Shall We Stay or Shall We Go? aka Live or Die, the Choice Is Ours

John 20:1-18

Ordinary 2 

First Presbyterian Church Clarksville, AR

Dr. Robert Wm Lowry

I am not a marathoner (shocking I know!), but those marathoners I know tell me that there is a point in the race when your body hits a wall and you have to make the mental and emotional decision to keep going those last few miles.
When our spirits are held in the grip of loss, I wager that we all reach something like that runner’s wall; a moment when sadness and mourning confront us with a decision.
By the third day, after the brutality of the crucifixion was becoming a memory, albeit a vivid and painful one, each of Jesus’ followers had certainly hit that emotional wall.  The sense of loss they must have felt in the wake of having their familiar and present friend taken from their midst has to have drawn from the depths of their spirits the last measure of energy-physical, emotional, or spiritual- that they had.
It is not surprising that by that third day, when we join the events in this text from John, the crowd of friends rallying from their exhausted mourning and attending the tomb has been reduced to one.
Mary Magdalene.
Ever faithful Mary.
She had no doubt hit the wall but rallied one more time.
In my mind’s eye, I see her walking up to the tomb in a slouch; her shoulders slumped under the weight of exhaustion and sorrow, her brow lowered to the ground, he arms heavy at her sides.  She went to ensure that everything was as it should be; that the tomb was undisturbed and the body of her friend in its resting place where it would be, well, forever.
Even the most casual and occasional Christian knows what happens next.
The stone is moved.
Mary rushes to tell the others.
The disciples rush to the tomb.
The body is gone.
The clothes are folded.
The disciples are confused.
Everyone leaves.
Everyone but Mary who stands and weeps.
She was the first to arrive and the last to leave.
Dutiful, faithful Mary cannot bring herself to leave just yet.
When the others are gone, as if to triple check that the body was really not there, Mary peers into the tomb one more time.  This time though, rather than the empty hollow with the folded grave clothes, Mary sees two angels sitting where her friend had been laid.
The angels speak to Mary asking why she is crying, an odd thing to ask in a cemetery, and in response that good, faithful, trusting, loving woman said, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”
I am hardly the first and I will certainly not be the last preacher to observe that to some degree we in the church all stand in Mary’s shoes today.
We too attend the tomb of a friend.
We too are exhausted from loss.
We too are looking for something that seems to have vanished.
Our church is dead.
Not dying.
Dead.
The church so many of us knew as children and even through much of adulthood;
the church where money was not a problem;
the church where other activities yielded to the church program calendar;
the church where the logic of faith in a God shaped by 2000 years of western theology was the standard definition of faith;
the church where the building was a symbol of the strength and roots of the community;
the church where evangelism meant reminding people that going to church is just what you do.
That church is dead.
Whether it was ever truly real or not, it is dead.
And lest that not be clear enough, let me put it this way.
  Not only is the church in general dead, this church is dead.
First Presbyterian Church of Clarksville is dead.
      At least the First Presbyterian that needed this imposing edifice, these towering stained glass windows, that glorious stained glass dome, and 40,000 square feet of building space in which to do ministry.
     That church is no more.
Whether we like it or not, we too stand outside the tomb of a loved one searching for a body that is no longer there.  So it is not at all surprising that woven into the fabric of our congregation right now is a sense of exhausted mourning.
Like Mary looking for the body of her familiar Lord, we stand with heavy hearts crying out, “They have taken away my church, and I do not know where they have laid it.”
If those words are hard to hear, know that they are equally hard to say.
I miss that kind of church.
I went to seminary to serve that kind of church.
When I quit my career and went to seminary, please believe me that it was not to spend every waking moment of my vocational life hoping the bills would get paid, the payroll met, that someone will show up for the planned church event, that the roof will not leak, and the membership stay content enough that you don’t spend the week putting out fires rather than doing the work of the church.
Preachers and parishioners are just alike.  We miss our fallen friend.  We follow Mary’s lead and keep taking one more peek inside the tomb just to be sure that the familiar body is not still there.
We do our best to hang around and keep an eye out hoping- just hoping- that the body will reappear; that the church we knew will be reborn; that all of this anxiety and loss will be but a dream gone bad.
And do you know what?
That’s ok.
It is ok to linger or, to use a good word from our Pentecostal brothers and sisters, to tarry a while outside the tomb.  It is ok to dwell in our mourning for a while and not just let go of the past as though it never mattered.
Because it did matter.
      It does matter.
The legacy of the church matters.
The legacy of THIS church matters.
The legacy of the church that nurtured generations,
