In reading this Gospel passage, often our attention has been confined to Jesus having physical control over the elements, or broadened a bit to consider his calming of the disciples' panic.  Until recently I hadn’t thought about why they were out in the boat this time.  Notice that Mark begins the story with Jesus saying “Let us go across to the other side”.  They were heading off to the territory of the Gerasenes, stepping outside their familiar traditional culture.  Jesus was challenging them to move outside their comfort zone.  So although deep water was a threat, always something to be feared, a source of danger, and although this was heightened by the sudden storm, there would be also the apprehension of going into alien territory.  So as Jesus responds to their panic, expressing his authority, as their fear dies down and the storm passes as suddenly as it had arisen, let us see in this an assurance of Jesus’ authority in bringing them “to the other side” and supporting them as they experience an alien culture.

In various ways we humans are challenged to step outside our comfort zone.  The challenge may come as desperation, as is the case for asylum seekers.  You may know the story of how Ahn Do as a baby came to Australia with his family in a perilous ocean voyage to escape from danger when Vietnam was suffering the turmoil of war; or you may have read or heard of Behrouz Boochani and his book “No Friend but the Mountains” based on his diary as he crossed the ocean to Australia; or the Murugappan family fleeing from the danger of being a Tamil family in Sri Lanka after the civil war ended in defeat for the Tamils.

Or the challenge may be to step from a line of work that you’re familiar with to something that challenges you as a service to others.  There are some examples of this even in our own congregation – and even greater, there are the examples of devoted missionaries in the 19^th century.  As a congregation we have sought to take up the challenge of reaching out to our community in a different way from how we have thought of it before, of reaching out to First Nations people within our own society and to the people of Timor Leste.  Or, again, the challenge may be to take up new disciplines or technologies, rather than being left behind. e.g..for some individuals moving into computer technology is stepping outside their comfort zone, and as we all know our own nation has been in political paralysis for more than a decade because of the challenge of replacing traditional energy sources with renewables, and so we have found ourselves left behind other advanced nations.

But the most important challenge coming from this episode is the challenge to cross over to the other side in the sense of reaching out to others who in some way are radically different from us.  Fear of “the other” seems to be natural, and Jesus was getting his disciples to go into alien territory – and not just these Gerasenes, but a crazy one whose mental disturbance fired him up so that chains couldn’t hold him!  And Jesus spoke to him, recognised and drew out his humanity.  On refugee Sunday, let us remember the fears that have been stirred up in our nation, fears of being swamped by hordes of alien people arriving by boat, fears often whipped up for political purposes.  Let us remember with shame the cruelty documented in Boochani’s book.  Yet a community in Tasmania was persuaded to open their arms to refugees from Afghanistan, and discovered a new dimension of God’s love and grace;  the town of Biloela in Queensland accepted the Tamil family I mentioned earlier, and discovered such blessing that they are fighting their hardest to overturn the cruelty inflicted as a matter of policy by a hardline but influential minority of politicians.

During the recent long weekend a man who is part of a reconciliation group spoke to me.  He told me that a few years ago, at Myall Creek on the Sunday morning when the service commemorating the massacre was to be on, a lady arrived at the top of the memorial walk and said to him “I’m not sure that I should be here.”  When he asked why, she said she was a descendant of one of those who had done the massacre.  He told her “Yes, you are right to be here, you are one of the most important people to be here” and so she continued on to the commemoration, taking part in the truth telling and reconciliation.

So often when we cross to the other side, as Jesus did with those disciples, we find not alienation, but humanity in a wider form than we knew.

God challenges us to step outside our comfort zone, believing in God's call to join God's mission of bringing abundant life to all people, in trust that God is with us.  There will be storms, but God is with us.