Worship on the Lord’s Day
10:00 am 23 June 2024
Online & Onsite (Mixed Presence) Gathering as a Worshipping Community
Led by the Rev Brad Childs
Music director: Binu Kapadia Vocalist: Lind F-B
Elder: Renita MacCallum
We gather to worship God
Music prelude
Greeting
L: The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.
P: and also with you.
Lighting of the Christ candle
Welcome and announcements
Silent preparation for worship
Call to Worship
L: Give thanks to the LORD, for God is good.
P: God’s steadfast love endures forever.
L: We see God’s wondrous works all around us,
P: so, we come to praise God’s holy name.
L: Open wide your hearts in this time of worship!
P: We lift our hearts to God with thanks and praise.
Opening praise: Graves into gardens
Prayers of approach and confession
Gracious Father in heaven, we come into your presence with adoration this morning in the name our risen Savior Jesus Christ through whom we have eternal access to you. We make a joyful noise to you, O Lord, and we bring our songs of praise because you are a great God and a great King above all gods. In your hand are the depths of the earth, and the heights of the mountains belong to you. Even the sea is yours, for you made it and prescribed limits for it and said, “Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed.”
We also praise you because you graciously sustain the world you have created by the word of your power. In your tender care, you provide for the needs of your creatures and us, your people. Lord, to man, the pinnacle of your creative works, you have given your law which is perfect because you are perfect. Your law can make the foolish wise. It is able to make the one who walks according to it like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season. It is a lamp unto our feet and light for our path.
Yet the light of your law, O Lord, also reveals the darkness in our hearts. We confess that the guilt we incurred through Adam’s first sin as well as the guilt we have earned through our own trespasses make us liable to your judgment. We confess that we have sinned against you even this week and even this morning. We have said words that are hurtful to others. We have been sinfully lazy and left undone the things to which you have called us. We have had selfish, hypocritical, and insincere motives even in our deeds which appear outwardly righteous. We have gossiped, lied, and broken promises; all the while excusing our sin or attempting to cover it by our means.
Yet, Father, we bring you praise this morning not only as our Maker and Sustainer, but also as our Savior, who has given us the free gift of righteousness, the forgiveness of our sins, and the hope of eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. We know we can confess our sins to you without fear because you have set aside the record of debt that stood against us by nailing it to the cross of Jesus. Thus, we may approach you boldly and with confidence. For it’s in the name of Jesus that we pray. Amen.
Response: Glory, Glory, Hallelujah
Assurance of God’s love
In the words of Christ our Lord, “I come to seek and save the lost”. It is not the righteous that need salvation but the sinners. To all of us who approach the throne with boldness… We are forgiven.
We listen for the voice of God
Children’s Time & Presentation of Bibles
Response: Open our eyes, Lord
Story and Presentation: Darlene Eerkes
Prayer: Brad
Transition music
Song: Saviour, like a shepherd lead us (485)
Today’s Message
Scripture: Psalm 107: 23-29; II Corinthians 6:1-13; Mark 4:35-41
Response: Behold the lamb of God
Message: Demons in the sea
The Sea of Galilee is Israel’s largest freshwater lake, approximately 110 square miles. It is situated deep in the Jordan surrounded by hills and right between the African and Arabian tectonic plates. As such, the area is subject to earthquakes and, in the past, volcanic activity. Although it is referred to as a “Sea”, it is just a little bit smaller than Calling Lake. The Sea of Galilee is also pretty deep with a depth of approximately 150ft. That’s enough to bury a thirteen-story building.) At about 600 feet below sea level, it is the lowest in Israel and the lowest freshwater lake on planet Earth. And it is the second-lowest lake of any kind in the world.
At the time of Jesus, the Sea of Galilee was the location of one of the world’s busiest fish markets. Even today the waters are known for their fish and the lake holds a variety of over 20 common species. When the disciples travelled the Ancient Near East, boats were the most common way to fish and nets were the most profitable by far. The boat that Jesus and the disciples went out onto the Sea of Galilee with was probably typical of the time: about 25 feet long 8 feet wide and 4.5 feet deep. These boats would usually hold 5 people with four in control of the one large sail as well as the four oars and with one person sitting on the cushion (the place of honour) steering the ruder at the stern (back of the boat).
(*Based on the Kibbutz Ginosar discovery). In 1986 a very well-preserved (typical of its time) 2000-year-old Lake Galilee fishing boat was uncovered. This is what it looks like.
According to first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, it is reported that the activity of the lake usually included around 230 fishing vessels on an average day. Most of these would tread only so far. It was few and far between that fishermen would cross the lake, with most boats straying only just a short distance from shore; staying far away from the deepest portions of the sea. They were afraid of it.