witnessed to the gospel in its own time and its own way,
baptized babies, cared for children, nurtured adults, and shepherded the dying into the arms of promise.
      That church mattered.
And things that matter in our lives deserve, when lost, the honesty of our sadness.
There is something holy about tarrying for a time while we live with our mourning.
According to the text while Mary stood tarrying in her sadness, angels attended her.
“Mary stood outside near the tomb crying.  As she cried, she bent down to look into the tomb.  She saw two angels dressed in white, seated where the body of Jesus had been, one at the head and one at the foot.  The angels asked her, ‘Woman, why are you crying?’  She replied, ‘They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they’ve put him.’”
      The disciples saw something in the tomb, but according to the John the angels only appear to and speak to Mary.  There is something about her mourning that is honored by their unique presence with her.
      There she is in her holy tarrying looking for the body of the one she lost.
      Was Mary’s story written with the logic of our contemporary culture, it would end there.
      Our culture has for the last three centuries more and more bought into the notion that life and death are bookends and the only volumes worth reading are those in between.  There is no reason, the world’s logic goes, to posit what is before birth because that is not real life nor is there reason to look beyond death because there is nothing there to see.
      In fact, there is something about Mary’s tarrying at the tomb that reflects that modern logic of death.  So it only makes sense for her to stay there looking for a dead body because that is all there is to be found.
Dead is dead after all, right?
If there is anything for Mary to find, it is nothing more than the gradually decaying corpse of the one she had lost.
And by extension, the same would be true for us.  Dead is dead.  Whether an individual or an institution, once death comes calling there is nothing to be done but let memory fade into the distance as we cling to what familiar may remain.
If we are honest with one another, I think we have to admit that much of our anxiety about the moment in our congregation- about the shifting ground beneath the foundations of the church in general and in this place- is due to the fact that we all, to one degree or another, buy what the world is selling.
We buy the idea that dead is dead and there is nothing for us but to stand at an empty tomb and cry out, “They have taken away my Lord, and I don’t know where they have laid him.”
Like faithful Mary we tarry, we mourn, and we search.
Hers would be a sad story if it ended there.
     Ours would be as well.
’They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.’
     The end?
     Not quite.
     “As soon as she said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there.”
     Mary’s story does not end with her lament and neither does ours because Mary and we are part of a different story; a story that follows a different logic; a different reality; a different promise.  We are part of a story where the bookend of death is toppled, stones at tombs are rolled away, the logic of the world is exposed for the fraud that it is, and death takes a permanent holiday!
     Right there in her mournful tarrying, Mary meets the risen Christ.
     Not the resuscitated corpse of the Jesus she knew, but the new creation that is the resurrected Lord.
     That is Mary’s story.
      It is the story of the living faithfulness of God.  In what more fundamental way does God reveal God’s faithfulness to us than by showing up in our lives in the person and promise of the risen Christ?
      Mary’s story does not end with the cold reality of death because that ending is the lie; the truth is not death but life!  Life is the promise of the faithfulness of God.
     And as disciples of Jesus Christ, we are defined by that promise;
         the promise of resurrection; of new creation; of the rejection of the finality of death in all its forms and the institution of divine promise in the fabric of human history.
the promise that when death comes calling, we see Jesus; we see life; we see new creation; we see the hope that comes only from being grafted into the miracle of the Jesus story.
the promise that though we dwell for a season in our mourning, we know that God shall wipe away every tear from our eyes and we shall weep and mourn no more.
That is the promise of our forever in the faithfulness of God.
      But until that time-that time of heavenly promise- comes to fruition; while we still stand outside the tomb; when we cry out in our mourning; when we give voice to our loss; when we echo Mary’s words, “they have taken away my Lord, and I don’t know where they have laid him,” we too turn around and see Jesus standing there!
      Right there in our moment of deepest need; our moment of mighty grief; or season of deep and abiding mourning, we turn and see none other than our resurrected Lord.
And when that happens, when like Mary we turn and encounter Jesus, when we look up with our tear soaked eyes and gaze upon the one true Lord…we often don’t recognize him at first.
The last half of John 20:14 is one of the most wonderfully ironic turns in all of scripture.
Mary who has shown such deep faith, such longing to see Jesus, such commitment to find the one who is lost, turns around and sees him face to face and doesn’t recognize him.
If the stakes of the moment were not so high, it would almost be funny.
