Now that summer is in full swing, we’ve entered the season in which every afternoon bears the potential for a thunderstorm. This week has been a perfect illustration of that. Some nights brought rumbling that shook the walls of our house. One night, the sky was filled with clouds and everything seemed to have an eerie yellow hue. Even driving in this morning, the sky alternated between grey looming clouds and sunny blue strips of sky. Summer storms can seem to come out of nowhere and stop just as quickly as they start. In fact, you can drive from your home to church and find drastically different weather patterns all in a matter of minutes. At this time of year especially, this storm pattern is common.
The same was true for the fishermen when they set out on the sea of Galilee. This body of water isn’t that big, and is surrounded by mountains and hillsides. A storm could sweep up out of nowhere and take a boat by surprise. And that’s exactly what happens in our gospel text for today, as the disciples and Jesus are transitioning from his teachings to a ministry marked by miracles. Out of nowhere, the wind and waves batter their ship to the point where they are in real danger. And where is Jesus? Sleeping peacefully in the midst of the chaos. Such an image can be a bit jarring to our faith. It’s not that Jesus was missing; the disciples were traveling with the Lord at their side. And yet, even when they were “going with God,” the going has gotten tough. The disciples wake him up with cries of sheer terror – we are perishing!
A common misnomer about the journey of faith is that if you are “right” with God, doing all the things that disciples are supposed to do, then you won’t have any problems or difficulties in your life. This is bad theology, and it’s not biblical, either. In both of our texts for today, God’s people experience real and present danger, all while being clearly on the road with God. So today we consider what it means to encounter storms along the way.
For the people of Israel, they are fleeing the tyrannical, oppressive rule of a Pharaoh who has abused his power and enslaved them in Egypt. Exodus 14 reveals the climax of the story; after plagues and signs, Pharaoh finally relents and grants the request Moses makes on God’s behalf to, “let me people go!” But the promise of release is seemingly short-lived, as Pharaoh changes his mind and pursues the refugees fleeing their captivity. The Israelites reach a literal dead end at the water’s edge. In the verses skipped this morning, they indicate how it seems pretty heartless of God to have led them this far, with hopes and expectations of the promised land, only to die at the hands of Pharaoh’s army. Rightly so, their cries become similar to the disciples on the boat: we are perishing!
Our experience falls in line. We live in a stressful, chaotic, and dare I say, stormy, world. We fight and bicker with those we love, and disagree with many that we meet. We struggle to make ends meet. Storms of addiction and depression, grief and illness threaten to overwhelm us. There are literal storms, too, that bring about destruction. On Wednesday morning, there was a significant earthquake in the northwest corner of Guatemala near the border with Mexico. Many are still rebuilding their lives across the Midwest and Gulf Coast in the wake of storms that are long absent from news cycles but very present realities for many. This week marked the one year anniversary of the deadliest shooting in U.S. history at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando in which 49 children of God were killed, and we woke up on Wednesday morning to the news that a gunman had opened fire on leaders and aides at a congressional baseball practice. One right after the other, sudden, dangerous storms break our hearts, and our spirits. “We are perishing” becomes our cry, too.
Has God fallen asleep like Jesus did on the boat? In the other gospels, the disciples accuse Jesus of not caring that they are perishing. This is a question of what scholars call “theodicy” – the exploration of what to make of a good, loving God, who allows bad things to happen and evil to seem to win. It is a question God’s people have been asking since the beginning of time, and continue to ask today. After the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, this question was at the top of everyone’s list. New York Times author Stephen Jay Gould wrote a poignant response just a few weeks after those devastating events, noting:
The patterns of human history mix decency and depravity in equal measure (1).
Given this, he writes, we often assume that this means that our society is balanced in this way, with equal numbers of decent and depraved people. But this isn’t actually true. Her suggests that in moments of crisis we have to reaffirm an essential truth too easily forgotten:
Good and kind people outnumber all others by thousands to one. The tragedy of human history lies in the enormous potential for destruction in rare acts of evil, not in the high frequency of evil people(3).
