Sunday, 21 June 2015

Sermon, Sunday 21 June: 'When the storms of life are raging stand by me'

As part of our service this morning, the occasional singing group sang the old spiritual, 'When the storms of life are raging stand by me' during the offering. We dedicated that song to our brothers and sisters in Emmanuel Church, Charleston, South Carolina, remembering that grieving community in our prayers for others.  Our hearts go out to the members of that church, families, friends and the wider community affected by the terrible events of this last week in South Carolina.  May they find comfort, and feel God's presence close with them at this time....

This morning's sermon:

1st READING: Ps 107:1-3, 23-32
2nd READING: Mark 4:35-41

SERMON
Let’s pray:
May the words of my mouth, 
and the meditations of all our hearts, 
be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Several summers ago, the Times newspaper carried the following story:
A young girl who was blown out to sea on a set of inflatable teeth 
was rescued by a man on an inflatable lobster. 
A coastguard spokesman commented 'this sort of thing is all too common.'
... I think that coastguard must have a very odd life at times!
Given the gospel reading, this news story conjured up 
some very odd images in my mind as I contemplated anew 
the disciples in the boat on the stormy sea...

The bible stories involving the sea,
and ships, and even storms at sea,
are ones that I particularly resonate with, 
as someone who grew up and who has lived by the sea most of my life:
I used to sail a lot when I lived in Australia, 
but thankfully never encountered the kind of storm 
that the disciples were suddenly hit with when crossing the Sea of Galilee.
And what’s really striking in the story
is that these were tough men,
several of whom were experienced sailors -
fishermen who made their living from the sea.
And they were terrified...
which just emphasises the absolute severity
of the storm that they were faced with.
The other striking thing about the story?
In the midst of the raging storm,
the howling gale,
the lashing of the waves
and the boat being thrown about
like a wee matchbox...
is that at the other end of the boat
Jesus is sound asleep,
totally oblivious to what's going on.
While physically he's there with them,
in every way that counts... it seems that he's not.

It had all been so very different just hours earlier.
Jesus and the disciples had been surrounded by eager crowds -
so many in fact that Jesus had hopped in the boat
and was teaching from it.
He told them parables: stories about
a sower sowing seed,
lamps and bushels, mustard seeds.
The crowd was receptive,
it had been a good day and,
as day had crept into evening,
he said to the disciples
'let's cross over to the other side.'
They sailed away from the shore,
from the crowds, and, as Jesus -
exhausted from his teaching,
exhausted from the crowd's demands -
sailed into the land of Nod,
the boat sailed into a sudden and unexpected storm.

Within the space of a few hours,
it felt as if the disciples' world
had turned upside-down.
They had been happily chuntering along,
things had been going along nicely,
smoothly and now...
quite literally, they felt swamped
and all at sea and     scared.
And so,       they woke Jesus up...
Jesus who had managed to sleep so soundly
in the midst of the turmoil
that it made the disciples feel even
more afraid and abandoned and alone.
They woke him up, and you can almost
hear them yelling at him in their fear:
'Teacher, don't you care?
Don't you care that we're about to die?!'

They'd done everything that they
knew how to do to weather the storm.
They were at the end of the resources;
at the end of their rope.
They'd learned, as they had walked with Jesus,
that he had extraordinary powers and abilities.
They'd seen his heart of caring compassion.
And here, on what at that point
may have felt like the worst night of their lives,
they looked to the person they expected
to help them...
and Jesus was sound asleep.
'Don't you care that we're about to die?'

Sometimes, in our own lives,
we find ourselves chuntering on quite happily
in the normal, cheery, humdrum
routine of our lives.
And then something out of the ordinary happens
that completely shakes our very lives
to their foundations:
the job we thought secure
disappears because of the credit crunch;
a sudden illness occurs;
a relationship or friendship founders
through a misunderstanding,
or because of some ill-judged words;
we grieve the death of someone we love....
So many unexpected things that
come like storms in our lives,
creating chaos, causing confusion...
and like the disciples we can feel
scared, and abandoned, and alone...
as if Jesus is asleep at the back of the boat,
while we're in turmoil.
And in the same way that the disciples did,
we might find ourselves almost yelling:
'don't you care Lord?'
and we might add:
'are you so indifferent to all this mess,
this stress, this pain,
that you can sleep right through it?'

