Where is your faith taking you?

It is the story about the storm on the Sea of Galilee in Mark that prompts this question.  Where is your faith taking you?

Might not be the first question that comes to your mind.  You might be thinking that this is a story of greater (or lesser) faith, or about Jesus as powerful, or a story about a miracle at sea.  A case can be made for all of those approaches, but I want to ask the question Where is your faith taking you? because of this little phrase at the beginning of the whole adventure  "Let's go over to the other side".

Jesus has just told the disciples a wonderful parable about how the mustard seed is like the Kingdom of God.  It is an unremarkable seed in size but it yields a plentiful harvest of .....mustard, which is considered a bit of a weed in most parts of the world.  This tiny, tiny seed will become a shrub so large birds can nest in its branches.  That is what the Kingdom of God is like.

Now let me propose that you weren't really paying attention when the mustard seed parable was read because you thought it was a parable about the size of your faith.  Not in Mark.  In Mark it is about the Kingdom of God growing large, strong and providing shelter for creation.

Then........

Then Jesus proposes taking the boat on a trip to the other side of the sea of Galilee.  The other side.  To those other people.  To that foreign and scary land.  On the other side of the Sea is the land of the Gerasenes, and waiting for Jesus' arrival is a man so possessed by demons that he has lost his mind along with any sense of decorum.  He is raving, living in the caves with dead people.

Sure, Jesus.  Let's take a trip to the land of the mad people.

Now the disciples didn't argue with Jesus, and one must presume that they had no idea how bad it was going to get once they got to the other side.  But we who know the whole story, who have the gift of distance from which to interpret this story, might not be so willing to pick up some oars and set off for 'the other side'.

So no matter how the disciples responded to Jesus' request, we might well take some time to realistically consider what our response would have been. Knowing what we know now, would you have started rowing?  Written a check?  Sent up thoughts and prayers?  Gone to Council to complain about wasted resources?  Hmmmmm.

So, on this Day 1 of Where is your faith taking you?  I want you to consider just how far you would go in response to God's command to 'go to the other side'.  Be honest with yourself.  What is holding you back?  What are really frightened of?  The people?  The locale?  That you will embarrass yourself?  That you will encounter people who you can't communicate with?

I have my own list.  It's time to make yours.