Gould calls this phenomenon the “Great Asymmetry,” and asserts that
Every spectacular incident of evil will be balanced by 10,000 acts of kindness, too often unnoted and invisible as the “ordinary” efforts of a vast majority(3).
He calls on all of us as a people to record and honor the weight of these kindnesses, so that our view of humanity, of ordinary human behavior, will not be distorted by the storms. We can’t get stuck in the storm. “We are perishing!” cannot be our final cry. We have to look and see Jesus on the boat. Then, we might remember some of the 10,000 acts of kindness and goodness that exist. In doing so, we might find a moment of calm or stillness, not unlike the wind and the waves on the Galiliee that day.
Former PCUSA Moderator and pastor Neal Presa writes “what can the church [or a preacher] possibly proclaim in the midst of tragedy, both while the storm is raging and after it has subsided(4)” that will make any sort of difference? If we are to have any hope, we must return to our biblical texts. When faced with peril, in both of the stories we read today we see evidence of God’s providential care. For the Israelites, God literally parts the waters; where there was once a dead end, God makes a way. For the disciples, Jesus rebukes the wind and waves and they subside; where there once was chaos, Christ brings peace. The message of scripture is this; when things in life get tough, God will bring us through the waters. That is what the church is called to proclaim.
This is the central claim we make in baptism. That we have been claimed by Christ in these sacred waters, and that God will deliver us from the ways of death and sin into new life. No storm can shake God’s love for us, whether it is something we experience at the hands of others or something we create ourselves. When we make these promises to an infant, we acknowledge that her life will be full of ups and downs. As a community of faith, we promise to walk alongside her and remind her of the faith which will make her strong. As she grows, we affirm that she is a beloved child of God, and celebrate the gifts that God has given her, encouraging her to share them with the world. When things get tough, we will be there with her as a reminder of God’s presence. We will tell her she is strong when kids on the playground make fun of her and tell her she can’t do something. We will tell her she is smart and can do it when she comes to youth group exhausted from hours of studying. We will pray with her and for her when she goes out on her own and tries to find her way in this world. And at the same time, we will navigate our own storms and the storms of this world. We will do it together, confident that God is walking with us. This is what it means to say yes to those questions we ask at baptism. That we will walk this path together, through the waters of life.
“Where is your faith?” Jesus asks the disciples after the storm is calmed. Rather than take this as a demeaning criticism of their belief system, perhaps we should view such a question as Jesus reminding them of where their strength will come from – their faith. With God’s help, our answer can be to look around us. This week at VBS, one of the central messages was that being a hero was not just something reserved for a select few – we are ALL God’s heroes, because God gives us all strength. With God, we have heart, courage, wisdom, hope, and power. These are the things we need to get us through the storms, and they have been given to us. Our real challenge is whether or not we will be able to find our strength in the faith God has given to us.
I don’t have a dog, but several friends with furry companions often note how terrified their animals are of thunderstorms. A few of them have discovered a fantastic solution; the thundershirt. It looks kind of like a sweater wrapped around the animal’s torso that provides constant, gentle pressure. In doing so, it relieves the anxiety felt in the face of a storm. The storm still happens, of course, but the dog or cat has an easier time getting through it. That’s what it’s like with faith. Our faith doesn’t make us immune from the storms in life any more than anyone else; but
anchored in faith, we can check the course that we have chosen, our responses along that course, and the decisions we have yet to make along the journey(5).
Our faith wraps around us with the assurance that God is with us, and helps us find the strength we need to move forward. When the storms come, and they will, “going with God” becomes the most important, because we trust that God will get us through those waters. May it be so. Amen.
~Rev. Elizabeth Lovell Milford
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1) Stephen Jay Gould, “A Time of Gifts,” The New York Times, September 26, 2001. https://mobile.nytimes.com/2001/09/26/opinion/a-time-of-gifts.html, accessed 6/15/2017.
2) Ibid.
3) Ibid.
4) Neal D. Presa, “Theological Perspective: Luke 8:22-25,” Feasting on the Gospels: Luke, Volume I, Chapters 1-11, Cynthia A. Jarvis and E. Elizabeth Johnson, editors, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2014).
5) Ibid.
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