After that ironic turn, Jesus and Mary repeat the brief conversation she had with the angels.  As if to drive home the point that what Mary is looking for cannot be found because it is no more, the writer of John’s gospel repeats that scene of concern and lament.
She is looking for the body.
But there is no body.
Still, her heart is so set on finding what she knew, that when she finds what she needs she cannot recognize it right in front of her.
Like we so often are, Mary is blinded by her single-minded determination to cling to what she once knew and loved; her eyes closed to the now and set instead on what had been.
Finally, when Jesus calls her by name, she recognizes him and turns, greets him, and the text implies that she reaches out to touch him.  But Jesus says to her, “Don’t hold on to me.”  He knows that although she recognizes him, she still holds onto some hope that he might be the same Jesus who lay in the tomb, hung on the cross, journeyed with and taught them.
Before she can go and tell what she has seen, she first has to let go.
That is the last we see or hear from Mary Magdalene.  The rest of John’s account is about the disciples.  She may have been with them or may not.
We don’t know.
All that we do know about her is that by the end of her encounter with the risen Christ, she is no longer standing at the tomb and no longer looking for what she had lost.
The Jesus she knew was gone, but the Jesus who knew her lived on; a new creation.  Mary learned that day, first hand, about the power of resurrection.  It was, after all, not the lost body of Jesus but a resurrected Lord she proclaimed when she left and went to see the disciples.
  It was a new day.  A new reality.  A new faith born in Mary.
And none of it would have been possible without the love that drew her to the tomb that morning or the courage that let her leave.
We, as a community, stand in her shoes this morning.
The only reason any of us are here in this place is that we have some love for this church. Whether that love is built on a lifelong legacy of nurture and memory or a new found sense of community and belonging.  Like the love that rallied Mary to visit the tomb of her friend, love for what this place has meant, continues to mean, and may mean in the future brings us here.
And like Mary, we have spent a lot of energy in recent months and years looking for something that we love that was lost; a bygone day, a long lost friend, a church that once was but no longer is.
“They have taken away our church, and we do not know where they have laid it.”
More importantly, like Mary at the tomb, I think the risen Christ is here with us in this moment and through this season.
You all know me well enough by now to know that I am not a terribly sentimental man and I do not throw around sentimental theological language often.  Little gets under my skin as much as what I often feel is the loosey-goosey attribution of good motives to God for the happenstance of good fortune in the world.
Still, I truly believe that the opportunity presented to us for this new ministry and the work we are doing here; bearing witness to a new kind of community; living into a new way of being church; and setting our sights on the possibilities of the future is nothing short of the work of the Holy Spirit in our midst and the promise of resurrection alive in our church and in us.
     If I did not believe in my heart that God is truly calling us together in this work, I wouldn’t be here doing it.  This is too hard on all of us to do it for any reason short of our love for the common object of our devotion; the God of promise who is known to us in the risen Christ.
It would be an hyperbole for me to say that the future of this church rests on our willingness to accept any particular form of leadership or any single structure of ministry.  It is the rarest of moments when God so limits our way that there is but one path forward into faithfulness.
However, it is no overstatement to say that providence has blessed us with a set of circumstances that give us options and opportunities for creativity and renewal not often available to churches like ours.  And although there is much to keep us standing with Mary at the tomb mourning what is no more; lamenting empty pews and empty coffers; letting our memories linger on days gone by and remembering with fondness the virtue and faithfulness of a church that was, there is much much more to send us out, like Mary, into the future proclaiming the hope found only in resurrection.  The work we are doing in and through this new ministry partnership is proclamation; it is our declaration to the world, the church, even ourselves that we are a people not ready to buy what the world is selling; a people whose ministry is far from done; a people who are ready to live into the hope of a risen Lord and let God do a new thing in this place.
The church we knew may be dead, but because we are in Christ and Christ is with us, the dead will never die but become a new creation.
      Like Mary, it is love that draws us here and love that echoes in our lament for what once was and, whether we like it or not, will never be again.
So, like Mary, let that love be the thing that gives us ears to hear God’s call to the future so we too will have the faith and the hope to leave the tomb of death and live into the promise of resurrection greeting God’s new day with rejoicing shouting, “He is risen!  He is risen, indeed!”
And with him, “We are risen!  We are risen, indeed!”
In the name of the risen Christ who lives for us all and makes ALL things new.
        Amen.

