For a bunch of professional fishermen – well accustomed to being out on the water, presumably in all kinds of weather, the Lord’s apostles sure spend a lot of time panicking over stormy seas. The only non-anxious presence in these choppy, gale-force Gospel circumstances is always Jesus, the landlubbing carpenter. Thus comes this morning’s Scripture lesson: Apparently so unbothered by rough seas as to sleep through it all, Jesus needs to be awakened from his peaceful slumber and alerted to the menacing wind and waves. Then with his mere word, he easily calms the tempest.
But according to Mark’s Gospel, that blessed moment of stillness actually is when the real terror begins to go bump in the night. The only time Mark describes the disciples as “terrified” is not when the storm threatens to swamp their boats but after Jesus rebukes both the winds and the disciples. The terror in eye and voice comes not when the apostles are shaking awake Jesus to accuse him of not caring if they live or die but in the end when they pose a simple-but-quite-faithful question. Listen for the word of the Lord.
On that day, when evening had come, Jesus said to them, “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?” (Mark 4:35-41)
Such a surprising response: “Who is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!”
Such a surprising response! No trembling with joy. No excitement in their voices. Only terror. And confusion: “Who is this?” Surely not a bad question, but you have to wonder why the anxious confusion of their hearts rises to their trembling lips.
The apostles have been with Jesus long enough now to have witnessed and experienced plenty of spectacular moments: The casting out of demons, the cleansing of lepers, the restoration of strength to the paralyzed, the full healing of bodies, minds, souls, and spirits. On some level, they well know that Jesus possesses phenomenal powers and is, by most any measure, no ordinary man or rabbi.
True, this snippet of Mark’s Gospel brings the first instance of Jesus commanding the very forces of nature in just this way. But it isn’t exactly the first time his followers have seen heavenly power at work in and through their Master’s very words. Yet this time around the apostles are terrified – petrified and loudly alarmed: “Who is this?”
Apparently this seafaring and meteorological miracle tips off the apostles that this Jesus is someone way more than a skilled healer. Jesus is, in fact, almighty God, creator of heaven and earth. And with that creative energy also comes the ease of commanding the elements of his creation. And maybe that’s what terrifies the apostles. It’s one thing to think you’ve hitched your wagon to a highly charismatic teacher and healer. It’s one thing to think you’re among in the inside circle of one incredibly gifted presence. But the struggle becomes real when you realize that you abide in the presence of not just a gifted person but nothing less than the Lord God himself!
Because if you are blessed with occasion to realize that you’ve been hanging around with God all along, suddenly your mind starts pondering other things. Suddenly you wonder if all along God has been able to read your mind, know your thoughts, see the envy and the anger, and hear the things you didn’t say – but really wanted to, even though they were not words of kindness. Suddenly you wonder if – along the way of life – you’ve been sitting up straight enough, eating your vegetables and chewing them properly if you did, and just generally behaving well enough. And also wondering if maybe the things you’ve done and said are going to have consequences well beyond the moment – like perhaps hanging like an albatross around your neck well into eternity!
Indeed, the presence of God is a double-edged sword: It’s what everyone wants and what nobody wants. It’s what we want, and yet it’s what terrifies us, too. And what only calms the storm is the conviction that the God in whose presence we live, move, and have our being is finally and for all time a good and gracious God, a God who loves us despite our sin and brokenness, despite the things that divine eyes at any given moment are spying in the fetid and festering corners our hearts and minds. Thankfully, another part of the answer to the question “Who is this?” is also that he is, without question, gracious and full of mercy. He is the One who graciously calms the storm and mercifully brings order to chaos.
“Who is this?” is the question I’ve been asking about one of my new neighbors in Prairie du Chien. Julie and I have begun spending a night or two a week in the house that’ll be our retirement home, and seemingly with every dawn there’s a 70-something gentleman on our block who sits on his front stoop and drinks his morning coffee. No book, no smartphone, no project in hand or on laptop. Just his coffee, his porch step, and the gentle sounds of the neighborhood waking up.
