ABOUT a century ago, Walter Cannon, a highly accomplished physiologist, noticed that when presented with a threat, real or imaginary, human beings react immediately and instinctively driven by powerful fight-flight impulse.  When we experience stress, whether the stress is due to internally generated anxieties or external circumstances, our bodies prepare to fight or flee from or avoid the perceived threat. 

If you’re hiking through the woods and a bear appears on the path in front of you, your pupils will dilate.  Your sight will sharpen.  You will become more alert, more aware.  Your perception of pain will diminish.  Your breathing will increase, oxygenating your blood.  Your body will stop digesting lunch and direct blood to your muscles.  It’s getting ready to run or defend itself.

The fight-flight response tends to take over our behavior.  The higher functioning part of the brain gives way to base, primitive instincts.  We become less rational and highly sensitive to potential dangers.  Our focus narrows.  Our minds close.  When we’re stressed, afraid, we perceive more potential enemies, identify more problems, and find it nearly impossible to have a positive attitude.  We concentrate our energies on short-term survival rather than long-term goals and benefits.  We lose sight of the big picture.  We act more on impulse and emotion instead of reason and reflection.

The fight-flight response is primitive hard-wiring to protect ourselves from danger.  When we lived in caves and routinely encountered threats to our physical well-being, it was enormously important to have well functioning fight-flight response.  Now most of us encounter far fewer bears and other immediate threats to our physical survival.  But the fight-flight response in us probably has not diminished much.  We just activate it for different things.

Say you’re driving and someone nudges in front of you, slightly cuts you off.  How do you react?   You might become enraged, start aggressively shouting and honking, driving recklessly.  You’re fighting.  Or you might over react by slamming on your brakes.  You’re fleeing.  Say you’re in an important meeting and your boss says something you interpret as an insult.  How do you react?  You might punch him in the nose, or you might retreat to your office.  Both are probably over-reactions.¹  Both narrow the possibilities for moving forward in a positive, constructive way.

The same behavior happens on larger stages.  When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust, calls Israel “filthy bacteria,” suggests Israel shouldn’t exist, he’s threatening.  He’s using fighting words.  Israel ’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does the same thing when he implies Iran needs to be bombed or when one of his advisers says of Iran , “Think Amalek.”²  In the Old Testament, God says via Samuel the Prophet to King Saul, “Go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.” (1 Sam 15:3)   It’s not a bit of scripture that we like to give much attention because it sounds like divinely sanctioned genocide.  Both Ahmadinejad and Netanyahu speak in a similar way, invoking God against the other, hardening positions, stoking fear and mistrust, treating the other nation as worthy of divine condemnation.  It narrows options.

Today’s gospel begins as Jesus has just completed a teaching session.  He has been sitting in a boat with a very large crowd gathered around the shore.  As evening falls, he tells the disciples to cross to the other side of the Sea of Galilee .  Presumably exhausted from his teaching, Jesus lay down and fell soundly asleep, possibly soothed by the rocking waters lapping against the boat inches from his head.  I imagine him lying in a little, rickety boat, something not much bigger than a dinghy.

In the Bible, the sea usually represents chaos, evil, death, the home of Leviathan, the sea monster, Satan.  In Genesis, by speaking the Word, God had brought forth creation – light, order, form – out of the dark waters.  Jesus is resting on these waters, sure of God’s care even when a sudden storm strikes.

The disciples, fishermen, must have known about such dangers.  This is where they fished.  But instead of dealing with the upheaval, they panic.  As the storm rages, they wake up Jesus: “Do you not care about us?”  It’s more than a bit passive aggressive.  They’re behaving as if they’re helpless, and they aren’t.  They’re testing Jesus, treating him like a genie.  They want him to protect them instead of doing what they can and leaving the rest to God. 

