June 22, 2003

Okay, show of hands—how many of us are sick of rain? I read a story in the paper yesterday that said since April we have had exactly four sunny days. Farmers’ seeds are rotting in the ground. Joanne told me yesterday that their hay won’t be fit to use. People who work in outdoor jobs, like landscapers, aren’t able to work. Coming back from seeing Doc Friday night I got caught on I-79 in the middle of that downpour, and that was quite scary.

 It has been, in short, one of the coldest, wettest springs on record in western Pennsylvania.

Now you don’t have to build an ark. We have God’s promise on record that he won’t destroy the world by flood again. That’s his sign in the rainbow—he won’t flood the earth again. He might mildew the world to death, but that’s another story.

No, the big problem with all this rain is psychological. It’s depressing, to beat the band. I heard the song “Pennies from Heaven” on the radio the other day. You know how that song goes—“Every time it rains, it rains pennies from heaven.” And even I had to say, “What a lot of horse hockey.” The plain fact is, when it rains over and over and over it’s murder keeping a positive attitude. The storms that beat on us from above seem so much worse than they might in “normal” times. Problems that pop up in life seem like killers, instead of just hurdles.

The disciples of Jesus who are pictured in today’s Gospel story are men who panic at the first sign of trouble. Mark often went out of his way to paint the disciples in a bad light, as dim bulbs who never understood who Jesus was. In this terse little story he shows Jesus calmly sleeping even as the boat fills up with water. It’s easy to imagine the disciples bailing frantically while someone shakes Jesus and says, “Don’t you care that we’re about to drown?”

 I love the New American translation of the Bible, which says Jesus stood up and said to the wind, not “peace, be still,” but “shut up!”

That’s the first half of the gospel message—God as pure providence, the one who sees his beloved in trouble and takes action to save them. But the second half of the message is even more important. Mark shows Jesus turning to these fishermen and saying, “Why are you so frightened? Do you still have no faith?” Catch this, folks—what Jesus is saying is that if you’re not careful, if you don’t keep faith, the storms inside you can sink you faster than the storms outside.

The great French writer Victor Hugo, author of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” and “Les Miserables,” also wrote a story called “Ninety-three,” a tale of a vicious storm at sea, much like today’s gospel lesson. At the height of the storm in Hugo’s story, the sailors hear a terrible crash below decks. They realize to their horror that one of their cannon has broken loose, and is smashing back and forth against the walls of the ship. If the cannon breaks through, they might well all drown.

Finally two brave sailors volunteer to go below decks and try to retie the cannon, knowing that the danger within was greater than the danger of the storm.

That is so like the human condition, which is the point that Victor Hugo was making. The storms that blow in on us are dangerous, but it is the storms that are within us that cause the most peril. I don’t know how many of you remember the comic strip Pogo; Pogo was a wise possum who commented on the foolish behavior all around him. One of Pogo’s most famous comments was “We have met the enemy, and he is is.”

We can be our own worst enemy in times of trouble, because we panic, and are ready to try anything to save ourselves except the most obvious choice—faith in a strong and a loving God who is always faithful to us. How often is he faithful, church? Sometimes? No, he is always faithful to us.

I have several points I want to share with you about keeping the faith in the middle of life’s storms. In fact, I have enough to keep us here until about 2:30, but I tried to pull out some of the most important items. Ready?

First is, Storms come up fast, and surprise us. Mark uses the word suddenly to describe the storm, and I’m told that’s the usual way with storms in the desert—they just sweep in before you know it. How many times has this occurred in your life? Things are sailing along smoothly, and then boom! You’re flat on your back.

That’s what happened to my friend Helen Auman. I was kidding her about an elementary school librarian qualifying for hazardous duty pay. But one minute she was on a table trying to reach the top shelf, and the next minute she’s on the ground with her leg broken and a long recovery ahead. That’s what happened to Doc—I saw him a week ago Saturday, when he was outside burning some leaves with his shirt off, looking fit as a fiddle, and then a couple days later he’s having chest pains, and catherization, and then bypass surgery.