Maybe, I first thought, he was waiting for a ride. Or for a grandchild to be dropped off before mom or dad heads to work. But no. Daily nothing more than his concrete step and cup of joe. Who is this? And then came a moment of clarity: Sitting out front with coffee in hand was his thing. There was no next part. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the community, other retirees his age – like soon-to-be me – are working harder at finding happiness and fulfillment than they ever worked at their jobs. Those of us who, like me, find ourselves in the demographic of retirement seem endlessly fixated on chasing purpose, hunting passion, optimizing our lives like a portfolio, tending to bucket lists and the constant low hum of “Is this it? Is this the fulfilling part yet?” Research declares the better route.
Apparently, according to the people who study such things, the pursuit of happiness has become a job. And evidently everyone over 60 got hired! Somewhere along the way, happiness quietly changed job descriptions. It stopped being something that just happens to you on a good Tuesday and became something you’re supposed to achieve – a project with inputs, milestones, and progress reviews. Nobody accepts this assignment with more gusto than people entering their 60s. The whole culture hands them the script: Now that work is winding down so begins the payoff chapter. Find your purpose. Ignite your passion. These are supposed to be the best years, so best measure and take stock of it accordingly.
And the dutiful ones do measure. They audit their days for meaning the way they once audited budgets or monitored yield per acre, forever checking if the trip, the hobby, the visit from the grandkids delivered. It sounds wise. But it’s actually a trap that ensnares all generations.
My neighborhood gentleman sitting on his porch? Here’s what I suspect he and the other coffee-on-the-step folks have figured out. To be genuinely happy is not finding the best strategy in pursuit of that elusive goal. The genuinely happy step off the treadmill of happiness – not by mindset but by lived experience and accumulated evidence. Enough decades of arriving somewhere and feeling the same teaches you what no book quite can: The delivery you were tracking is not coming, because it was never in transit.
What replaces the pursuit isn’t passion, isn’t purpose – though both from time to time may wander through meaningfully. (We are, after all, gifted with time and talent that the Holy Spirit empowers and calls us to share.) What replaces the pursuit of happiness and passion is something quieter and much-more radical: Letting a day, however it unfolds, be sufficient. It doesn’t need grading; it need not require meaningful feedback. Sometimes coffee is just coffee. And a neighborhood just awakens. Existence itself moves from the venue where happiness is supposed to occur to the thing itself – no longer a means to an end but the end itself. The whole point! Like sitting there on the front step!
That means accepting negative feelings as normal weather rather than project failure, and doing things for their own sake instead of as a means to feeling happier. Walk because it’s morning, not because walking is on your wellbeing plan. See the friend because he or she is the friend, not because connection is an input. Pray without ceasing, simply because that’s what Scripture calls us to do. The moment the activity stops being an instrument, it starts paying — through the one door that opens only when you stop watching it.
Even if right now you don’t have an AARP card tucked in your wallet, know that such resignation is available at any age, and it starts small. Once a day, catch yourself mid-audit — Is this good enough? Am I happy yet? — and put down the clipboard. Let the coffee, the walk, whatever’s actually happening, unfold as it will. Let it unfold as the blessing that the Lord God intends it to be in and of itself. It will feel like slacking. It will feel like you’re “afraid of work.” But that feeling is the old job, wondering where you went. My new neighbor on the step isn’t waiting for anything. He stopped waiting years ago — and that, as it turns out, was the arrival.
“Who is this?” we wonder. “Be still and know that I am God” comes in response. “Even the wind and the waves obey me.” And that is more than enough – precisely as precious lyrics to a hymn of stillness declare:
Silence is a friend who claims us, cools the heat and slows the pace,
God is it who speaks and names us, knows our being, touches base,
making space within our thinking, lifting shades to show the sun,
raising courage when we’re shrinking, finding scope for faith begun.
Glory be to Father, Son, and Spirit. Amen, and amen!
Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message during worship on Sunday, August 9, 2026, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa, USA. Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Brendan Brown, Fred Craddock, Chelsey Harmon, Scott Hoezee, and Iris Mauss inform the message.