Mark 4:35-41

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?”

In Chapter 1 of the Kenneth Grahame’s book Wind in the Willows, we meet Mole in the middle of his spring cleaning. He’s hard at work with ladders and brooms and pails and brushes; he has also reached the end if his patience with the entire effort. And so before the book’s first paragraph is over, Mole has flung one of his brushes onto the floor and has tunneled his way into the sunlight for a breath of spring air and a little stroll.

That stroll takes him down to the edge of a full-fed river. He has never seen a river before and is immediately bewitched by it, by the shake and shiver of it, the glint and gleam of it.

Before long, Water Rat joins him at the river’s edge. He is holding a rope that just so happens to be tied to a little blue boat just big enough for two animals. Water Rat invites Mole to come aboard, and Mole, afraid and delighted, steps down into the boat and takes his seat on a small cushion in the stern.

“This has been a wonderful day!’” says Mole as the Rat shoves off. “Do you know, I’ve never been in a boat before in all my life.”

“What?’ cries the Rat, open-mouthed: “Never been in a--you never--well I--what have you been doing, then?”

“Is it so nice as all that?” asks the Mole shyly.

“Nice? It’s the ONLY thing,”’ says the Water Rat solemnly, as he leans forward for his stroke. `Believe me, my young friend, there is NOTHING--absolutely nothing--half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. Simply messing, messing--about--in--boats--or WITH boats…`In or out of ‘em, it doesn’t matter. Nothing seems really to matter, that’s the charm of it. Whether you get away, or whether you don’t; whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at all, you’re always busy, and you never do anything in particular; and when you’ve done it, there’s always something else to do…

Look here! If you’ve really nothing else on hand this morning, supposing we drop down the river together, and have a long day of it?”

The Mole waggled his toes from sheer happiness, spread his chest with a sigh of full contentment, and leaned back blissfully into the soft cushions. `WHAT a day I’m having!’ he said. `Let us start at once!’

There is nothing so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.

Tell that to the disciples in our gospel for today—the disciples who while sailing in a boat with Jesus become terrified when a storm kicked up.

There is nothing so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.

Come to think of it, we may need to hear this ourselves, may need to tell this to ourselves when we get ready to set sail on some new venture, in some new direction, and we unexpectedly run into choppy waters and high winds that causes our little boat, our lives, to pitch and to heave.

I am not a sailor, but my brief bit of sailing experience has taught me this: that sailing is like an intensification of life itself—the dead calms, more dead and calmer, the storms, stormier and more threatening, the absorption of work that needs doing, more absorbing, the feelings of being out of control more uncontrollable, the shots of beauty and joy more exhilarating.

And so what is our Gospel for today trying to tell us about our lives? Our Gospel is the story of the disciples, not out to mess about in a boat (the poor fishermen among them would probably not have even been familiar with such a concept). Rather, the disciples get into a boat at night at Jesus’ suggestion to go, as he says, “to the other side,” to a place where Jesus will for the first time heal a person in the realm of the Gentiles. Thus, Jesus and these Jewish disciples are on their way to an expanded mission, one that will be stretch them beyond anything many of them have ever imagined.

And on the way to this region, this healing on the other side, this expanded mission, they encounter a storm, one translator calls it a “squall’’—an intense wind that comes out of nowhere and threatens to capsize the boat. And this should not surprise us. For heading into new regions, expanded missions, heading “to the other side”, significantly, I might add, at night, will always bring up a storm within us or within those who want us to stay in the more predictable regions where we already are. And so it’s not a surprise that Mark depicts the ship carrying Jesus and the disciples to the land of Gentiles as running into a severe, fear-producing, even life-threatening squall.

And what does Jesus do in the middle of this squall?

Mark could have depicted Jesus doing so many things—He could have depicted Jesus as being at prayer, for instance, as the weather kicked up, or, he could have depicted Jesus as being preoccupied with some other aspect of the experience, simply “messing about” to use the phrase from Wind in the Willows. But instead Mark (whose Jesus, by the way, is positioned on a cushion in the stern, exactly where Mole was sitting) instead, Mark describes Jesus as out cold, sleeping as the boat pitches and heaves and takes on water.

Ron Rohlheiser in his book The Holy Longing says this about a healthy spiritual life: the ability to sleep at night can be more indicative of a healthy spirituality than adherence to a dizzying list of spiritual practices. The point, it seems, then, in Rohlheiser’s remark and in our Gospel story may be that spiritual maturity is about cultivating the ability to set sail toward the other side, toward places we have never been before. It is also about the ability the ability to relax, to fall asleep, if you will, in the midst of the storm that such sailing will inevitably kick up in ourselves and in others: to relax, to be able to fall asleep, in the assurance that more than just ourselves are at work in our setting sail.

I’m very aware of this as I look at what we as a community have on our plate for the next few years. We are setting sail toward the other side—to the land of a third Sunday liturgy and a building renovation, both of which are about offering the Good News of God in Christ to an expanded group of people or about making it easier to be here for people who are not having a very easy time right now. As we do this, I regularly feel a storm in me rising, my own sense of worry and fear as we head into these waters. On a good day (a day when I’ve had enough sleep!) I believe these are like the waters of baptism: they are the waters of chaos, the waters of creation, the waters of dying and rising and rebirth.

Will I, will we, be able to relax as we navigate these waters? To fall asleep in the assurance that God is in these efforts in ways I cannot and have not imagined?

Where are you being called to the other side in this experience or in some other place in your life, called to set sail toward a place you have never been before? What storms are you encountering in yourself or in others as you try to do this? What about God and about what God has given you already helps you relax into this?

Which brings me back to Wind in the Willows, to Mole and to Water Rat and to the idea of messing about in boats. I believe that when, with God’s help, we relax into the roll of the water beneath us, relax a little more in the middle of the squalls of our lives, when we do this, we begin to get in touch with the sheer the joy of messing. We begin to get in touch with the joy of trying one thing and then another, of learning what works and what doesn’t as we do it, of exploring what actions bring about what outcomes in what waters, of discovering which shipmates gladden our hearts. We discover the journey, we discover the day, we discover the moment is enough.

What a day I’m having!’ Mole said. "Let us start at once!”

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