And yet, while the disciples felt -
and while we might feel abandoned
by God's seeming indifference...
we ... are... not.
We cry out 'don't you care, Lord?'
and perhaps find the answer to our question,
our heart's cry as we remember parables:
the parable of the mustard seed
and resting in the shelter of God;
the parable of the sower
and God's abundant, extravagant love...
We're reminded that God loves us
beyond our wildest imaginings,
that God's love is everywhere, ever-present -
even in the midst of the worst of storms.

And... it's absolutely okay to cry out to God -
and even shake our fist.
Like the disciples, when we cry out to God,
we're doing exactly the right thing.
In fact, God invites us to cry out:
we're told to ask, to seek, to knock...
to pound on the door of heaven.

Paradoxically, even though Jesus rebukes
the disciples for lack of faith,
the very act of crying out
demonstrates that somewhere,
deep in the core of those who cry out
is enough faith to know that they -
that we - will be listened to.
I wonder if underlying the rebuke of Jesus
is more a question of:
'why didn't you ask me first?'
'why did you try to do everything you could
under your own strength...
and only when everything else had failed,
call me? Last...!'
You can almost see the disciples
as the waves break in and the storm is furious.
They do the one thing that is left to do.
....They'd done everything else...
they finally get Jesus involved - they cry out.

And we cry out...
and sometimes I wonder if that sense
of abandonment by God is more due
to our own habit of just getting on with things,
and forgetting to ask God in the first place...
not quite seeing that God's in the boat?
As the disciples, and as we, find ourselves
in the places of storm and tempest
we cry out to God: 'don't you care, Lord?'
And as we do, we find out
that the God who we thought was absent,
or asleep, has actually been there
with us all along,
right in the midst of the storm,
right there in our boat, wide awake,
right there hearing our cries,
right there feeling our pain...
and even though he knows we're sometimes
so very slow to understand just who he is,
and that his love is both abundant
and ever-present...
in the midst of the turmoil,
in the midst of the storm,
Jesus, the storm-stiller, the peace-bringer, 
brings us to a place of calm and 
gets us through the storm and across to the other side.

The disciples woke Jesus saying
'don't you care that we're about to die?'
And in response, Jesus got up
and said three things:
to the wind: 'be quiet'...
to the waves: 'be still'...
and then, to the disciples:
'why are you frightened?
Have you still no faith?'
And then the wind died down and it was completely calm.
And the result?
They were all relieved, had a good laugh,
and sailed to the other side
singing a cheerful song....
Well, that's what might have happened
if the story had been re-written as a Hollywood movie -
but we know that's not what happened.
The result, according to our writer,
is that the disciples were still terrified,
but now, not of the storm.
The disciples were terrified
and they asked each other:
'Who is this? Even the wind and waves obey him.'

Having cried out to Jesus
and expected him to do something,
Jesus indeed does do something:
something so utterly unexpected,
so utterly astonishing,
that they are forced once again in their journey
to think again about this man they are following.

Much of the turmoil in our lives
isn't simply the turmoil from outer circumstances,
it's the turmoil that churns within us,
tearing us apart.
We cry out to God and then,
to our astonishment,
we discover that God comes.
In fact, that God is already here.
God is not absent, but present,
and God speaks to the storm
that is within our turbulent and tossed spirits.
God, who knows our cry, knows what it means
to be in a boat swamped by the storm,
and yet has the power to give peace
and strength and help
even in the midst of such incredibly difficult,
very scary circumstances.
The disciples cried out for peace
and God, made flesh in Jesus, met them at their point of need.
And as we cry out to God,
God meets us at our point of need as well,
because God is right here:
in the middle of all our need,
our despair, our pain,
our chaos,
our fear.

The disciples - who knew what a storm was like -
watched Jesus answer their cry...
and knew that they were in way over their heads.
'Who is this?'
And it was to be a question they would find
themselves asking again and again and again
as they journeyed with him...
thinking they knew him,
thinking they had his measure,
until something extraordinary would happen
along the way to teach them that they were
on a life-journey of discovering
who this Jesus was.

Again and again, as the disciples,
and as we, continue to follow Jesus,
part of the ongoing, unfolding discovery is that 
we are following no ordinary man.
This is the One foretold by prophets:
God’s Word, made flesh.
Son of God.
Son of humanity.
The One who knows us,
and understands our fears,
because he is with us on the boat,
and rescues us with his ever-present love.  Amen.

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