Jesus does calm the sea – “Peace.  Be still.”  The point of the miracle is to show the disciples who he is, that here in Jesus God acts as he did at Genesis – bringing order and peace out of the raging waters, that God is renewing creation through Jesus.  It makes a huge impression upon the  disciples, but they  don’t get the message.  They’re left at the end of the passage wondering, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

One of the main themes of Mark’s gospel is Jesus telling people not to focus on his miracles, but rather to listen to his parables and his teaching.  If we focus on the miracles, we usually miss the point.  If we focus on the miracles, we see Jesus as a wonder worker, whose purpose is to take care of us, to help us avoid problems, to make bad things go away, to assist us fleeing or fighting what we perceive to be threats.  Jesus’ message to us is that following him will not diminish our hardships, our misfortunes, or our disappointments.  Following him is likely to increase them.

In the storm, amidst the turbulence, when things weren’t going their way, the disciples became fearful.  They didn’t trust God.  They felt abandoned.  The good news is that God is with us in our troubles.  When our lives are tossed to and fro, when the Church flounders, when the world is nuts – wild, perverse, violent, cruel, unjust, God may seem to be sleeping, but he does care.  God’s presence with us may not be obvious, but God is with us even when we don’t perceive him.  Jesus asked his anxious, frightened disciples, “Why are you afraid?  Have you no faith?”  It’s a challenge to every one of us to trust him. 

And it wasn’t just the storm that had sparked the fight-flight response of the disciples.  It was also their destination.  They had set sail for the other side of the Sea of Galilee, heading toward Decapolis, a Greek word meaning ‘Ten Cities,’ which had been founded by Alexander the Great over three centuries before Jesus.  It was a pagan, Hellenistic territory, diverse and cosmopolitan, and these cities almost always sided with the occupying power, at the time of Jesus – the Romans.

In away, the disciples were crossing a boundary, leaving their relatively secure gated community and heading into an unsafe neighborhood.  That alone was frightening, threatening. The storm represents the chaos and turmoil unleashed when walls are breached, when behaviors and customs are challenged.

Unlike most of us, but perhaps like Ahmadinejad and Netanyahu, Jesus had a taste for confrontation.  He withstood tremendous conflict – more than I can imagine, but he handled it in a vastly different way than most of us do.  While he routinely exposed himself to threats and danger, Jesus controlled his fight-flight response.  Threats aren’t so threatening if we trust God.  Jesus confronted and challenged the political establishment, the religious authorities, the expectations of the people – not running from challenges, not responding aggressively, but engaging people, listening to opposition, stating his views, and calmly standing his ground.  Amazing. 

The Rev. Kate Layzer notices, “Jesus will talk to anyone: members of opposing parties, hostile foreign heads of state, sinners, Samaritans, people who are out to destroy him.  Anyone.”³  He directly addresses those beyond the pale, the untouchable and ritually impure, pagans and foreigners, thugs and cheats, demons and unclean spirits, even Satan himself.  Jesus responds not by fleeing and not by chest thumping intimidation.  Jesus shows us a third way – engagement, dialogue, exchange of ideas, a way that expands options, increases possibilities, develops relationships.

What is real power – ignoring problems, lashing out at problems, engaging with problems?  Who do you want on your side – someone who avoids difficulty and runs away, someone who flings invective and reacts aggressively, or someone who keeps their cool and tries to engage?  What’s the most courageous?  What looks most like trusting in God?  In a world full of dangers and chaos and uncertainty, the way of Jesus, the possibility of a third way, is very good news.

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

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¹ Both of these examples are suggested by Neil F. Neimark, M.D., ‘Mind/Body Education Center: The Fight or Flight Response,’ www.thebodysoulconnection.com.  Dr. Neimark’s piece also provides some of the background material about the fight-flight response mentioned in the paragraphs above, particularly the third paragraph.

² Fareed Zakaria, ‘They May Not Want the Bomb,’ Newsweek, June 1, 2009, p. 47.

³ Kate Layzer, ‘Reflections on the Lectionary,’ Christian Century, June 16, 2009, p. 18.  This sermon significantly derives from her piece and reflection upon it.