Chewing

Chewing

I’m working on my sermon for this Sunday and chewing on the Gospel lectionary text – Mark 4:35-41.  This is that great little tale of Jesus taking a nap in the boat while the disciples are fighting a huge storm.

When I prep for a sermon, I read the text over and over again – from a variety of translations and paraphrases – so that I can just  chew on it and see where God strikes my taste buds.

The last couple of days I can’t seem to get past the question that the disciples ask Jesus when they rudely awaken him from his nap. Picture it – there is a storm all about you, you think your boat is going down, your worried and ready to cry "oops I crapped my pants" and you see Jesus sleeping.  You rush over to him and scream "don’t you care that we’re going down?".   

I don’t know.  It just really strikes me as an odd first question in the midst of the panic.  Why not?  "Get up, Jesus.  Grab a life jacket." or "Jesus, wake up.  Here’s a bucket.  Start bailing".  I’m not sure where it will go but I"ve learned enough to know that I need to follow the scent for awhile to see what I discovered.

What I do know I’ll find for sure is a little "touche".   God always does that with me.  I usually travel with my nose to the ground and run smack into a mirror.  Usually stings a little too.