People not Puzzles: Recapturing a Teaching of Jesus for a New Day

Genesis 2:18-24

Mark 10:2-16

World Communion Sunday

October 4, 2015

If you are wondering where in the world I am going with these two texts, you are not alone!

          He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if a wife divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

          How can I, a man who has walked the difficult road of divorce not once but twice, hope to preach this text to a congregation, some of whom have walked that same road?  How can I, with a straight face and any measure of self-respect, preach these words?

          If we take the traditional reading of this text and leave it there, the answer is I can’t preach it.  Not without being shrouded head to toe in hypocrisy.  The traditional reading of this text, like the traditional reading of so many texts, takes the words, rips them out of their context, thrusts them before the church and says, “Here.  Don’t ask questions, just take the words at face value.”

          While that is a tempting way to read this complicated book in which we put so much stock, it is not a very respectful way.  To take the words of Jesus and act as though the moment did not matter; to take the answers Jesus gives to life’s questions and act as though the one who asked the question was inconsequential to Jesus in that moment is to give precious little respect to the way God reaches out to and for us in Christ.  The words absolutely matter, but the context in which they were spoken matters as well. 

          So what was that moment?  What was going on that day when Jesus gave this difficult answer to a question on divorce?

          As it happens, divorce was a pretty hot topic among first century Jews.  And Jesus’ audience that day was a group of Pharisees.  The debate he found himself dragged into was likely one between followers of two influential Rabbis; Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Shammai. 

The two groups disagreed on several issues, but divorce was one of the most divisive.  The Hillelites argued that Deuteronomy 24, the law on divorce, gave a man the right to divorce his wife for any reason.  The Shammaites argued that it reserved divorce for only cases of unfaithfulness. 

          Back and forth they went arguing and debating and finally drawing Jesus into the debate to see on which side of the fence he would fall.

          Jesus, doing what he does so often especially in Mark’s gospel, gives a short, concise, and thoroughly infuriating answer.  He tells them that they are both wrong.  A pox on both of their houses, he seems to say.  His frustration with their questions is evident even when he talks to the disciples.

           He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if a wife divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

          Throughout the gospels, Jesus challenges these debates about the law by not taking sides but questioning the debate itself. 

          Is this the way to get a divorce or is that the way?

          “You are asking the wrong question!”, Jesus replies.

          Divorce in the first century was predominantly a one sided affair.  While there were ways for women to divorce their husbands, they were few and extremely rare.  According to the Hillelites, a man could divorce his wife on a whim; for whatever reason strikes his fancy.  The Shammites were a little less cavalier, but even they focused on how a husband could be rid of his wife under the law.

