You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly!
Have
you ever felt like Chippie the parakeet?
Well, let me tell you, Chippie never saw it coming. One second he was peacefully perched in his
cage. The next thing he knew he was sucked in, washed up, and blown over.
The
problem began when Chippie's owner decided to clean the perky little bird’s
cage with a vacuum cleaner. She removed
the attachment from the end of the hose and stuck the hose into the cage.
It
was at that moment that she heard her special ringtone, and, without thinking, she
turned to pick up her smartphone and answer it.
She had barely said "hello" when "ssssopp!": Chippie
got sucked in.
The
bird's owner, of course, gasped in horror, dropped the phone, turned off the
vacuum cleaner, and opened the bag – naturally expecting the worst. But lo and behold - there was Chippie. And guess what? Chippie was still alive,
though quite stunned.
Since
the bird was now covered with dust, hair, and all the other stuff in the vacuum
bag, the woman grabbed him and raced to the bathroom sink, turned on the tap,
and held Chippie under the running water. However, a moment later, she
realized that Chippie was soaked and shivering – washed up - so she did what
any compassionate bird owner would do.
She reached for the hair dryer and blasted the little guy with hot
air. Poor Chippie! Blown over! That bird never knew what hit
him.
A
few days later, a friend who had heard about Chippie's misadventure stopped by to
see how the bird was doing.
"Well," the woman said, "Chippie doesn't really do much
anymore - he either is a little bit jumpy, or he just sits and stares":
The calm after the storm. And, really,
who can blame him?
Sucked
in, washed up, blown over, and then the eerie calm: Kind of like what the disciples’ experienced
in that old beaten up fishing boat they found themselves in when a sudden storm
came sweeping over the Sea of Galilee:
sucked in to going over to the other side of the lake in the first
place, practically washed up by the cold rains that lashed about them, running
into their eyes and plastering bits of hair to their faces and necks, and
nearly blown over - and overboard - by the wind that whipped the rain about
them and roiled up the waves into a mass of solid chaos.
It
had all started innocently enough. Jesus,
the landlubber carpenter turned self-proclaimed rabbi, had announced his
intention. “Let’s take our leave of the
crowds,” he said. “Let’s put aside the
images of sowers and lamps under bushels, and mustard seeds. The evening is so fine. We’ll take a twilight cruise to the other
side of the lake.”
Nice
idea and all - though going to the other side with Jesus is never smooth
sailing. It generally means that
something very unexpected and jarring will happen, and so maybe the disciples
should have been wary about his grand idea.
And
you would have thought that at least one of the former fishermen in the bunch
would have seen that single cloud just beginning to peek over the horizon and,
knowing how quickly a storm could build even when the sun was shining, would
have said something like, “Ah, Jesus, see that tiny innocent-looking cloud over
there to the west? Or - can you feel the
wind just beginning to tickle your beard?
Or - I want you to know that my bad knee is beginning to throb. We ought not to venture out right now.”
But
if anyone did say anything, Jesus had already made up his mind. In fact, he had already gotten
into the boat and taken up his position in the stern - where one would steer
the boat. Is that why he went to the back, to steer it? One wonders -
especially since he promptly fell asleep, his head resting on a small,
checkered pillow.
At
any rate, Jesus’ assertiveness coupled with his snoring left no room for
debate, and so, there they were, out in the middle of the lake, when the clouds
billowed, and the sky darkened, and winds rose, and the rains came, and those
who were fishermen mumbled to themselves “See, we told you so,” and they all
wondered if they would perish and be sent to their watery graves that very ight.
And
a couple of them shook Jesus – still sleeping soundly when perhaps he should
have been steering the boat – after all he was in the stern – and woke him up
and spilled their hearts out to him.
However, interestingly enough, they did not tell him that they feared
for their very lives but rather blurted out what really bothered them: “Don’t
you care that we are about to die?
Jesus, don’t you care about us?”
And
if we have read this story before, we know that Jesus, much like Moses before
him who had confronted the Red Sea so long ago, raised his arms high and in a
commanding voice directed the sea and the wind and the rain. “Be quiet.
Be still. Be at peace.” And even as the words left his lips, there
was a great calm – and a great silence – broken only by Jesus’ probing and
provocative question: “Why are you so frightened? Do you still have no faith?”
And
in that calm and silence pierced by his words, did the disciples remember the
psalm that proclaimed: “Be still and know that I am God?” Did they remember the story of the great
prophet Elijah hidden in his cave who experienced God not in the power of the
earthquake or in the heat of the fire but rather in the still small voice, in
the peace, in the silence? Is that why they found that moment more terrifying
than the storm itself, more terrifying because in their heart of hearts they
knew that they were face-to-face with the Great Mystery revealed in this man
Jesus. “Who is he?” they asked. “Who is
he that even the wind and the waves obey him?”