In the verses read from here today, Jesus is out in the boat with his disciples. What is important to note is that at least 4 of these men were fishermen by trade. They had worked at the Sea of Galilee, and they knew it very well. Although the sea was known for its cruel winds, high waves and quick drops in temperature at least 4 of the disciples would have had an intimate knowledge of this. But that is one of the things that makes this story a bit odd. You see, in verse 41 it says that the disciples were “terrified”. In verse 38 they say to Jesus, “Don’t you know that we are perishing?”
“Terrified”, Perishing” … really?
Why…They’re on a lake.
The Sea of Galilee is dangerous. It is almost completely surrounded by hills with deep ravines and gorges. When the wind hits the natural rock formations, they essentially act just like massive funnels that rush cold winds downwards onto the surface of the water causing strange shifts in wind direction. Small, ancient boats that dared to roam too far from shore could easily be overturned or flooded. But as dangerous as this all is, there’s something more to this story than just that.
See, the strangest thing about this story is that the sea and storm are not treated like your average force of nature. The lake is not talked about as if it’s just a mass of water or if the waves are normal. And why would it be? The story wasn’t written in 2024. These people were people of their time. And the way they understood the world was different from us.
To them, the Sea of Galilee wasn’t just a lake. A lot of people today wrongly sometimes assume that everyone in biblical times thought that the world was flat, but that simply was not the case. In fact, for most people at the time (and particularly the Hebrews), the world was thought to be a kind of bowl shape (the sides of which were called the pillars of the earth). These “pillars” then held up the land that kind of floated in the ocean. And more importantly, they held back the waters on the other side of the pillars. Space as we know it was thought of very differently. It was not an empty mass or vacuum. They believed that it was filled with water just waiting to smash through the pillars and destroy everything. Here is a well-known Hebrew Cosmological drawing.
This is what is described in the opening chapter of Genesis for example.
In creation, God brought order to the chaos of water and separated the water from the dry land. You may recall that God separates the “water from above from the water from below”. This is why the waters in the Noah’s Ark story are told to come from both above and from the ground.
Now, over the top of the bowl-shaped world is this kind of pasta strainer (called the firmament). It was thought to be rock-hard. But it was also thought to have these holes called “doors” and “windows” and so when God wanted it to rain it was said that He would just open and close them up to let rain in or to stop it.
And although there are seas both salt water and fresh water out there, for the Jews, the only safe water comes from wells or streams. Everything else (every large body of water) at some point connects to the “waters of the deep” underground (to the waters of evil or chaos just begging to break through). Interestingly, they were very scientifically correct in this regard. Lake Galilee is fed from several underground springs in addition to the Jordan.
Now, in the deep, under the land was Sheol (the place of the dead). The monsters of the deep that guard Sheol were a common part of popular understanding for both Jews and Gentiles. For the Greeks, it was the stories of Baal vs. Yam (the monster of chaos) for others Marduk and the demon serpent Tiamat. For the Jews, it was Rehab and Leviathan (great sea monsters said to stir up the water and sink ships).
Though these monsters were usually said to confine themselves to the Red and Dead Seas you have to remember that all of the waters were thought to have connected to each other under the ground by “the waters of the deep” and so these great beasts were thought to move from sea to sea by travelling under the land. And this meant that they could pop up at any time in any large body of water.
The monsters can appear from lake to lake and when they come, they are thought to bring with them massive storms and waves.
For Mark’s original audience, this story was not just about a simple natural occurrence. It wasn’t just a storm on a lake. It wasn’t only the worry of mortality. It was about the demons in the sea.
In the book of Mark, in the very next paragraph after what we have read today, we find another interesting story that makes most modern readers quite nervous. The story takes place just after Jesus and the disciples arrive safely on the other side of the Sea of Galilee. It is the story of a man possessed by evil spirits and in this story, a large number of demons begs not to be cast out into the countryside (away from home). Instead, they plead with Jesus that they might be sent into a herd of pigs instead. This crazy story from Mark 5:13 records this wild detail. It says, “Then the unclean spirits went out of the man and entered the swine (there were about two thousand), and then the herd ran violently down the steep place into the sea…”.
For modern readers, this seems a strange tale. Why don’t the demons want to go out into the countryside? And when they find themselves inhabiting the bodies of the pigs why do they immediately run for the water?
But see, for Mark’s audience, the answer was simple… the evil spirits didn’t want to go out into no man’s land (back out into the country). They wanted to go home. They wanted to go back to the Sea of Galilee because that’s where they came from. The demons came from the sea.
In our story at Sea, Jesus doesn’t just calm the storm. That’s certainly not how Mark tells it. He’s not talking to an inanimate object.
In verse 39 it says that Jesus “stood and rebuked the wind and the waves”. (the word used for “Rebuked” here literally means “gagged”). It is the same word, by the way, that was used to describe the muzzling of an animal. And it is the same word used in Mark 1:25 when Jesus “rebuked” the evil spirit. Here out at sea, Jesus “rebuked” the wind and the waves as if the storm were itself a living thing.