          It does not take much time spent with this text in light of the rest of Jesus’ ministry to see that by answering the way he does, Jesus is trying to point the Pharisees to a new place in their debate.  The point, he tells them, is not figuring out how to get out of a marriage without breaking the Mosaic Law, the point is realizing that a broken relationship of any kind is more than an equation of legal reasoning.  It is more than a puzzle to be solved.  Whenever the children of God are involved, there is more at stake than coloring inside the lines.  The problem with the Pharisee’s argument is that they are focused on how to most efficiently and effectively be rid of people they saw as disposable.  Women were, in far too many ways, viewed as throw away people in first century culture and Jesus presses back on that underlying assumption.

          Now, it would be a wild stretch to say that in this text Jesus is trying to somehow rewrite the cultural norms of gender and marriage.  To be sure, Jesus pushes the boundaries on gender at many times in his ministry.  Here, however, there is no evidence that he is doing anything so radical as to upend the traditions on gender in ancient Jewish communities in the Roman Empire.

          Even without that radical turn, what Jesus does here is important.  He reminds the Pharisees and he reminds us that the breakdown of any relationship between two of God’s children is a thing worthy of more than a Pharisee’s debate and something with more at stake than being inside or outside the lines of the law.  And when the breakdown of that relationship happens, no one is disposable; there are no throw away people despite what the culture might like to teach. 

          In the case they present to him, divorce involves two of God’s children- two people brought together by God- not merely a puzzle of the law. 

          Not an entirely comfortable reading of the text, but at least one that feels slightly less hypocritical for this plank of the crooked timber of humanity to preach. 

          All of that is well and good and the preacher may have been rescued from quite so great a measure of hypocrisy, but there is still another question lingering today.  What in the world is this text doing on World Communion Sunday?

World Communion Sunday is one of the particular contributions of the Presbyterian Church to the worldwide Christian community.  Started in the 1930’s in the midst of growing American isolationism in the world, the first World Communion Sunday was celebrated at Shadyside Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh.  It was less than 20 years later that the World Federation of Churches endorsed the now common Presbyterian celebration on the first Sunday of October and a worldwide celebration of the unity of the body of Christ was born.  Today Christians around the world in traditions as varied as the Anglican Communion and the Congregationalist Churches are celebrating that despite what makes us different in the way we live our faith, it is a shared faith Christ Jesus that binds us together despite it all. 

So we on this day celebrating our unity in Christ, we get a text on divorce as the gospel reading. 

I suppose there could be a more awkward day for this text to appear.  It could be assigned to Christmas Eve!

Greeting this text about the breakdown of human relationships on this day celebrating Christian community really does require all of our interpretive skills.

I’m not sure, though, that even looking at Jesus’ words in their own context can soften the edges of this text enough to make them work today. 

Thankfully, the word Jesus spoke then- the word we encounter today- is not a word stuck in the past in that moment with the Pharisees.  What Jesus said then, that there are in truth no throw-away people- no people whose value is less than in the eyes of God-, is as true today as it was then. 

For the most part, we have gotten past the Hillelite/ Shammaite debate over Mosaic divorce law.  We have even made some, though not nearly enough, progress on issues of gender both inside the church and in some parts of the world.  So what is the equivalent in our world?  What today is the forum of the Pharisee’s demanding these words of Jesus?

The answer, I think, is in both the text and in the day.  We read this text today precisely because it needs to be read in a global context. 

If women in the first century were too often treated as throw-away people- as beneath consideration of anything other than the details of legal niceties- that role today is played by migrants and refugees.  As we celebrate this World Communion Sunday, our world is plagued by a rapidly growing crisis of displaced people viewed by much of the world as either disposable or a mere nuisance.

As we sit here today in the relative comfort of our church community, worshiping under the umbrella of, despite what some politicians would have us believe, is the least restrictive and least oppressive nation on the planet, there are 60 million people forcibly displaced from their homes due to conflicts of politics, religion, and wealth.  60 million people whose only crime was being alive in this moment in a particular place in this world. 

Josef Stalin was reported to have said once, “A single death is a tragedy.  A million deaths is a statistic.”

Too often we view migrants and refugees around the world as statistics or abstractions to be plugged into an equation.  Germany will take this many and Britain will take this many and the Swedes will take this many.  We see people as a nameless faceless whole as easily kept at arm’s length as a math problem on a classroom board.