There
are three important parts to this marvelous little story that we find in all
three of our Synoptic Gospels (Matthew Mark, and Luke). There is the sucked in part, then there is
the storm itself, and finally there is the calm. All three of these parts are
important for us because they all have to do with the relationship between our
fear and our faith and the thin and risky line between the two. Let’s take a
look at them.
First, there is the sucked in part –
the prelude to the disciples finding themselves in the middle of the Sea of
Galilee in hurricane-like conditions.
Seminary professor Karoline Lewis describes it this way.
“Here’s the problem, as if there is
only one, with Jesus. He seems rather dissatisfied with letting us live on one
side of the lake for too long. So he takes the disciples to the other side. And
getting to the other side is no easy trip. Nor should we expect that to be the
case. When we over-sentimentalize or spiritualize this story we end up
overlooking the obvious -- that this boat trip was a means by which to get from
one place to another. And, something equally as obvious -- that change, trading
spaces, is rarely without its challenges. Getting to the other side means a
boat ride for sure, a torrential downpour, and dead calm. That’s what happens
when Jesus tries to move us from one place to another. But that’s also the
nature of change.
If the disciples had said to Jesus,
“Well, what if there is a storm?” they would have never gotten into the boat
because there are always storms on the Sea of Galilee and when you least expect
it. If the disciples had said to Jesus,
“Well, first tell us what’s on the other side?” they would have never gotten
into the boat because (well, which of them would have believed what was to
happen on all the “other sides” they embarked on with Jesus)….The hardest thing
(Lewis concludes) is getting into the boat. You just have to get into the darn
boat.”
We have all been sucked in to some
extent. It happens each time we set foot
in this sanctuary on a Sunday morning, and each time we are faced with a choice
to be Christ-like in our actions - or not.
Somewhere along the way on our life’s journey, we have been sucked into
this Christianity business - though that alone, mind you, does not mean we have
stepped into the boat.
We who say we are Christians are given
a choice at every juncture because following Jesus is always a risky business,
one that may take us to places we do not want to go and to people we would just
as soon not meet. But Jesus
gets into the boat and beckons to us to follow because he will not stay in one
place – unchanged. He always challenges
us to do more and be more. “The hardest thing is getting into the boat. You
just have to get into the darn boat.”
You just have to embrace the change, control the fear, and step out into
the waters of faith.
And you do so knowing that it will not
be smooth sailing, which brings us to the second part of this story – the storm
itself. Oh, the winds and the rains are
different for each one of us: a death in
the family to mourn, an aging parent to care for, a teenager you simply can not
understand, a marriage in shambles, you weigh too much, you talk too little,
you are too stressed at work, you have too much time to yourself at home – and
through it all you feel so overwhelmed, so lost, so angry, so resentful, so
utterly alone.
As Episcopal priest David Henson wrote,
“We are like the disciples. We want God to calm the wind and seas. We want to
shout at God, “What’s the matter with you? Don’t you see we are perishing?
Don’t you see so many of us — children, even! — have already perished? Wake up,
God! Stop sleeping when we need you most!” Such
angry questions! But step back for a
moment, and remember that even as the disciples’ rode out those thirty-foot
waves, they were not alone. Jesus was
there in the boat with them, ready to sink alongside them if it came to
that.
Maybe the miracle of this story is not
that Jesus calmed the waters but that he was there in the waterlogged and
leaking boat with those disciples, experiencing the same storm, the same wind
and rain, the same danger. As Episcopal
priest Rick Morley wrote, “God is with you. And all you need is enough faith to
get you through to the moment when Jesus speaks, “Peace. Be still.”
God never promised us an easy life, but
God does promise to be there with us in all of our struggles and through all of
our storms – and may we have faith enough to trust that, in God’s time, the
peace and calm will come.
Fear need not have the last word, which
brings us to the final part of this story.
The calm will come, but it will come when we embrace the change that the
storm has inevitably brought. And it
will be in the calm – when we embrace the change - that we will find ourselves
face-to-face with the Great Mystery, and, like the disciples, we too might be
terrified, but we too are not alone, were never alone.
The cancer may be terminal (and that is
frightening news), but there is still a life to be lived, people to be loved,
and a death on one’s own terms to be planned for. The marriage may end (and that is scary),
but, in its wake, the shouting has stopped, and the arguments have ceased, and
there is still a life to be lived and new people to love. The church may seem to be shaken to its very
foundations and not at all like the church we grew up in (and that is
frightening), but there in the new songs and bold colors and quirky worship, if
we embrace them, there is a new life for the church to be lived and new people
in its midst to love.
O God, give us faith more than fear as
we are sucked in and challenged to go to the other side (whatever that may be
for us), give us more faith than fear as we stand firm in the midst of the
storm that washes us up and threatens to blow us over – and overboard, and
finally, O Holy One, give us more faith than fear, so that when we find our
calm, we will also find our God. Amen.
by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church U.C.C., Raymond, Maine
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