nearby Grand Island, killing five, injuring 200, and causing hundreds of millions of dollars of damage to the city. I myself remember going to the basement through several tornados and generally being terrified of storms.
In early high school, I went to boy scout camp one summer at Camp Mitigwa, and one of the nights we had extremely severe weather. Torrential rain, lightning striking everywhere nearby, and high winds making a ton of noise. Our troop huddled together under a rain tarp and put on brave faces. But we were all scared.
The next morning we discovered that we were right to be.A tornado had ripped through the forest about a hundred yards from us, and we had missed the alarm bells because we were in the remotest camp site in the camp.We were fortunate that we had no injuries.But we were right to be scared. Around a decade later in 2008 4 scouts were killed and about 50 others injured in similar scenario in western Iowa.
Now, I grew up in church. The story of Jesus calming the storm was familiar to me. In Sunday school its easy to get a laugh at the expense of the disciples for being afraid when the Creator of Heaven and Earth was right there in the boat with them!But I’ll be honest, I don’t remember praying that night at Boy Scout camp. Even though I was known as a “church kid” - Jesus just wasn’t that real, that present to me, at that point in my life.
I was just like the disciples, acting as if Jesus didn’t see me and that he didn’t care about my situation. I thought that I was on my own, that I was at the mercy of random, out of control, natural forces, that I was powerless against their onslaught and cowering in a corner hoping that it’d somehow just miss me.
I wonder if you can relate.
But at least with tornados and derechos we have basements to hide in. I can’t imagine being caught on a boat in the middle of that kind of storm, taking on water. No wonder they were frightened!
Jesus’s Response
And in the middle of that death sentence, Jesus stands up, and with a word, changes everything.
The great windstorm and the waves - cease - “and there was a great calm.”
And he turns to them and asks “do you still have no faith?”Jesus rebukes the wind and the waves and then turns and rebukes the disciples. Why? Weren’t they right to be afraid?
He rebukes their lack of trust because - he said “we’re going to the other side of the sea.” - It’s as if he’s saying “did you think I was going to let you down?Did you think I would let something get in the way of my word, and either not see it coming, or not be able to handle it?”
The Disciples’ Response
And the disciples cease being afraid of the storm and switch to being afraid of The Lord of the Storm. And catch a glimpse of a God they didn’t fully know yet. And ask “who is this…?”
After accompanying Jesus on his mission so far, and witnessing all the healing and all the teaching, they still didn’t know the fullness of who he was. And they are astounded. That this story occurs just after the parable of the sower, and after the setup of Jesus saying “My mother and brothers are those that hear the word God and do it.” - should leave us asking “so which soil are these disciples?”
And the reality is - we don’t know. They believe. But is it momentary? Will they be choked out by the cares of the world? Or will they prove to be good soil? Keep reading and find out…
But we know they are one of those three, because they keep following, and get to see Jesus calm an even bigger storm.
Jesus has an appointment. The reason they’re traveling across the sea.
Calming The Legion
Mark 5:1-20 (CSB)
1 They came to the other side of the sea, to the region of the Gerasenes. 2 As soon as he got out of the boat, a man with an unclean spirit came out of the tombs and met him. 3 He lived in the tombs, and no one was able to restrain him anymore—not even with a chain—4 because he often had been bound with shackles and chains, but had torn the chains apart and smashed the shackles. No one was strong enough to subdue him. 5 Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains, he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones.
6 When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and knelt down before him. 7 And he cried out with a loud voice, “What do you have to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you before God, don’t torment me!” 8 For he had told him, “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!” 9 “What is your name?” he asked him. “My name is Legion,” he answered him, “because we are many.” 10 And he begged him earnestly not to send them out of the region.
11 A large herd of pigs was there, feeding on the hillside. 12 The demons begged him, “Send us to the pigs, so that we may enter them.” 13 So he gave them permission, and the unclean spirits came out and entered the pigs. The herd of about two thousand rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned there.
14 The men who tended them ran off and reported it in the town and the countryside, and people went to see what had happened. 15 They came to Jesus and saw the man who had been demon-possessed, sitting there, dressed and in his right mind; and they were afraid.
16 Those who had seen it described to them what had happened to the demon-possessed man and told about the pigs. 17 Then they began to beg him to leave their region.