It is the sort of logic that allowed the Pharisees to coldly and unsympathetically spend their time debating the finer points of divorce without being burdened by the human realities. 

It is the sort of cold logic that allows too many people today to say things with such Pharisaic callousness as Donald Trump’s atrocious claim that Mexican immigrants are rapists or Mike Huckabee’s staggering claim that Syrian refugees are Jihadists sent by ISIS.  It allows the Obama administration to act with shocking indifference to the refugees of the world and the governments of Europe debate the fate of men, women, and children as though they were cargo on a ship looking for a port.

In our moment, the debate of the Pharisees might be different but the response from Jesus is the same.

          He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if a wife divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

          He said to them, “If you take a hundred and see them as a statistic, you are missing the point.  And if you take a thousand and treat them as anything but your brothers and sisters, you are missing the point!”

          Two weeks ago I found myself increasingly bothered by the rhetoric of our politicians on this issue.  As I sat and stewed in my own juices, it began to dawn on me that I was actually approaching the issue the same way they were.  Hopefully I was being less heartless than many of them have been, but I found myself talking about the 60 million displaced people in the world in much the same way.  The outcome of my cold calculations were different and the expectations I am willing to put on individual nation states are different, but I found myself thinking in the same cold impersonal terms. 

          Perhaps Stalin was right and what might look like a tragedy for one family is only comprehensible as a statistic when it grows to this level.  Perhaps the only way to get our minds to wrap around this global issue is with the kind of cold calculations that define the geo-politics of displaced peoples.  

          Then one afternoon, listening to the radio, I heard a news story that helped turn the key in the lock.  Pope Francis, addressing the issue of immigrants coming to Europe and fleeing the war in Syria, called on each parish in Europe to take in one family. 

          One family.

          Not a portion of a whole population with larger parishes taking in more and smaller taking in less. Take in one family, he asked, and show them the love and hospitality of Jesus.  Take in one family and get to know them not as statistics but as mothers and fathers, children and grandchildren.  Get to know them as people who worry about many of the same things you do; making the world a better place for their children, ensuring that their children are safe and their loved ones cared for.  Get to know them as people rather than statistics.

          You have heard me mention my friend Lucy who is an elder in Batesville. Lucy is the one who, when I would get too wound up in my head worried about church things and trying to find the answer to a difficult problem in a book rather than in the community, would look at me and say, “Robert, put down the book and pick up the baby.”

          Jesus said the same thing to the Pharisees.

          Jesus says the same thing to us.

          Life is not an equation to be solved and the people in God’s world are not pawns in an intellectual legal or political quandary. 

          Put down the book and pick up the baby.

          Stop treating people like puzzles and start living the way God intended us to live from the beginning; face to face, side by side, workers together tending the vineyards, and brothers and sisters together worshiping God. 

          This World Communion Sunday through the words of this text most of us would like to leave to its own devises, Jesus reminds us that while our human relationships may break down from time to time, one thing never changes; we are all beloved children of God; all deemed worthy despite our unworthiness for the love of God; all deserving of the respect and dignity of a child of God.

          And none of us- NONE of us- is disposable in God’s eyes. 

          Amen. 

In the Boat

Mark 4:35-41

June 21, 2015

Year B

First and Harmony Presbyterian Churches

The Rev. Dr. Robert Wm Lowry

*Preached the Sunday after a mass shooting at Mother Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC.

               

The weekend after the Iraq war began, I stepped into the pulpit at First Presbyterian Church in Ann Arbor and began my sermon with these words, “Since we last gathered in this place, our world has changed dramatically.”

Today I can only stand here and say that since we last gathered in this place, our world is tragically the same.

In a turn of events that is becoming all too familiar, a disaffected young man took out the rage of his inner struggles on innocent lives.

In a turn of events that is becoming all too familiar, the targets of his rage were chosen because of the color of their skin.