Out on the water in that boat, they were afraid. They were afraid of dying because of the true storm… but more than that… when the waves spilled over the boat and the wind slapped them in the face, they were absolutely terrified of falling (not just into the water) but into the hands of evil and chaos itself.
In the middle of the storm, far from the safety of the shore, right in the middle of evil’s territory, where the Leviathan might lurk, and the underwater channels lead straight down to Sheol (the place of the dead), Jesus brings peace back to the water and the waves… And the people cry out, “Who is this man, that even the wind and waves obey him”.
It’s at this point that most sermons on this topic begin to ask, “What are the demons in the sea in our lives”. They might speak of troubles with marriage or addictions, poor health or just about anything to make this story relate better to today. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But this story is not just about the demons in the sea. Its main topic is not about fear or the amount of faith we have. It’s bigger than that. This story is about the question Mark asks throughout his gospel. It’s not about what Jesus does so much as who he is. Is this guy the Psalmist said would come?
This story is about that question that the disciples ask out on that boat. This story is about who is really in control of things, “who can conquer evil” and “who can hold back the chaos”. It’s about that question the disciples ask, “Who is this, that even the wind and the waves obey him?”
And now for my little twist: This sermon is not about the calming of the sea in the book of Mark. This sermon is actually about our reading from the book of Psalms (107:23-20 ) and its depiction of God. Because it’s the answer to the question the disciples ask: “Who is this?”
Song: We cannot own the sunlit sky (717)
We respond to serve God: Our time of giving
Reflection on giving: Dayspring is empowered to carry out our mission of worship, service, and care by generously given volunteer time, talent, and treasure. Many thanks to all who give so generously!
Prayer for our world
From hunger and unemployment, and forced eviction:
Good Lord, deliver us.
People in our city need help. People in our congregation need help.
From unjust sentences and unjust wars:
Good Lord, deliver us.
For the innocent caught between waring forces, the children, infants, the infirmed and aged. For those forced to fight, without choice or deluded to believe violence rules. From neglect by parents, neglect by children, and neglect by callous
institutions:
Good Lord, deliver us.
Many of us are confined, some have children who do not call or visit. Our programs come with strings and are difficult to navigate.
From cancer and stroke, falls and fractures
Good Lord, deliver us.
From stubbed toes to Parkinsons disease, to hospital beds, blessed physicians hands, and long term care;
From famine and epidemic, from pollution of the soil, the air, and the waters:
Good Lord, deliver us.
Corporations have shifted blame from long damaging practices of their own to the average person. For honesty, fair application and a better understanding of our world we pray.
Free us Lord,
From segregation and prejudice, from harassment, discrimination and brutality:
Good Lord, deliver us.
We need not all be the same, think or act the same, but there is no place in our faith for hate. And for those working for peace.
From time eaters and family distracters and idols
Good Lord, deliver us.
Do not let us be led into foolishness by every shinny object we see. Make us humble and thoughtful and agents of healing in our homes.
From the concentration of power in the hands of ignorant, threatened or hasty leaders:
Good Lord, deliver us.
For Prime Ministers and Presidents and local peoples. Bring wisdom and judgement to voters and better character to our limited choices.
From propaganda, fads, frivolity and untruthfulness:
Good Lord, deliver us.
Our worth Lord is in You. No title and no idea of self more central than “Child of God”.
From arrogance, narrowness and meanness, from stupidity and pretense:
From boredom, apathy and fatigue, from lack of conviction, from fear, self-satisfaction and timidity, thinking to little or self, too much of self to distracted by self:
Good Lord, deliver us.
From self-satisfaction and self-abuse
From the consequences of our own folly
From resignation and despair, from cynicism and manipulation:
From all unmerciful suffering, our own and that of others:
From empty refrigerators, little closets, and tiny/empty tummies
From broken parts of life, and pain and loss of a baby in the whom.
Lord, From the unending cry of all peoples for justice and freedom:
Good Lord, deliver us and calm our storms.
Good Lord, deliver us. Deliver us, Good Lord, by opening our eyes and unstopping our ears, that we may hear Your Word and do Your Will and attempt to do ourselves all that we have asked of you as well.
Thy will be done. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Song: How firm a foundation (685)
Sending out with God’s blessing
May the God of endurance and encouragement
Grant you to live in such harmony with one another, and in accordance with Christ Jesus, that together you may, with one voice,
glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ
through the Spirit of God who resides within all of you. Amen.
Response: Amen, we praise your name, O God
Music postlude
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Numbers in brackets after a song/hymn indicate that it is from the 1997 Book of Praise of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. Those and other songs are being used in accordance with the specifications of Dayspring’s licensing with One License (3095377) and CLC (A735555).
The Rev. Brad Childs retains the copyright (© 2024) on all original material in this service. As far as Brad Childs is aware, all of the material that has not been attributed to others is his own creation or is in the public domain. Unacknowledged use of copyrighted material is unintentional and will be corrected immediately upon notification being received.