18 As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon-possessed begged him earnestly that he might remain with him. 19 Jesus did not let him but told him, “Go home to your own people, and report to them how much the Lord has done for you and how he has had mercy on you.” 20 So he went out and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him, and they were all amazed.
The disciples were caught in a boat with a raging sea and a storm all around them.
This man lived in the quiet and isolation of the graveyard, with a raging storm inside him.
This man, naked and alone, knew Jesus on sight. This ravaged outcast, and his legion of demons recognized Jesus’s power and his identity, and he was concerned. Everyone else who had tried to help him previously left him in torment. Can you imagine the damage it would do to your skin and bone to be bound with chain and to break through them? The voices inside you driving you mad and chasing you into the desert?
This name of legion would have been to the poor man’s neighbors, and to the recipients of the gospel account, a terrifying word. It would have brought to mind a Roman legion. Over 5,000 highly trained, well organized, well equipped, professional killers. The oppressors of the land.
There were only 28 legions in the whole of the Roman Empire at the time. Four in the middle east, and a single legion in Judea. All the military might of the empire deployed to keep Israel under control - represented in this word - Legion.
No wonder Jesus came to pay this man a visit.
The Response of the Demons
And with a single command Jesus drives them out. They are powerless to resist. They submit to the command unquestioningly, but they do have a few “prayer requests” - in the face of the Judgement of Christ - they beg for an ounce of short-sighted mercy. “Don’t send us to the abyss, let us go into those pigs!”And in a very strange moment, Jesus allows the request of the demons.He allows them to go into the 2000 nearby pigs, who immediately bolt for the lake and drowned. So much for that plan, demons… like I said, short-sighted.
2,000 pigs. Probably the entire pork industry of that village. But here’s the thing: according to the Mosaic law, pork is an unclean animal, unfit to keep as livestock. In a single move, Jesus cleanses a tormented man, and the local economy.
And most importantly, he proves himself to be master over the spiritual realm. As Jesus’s brother James writes later in his epistle: Even the demons “believe” - and shudder..The devil is only ever a dog on God’s leash.This raises the mystery that Christ has absolute control over the demons, but also the comfort that - as with tornados - we’re never at the mercy of random, overwhelming, unstoppable forces.
The Response of the People
Finally, let’s zero in on Mark’s theme of the response of the people to Jesus’s proofs that he is the Messiah of God:
The townspeople - see what happened - that this infamous wild man was finally cured, clothed, and in his right mind. That Jesus was the one who did it. And they were filled with fear. They recognized that a force greater than the tormenting legion and the raging storm was among them. They were afraid.And like the demons, the begged Jesus to leave them alone.
If Jesus was able to demand, command, and enact a life change with the seemingly unchangeable things: the overwhelming spiritual oppression, the embedded corrupt economic systems, how much more would he require change in their personal lives, with the small, and easier to fix things? “Go away. I don’t want you as Lord over my pocket book, my bedroom, my private life…”
The Response of the Healed Man
But look at the response of the man who had been healed, whose reputation for violence and instability had separated him from the people: “Please let me come with you!”But Jesus had another job for him. Another commandment: Go and tell everyone what God has done.
So the man did. He heard the words of his Lord and his God, and He did them. He got much more than to be Jesus’s follower, He got to be his brother.He got to bear fruit with patience as he proclaimed the good news of what God had done for him to all who would listen.
Our Response
In today’s text we get to see that Jesus has complete power and total control over seemingly unstoppable natural and spiritual forces. And this should give us cause for trust in Christ and his promises to us. It should give us cause to listen up when he speaks. It should give us cause to obey when he commands.
I told you about a few storms I went through as a kid, and even though I knew the stories about Jesus, it didn’t occur to me to call to him for help. I just felt helpless, afraid, ashamed of my fear, and alone. There is one more important storm in my story. The summer after my freshman year in college. God was doing a number of things in my life to draw me to himself. And I remember sitting outside one evening watching big storm roll through town. Lots of wind and lightning.
But I wasn’t afraid this time. I was enthralled. Something about that storm made me think of the disciples in the boat on the lake. The power of the wind and the lightning, in that moment sort of woke me up. God made that. And this powerful storm that can start fires and knock out power and rip trees over, was created by, and submits to Jesus’s simple words.
It made me realize that, if God is who he says he is, and does what he says he does in this book, then it demanded my whole life. The creator and sustainer of the universe, was my creator and sustainer. The king and master over every natural and spiritual force is my king and master.
When we hear his words, we should do them.
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