In a turn of events that is becoming all too familiar, our political, cultural, and media voices have spent more time trying to explain away the actions of this disturbed young man than they have spent talking about the spiritual and societal cancer that is at the root of this and all too many events like these; racism.

Racism is but one manifestation of our culture’s persistent devaluation of human life and dignity, but it is perhaps the one that has grown deepest into our bones.  Racism is, as one commentator said many years ago, America’s original sin. 

It is the sin that stains our culture and colors our lives.  Our cultural history of segmenting off one portion of the children of God as inherently less than has made it tragically easy to segment off others based on the cultural fears, prejudices, and whims of the moment.

On Wednesday night as the news broke about the shootings at Mother Emmanuel AME church in Charleston, I found myself cycling through a laundry list of reactions.

I was horrified that this could happen in a church.

I was heartbroken that so many innocent lives were lost.

I was angry that this young man had taken his ignorance to a lethal level.

I was livid that commentators on the left took this as a chance to preach about gun violence as though a law can dictate what happens in a callous heart and commentators on the right twisted themselves in knots to ignore that this was an act of domestic racial terror and instead tried to paint this as an attack on Christians rather than what it was; cowardly racial hate. 

I was disappointed that my President and each and every man and woman of both parties who wants to be President parsed their words and hedged their statements until what they said made sense only to the narrow band of like-minded people to whom they were momentarily pandering. 

I cycled through a laundry list of reactions until finally I got around to what was, and is, really bothering me.

Our world is being thrown about on a stormy sea and as often as not it feels like our savior is asleep in the boat. 

The context for this narrative from Mark is the parable of the sower.  The farmer throws seed on the ground.  Some lands on fertile soil, some on rocky ground.  The parable is rather clearly about whether we, in heart, soul, and living, will be hospitable soil for the gospel of Jesus Christ to take root in the world and grow.

Punctuated by Mark’s rapid fire narrative, while the words of the parable hang in the air the disciples find themselves on a boat confronted by a fearful moment and a fateful choice; in their moment of need will they put their faith in God in Christ or will they allow themselves to be held captive by their fears.

Readings of this text which have endured the test of time and the changing winds of interpretive whims, cast this story in just such a light.  The disciples are faced with a moment of decision; will they choose faith or fear?  Will their lives be fertile ground in which the Gospel can find purchase and grow or will they be overcome by the weight of their fears?

Despite the abbreviated length of this narrative, Mark does what Mark so often does, he throws a wrinkle into the question.

The implication that the disciples are faced with a choice between faith and fear is compounded by the fact that at their urging, and probably because of the volume of their pleading, Jesus wakes up from his sleeping and calms the storm. 

Now, remember here that the men in the boat with Jesus were not inexperienced land lubbers. Most are experienced fishermen who had probably seen it all and lived to tell the tale of rough seas before.  This storm was so fierce that even the saltiest dog of the crowd was begging Jesus to do something to calm things down.

Jesus wakes from his sleep and at his word the storm stopped, the waves calmed, the winds abated, and the peril disappeared.

It is then, and only then, that Jesus poses the question to them, “Why are you afraid?  Have you no faith?”

When they are confronted by this defining question of faith and fear it comes not when the danger is still underfoot, but when the waters are calm and all is well again.

The text tells us that it is at this moment, when the seas are calm and when Jesus poses this question of faith or fear, that the disciples ask one another, “Who is this that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

I remember learning this story in Sunday school growing up and the lesson that attended it then; like the disciples, we are called to stand in awe and wonder at the power of God.  What voice do the wind and sea obey? 

Jesus.

Just Jesus.

Not Jesus plus.

Not Jesus and a little luck.

Not Jesus and some help from us.

Just Jesus.

At the word of Jesus, the wind and the sea obey.

Any traditional reading of this text affirms that conclusion and calls us to the faith of the disciples.  And, friends, I hope and pray that when that day comes you and I will have that faith.

I truly do.

I hope we have that faith.

I hope we have that courage.

I hope we have the spiritual capacity to stand in the wake of our fear and see with eyes of wonder the peace that God has made in the world.

I pray that when that time comes, we will have the faith of those disciples and we might be fertile ground for faith to grow.

When that time comes.

When that time comes.

For my part, I just wish that time would get here.  Because at this moment, in this time, our boat is still taking on water and the perilous winds of the world are raging.

I hope we have the courage of the disciples when that day comes, but what do we do now?

How do we stand in our boat with the storms of the present raging around us? 

This story gives us insight into what I hope we will all do when the time comes that the storms of the day are calmed, but what about now?  Because as much as I like to think that faith will find its way into my heart when that day comes, right here right now in the midst of the storms of this world…

I am afraid.

I would like to say that I have the steely faith of the Breton fishermen of legend who calmly pray, “O God, be good to me, for thy sea is so vast and my boat is so small.”

The truth is that I am afraid of the waves, I am afraid of the winds, I am afraid that my little boat is going to capsize before Jesus wakes up and makes it all stop.

I am afraid of the storm on the sea and I wager to say that I am not the only one.

How then, with this story hanging in the air, can we possibly be fearful and yet hope to be faithful?

The answer comes from Jesus’ question.

Hear it again in this story. 

They woke him up and said, “Teacher, don’t you care that we’re drowning?” He got up and gave orders to the wind, and he said to the lake, “Silence! Be still!” The wind settled down and there was a great calm. ⁴⁰ Jesus asked them, “Why are you afraid?”

Why are you afraid?

Not, do not be afraid, but why are you afraid?

Fear is not the enemy in this story. 

Fear isn’t even the point of this story.

Jesus never tells the disciples that there is nothing to be afraid of.  A massive storm on the Sea of Galilee is absolutely something to be afraid of!  The fear in this story is very real and Jesus recognizes it.

For too many years I read Jesus’ words as a rebuke as though he was sternly scolding the disciples who woke him from his slumber like Mr. Wilson chasing Dennis the Menace across the yard!  In truth, I think this scene is more like a parent sitting in the dark holding a child just awake from a nightmare.  This is a moment of Jesus’ genuine concern for the disciples, not exasperated impatience for being awakened with no reason.

The issue is not that the fear is unreal or unimportant.  The issue is that the fear is not all that there is. 

When Jesus says, “Why are you afraid?” his voice must be one of compassionate concern.  For it to be anything else would be to deny the promise of the gospel.  It is the voice befitting the one who came into the world to say and to show for once and for all that brokenness, sinfulness, hate, and, yes, fear are fleeting and have no more staying power than the steam from  a kettle.  The only thing that endures is the hope that is born into the world in Christ Jesus. 

It is that hope that carries us through when the very real fears and trials of this world take hold of us while the storm is still raging and we cannot escape the feeling that Jesus is asleep in the boat.

And it is that hope that reminds us that even when we cannot escape the feeling that Jesus is asleep in the boat, he is IN THE BOAT!

He isn’t waiting on the distant shore for us to get ourselves across the sea or out of this mess. 

He is in the boat!  If there is any place for us to put our faith in the midst of the very real fears of our day, it is in that truth and that hope.

He knows the waves that crash over us, because he is in the boat!

He knows the winds that howl around us, because he is in the boat!

He knows the churning seas that threaten to pull us down to the deepest darkest depths, because he is in the boat!

He knows the pain of a broken world, because he is in the boat!

He knows the fear that grips our lives, because he is in the boat!

He knows the pain of a community reeling from loss, because he is in the boat!

Yes, in Charleston,

or Baltimore,

or Cleveland,

or Ferguson,

or Clarksville,

or Nepal,

or Syria,

or Israel,

or the quiet of our  own homes,

or the silence of our own hearts…

wherever the human spirit grieves,

wherever fear seeks to take hold,

wherever the waters come crashing over the side and the tumult threatens to overwhelm us, he is in the boat!

If you hear nothing else I say on this or any other day, please, please hear this…

by God, through the Spirit, in this moment, in this place, in our lives, through this storm, without fail, the proof of God’s amazing love is and will always be this…

…he is in this boat!

Alleluia!  Alleluia!  Amen.