Here’s the key—you have to be ready for the storm before it arrives. The amount of exercise Doc has done—he walked up to three miles a day—will help him bounce back from his surgery, and the work that people put into their faith will help them hold fast in a storm. David found out how fast our friends can turn into our enemies when the jealous King Saul started chucking spears at him. David killed Goliath and eliminated this huge problem for Saul. The giant’s body isn’t even cold yet, and what happens? Saul tries to kill David. Saul keeps sending David into battle, hoping he’ll get killed, but God stays with him and protects him, and even through all David’s shenanigans God blesses him so that he lives to die in bed at a very old age.

You know what? I can’t guarantee that you’ll die in bed, but I can guarantee that God will stay with you always, because that’s his promise. And it leads straight into the second point for this morning—when you’re struggling with the storms within, you can’t win. That is, you can’t win alone. Only God can win. It takes the power of God’s love as revealed in Jesus Christ to get us over our fears.

And that, too, is what Mark says about the disciples. When the storm abates, they are left to ask the age-old question, “Who is this man?” Everyone who encounters Jesus asks the same question, but many need a lifetime to come to a conclusion. The disciples needed the proof of the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus to conclude that he was God’s son. It’s easy for us to say if we had been in the boat and witnessed Jesus calming the wind and the waves that our faith would be absolute. But later on when the winds return and the boat is filling up again and your senses tell you you’re alone, you’ll need a powerful faith to stop bailing the boat and put your trust in God.

One of my favorite illustrations is the one about a man who fell off a cliff and grabbed hold of a bush on the way down. As he hangs in mid-air he cries out, “Somebody help me. Is there anybody up there?” And a voice comes down from the sky, “I’ll help you.” And the man says “Oh, thank God, who is that.” “It’s God.” “Oh, that’s the best news possible. Please rescue me, God. What do you want me to do?” And the voice says, “Let go of the bush.” “Is there anybody else up there?”

The point is, when you want God’s help with your inner storms, sometimes you have to stop rushing around frantically and just listen for his answer. Which takes us into our third point: Storms can knock us off course. In 1996 a man from Australia by the name of Davies won the Templeton Prize for progress in religion, a very prestigious award which comes with a nice cash grant. I’m sure Professor Davies has done many good works, but in one of his books he says that Christians have to get over the idea of an interventionist God, that is, a God who hears us, loves us and acts on our behalf. Such a God is an offense against reason, and totally unbelievable to modern skeptical people.

Somewhere along the way, I think Professor Davies got knocked off course. If we do not believe in an interventionist God, I’m afraid there’s no reason for us to get together on Sunday mornings. If we don’t believe in a God who can calm the storms within, then ultimately we’re nothing but bits of human wreckage totally trapped between the forces inside and outside. Excuse the pun, but we don’t have a prayer of survival without a God who loves us and shelters us.

A little girl was about to undergo a dangerous operation, and the surgeon told her, “Before we can make you well, we have to put you to sleep.” And the little girl said, “Oh, if I’m going to sleep I have to say my prayers.” And she folded her hands and closed her eyes, and said, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. And this I ask for Jesus’ sake. Amen.” Later on the surgeon admitted that he said that prayer that night, for the first time in 40 years.

It’s that kind of faith, however, that we need to get over our fears, which are extremely powerful—powerful enough to paralyze us. During his years as premier of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev frequently denounced the atrocities committed by Joseph Stalin. Once, as he censured Stalin in a public meeting, a heckler yelled out from the back of the room, “You were one of Stalin’s colleagues. Why didn’t you stop him?” Khrushchev roared in anger, “Who said that?” But the entire room was silent; nobody dared move a muscle. Khrushchev said quietly, “Now you know why.”

Sometimes we can be paralyzed, not by the storms we face, but by the fear within. What we would prefer is a God who says, “It’s okay, leave your boat tied up at the dock. You’re smart to be afraid of the storm.” That’s not what happens.

When Jesus said “Let’s go across to the other side of the lake, he had just finished a wonderful day of preaching. He had told the crowd, so huge that he had to preach from a boat on the water, the parable of the sower and the seed and the story of faith so strong that a mustard’s seed worth could move mountains. The disciples may have been shocked when Jesus said, “Let’s sail on.” “Why?” they thought. “The crowd is here.”

And when the storm popped up at sea, the disciples felt that Jesus had led them to their destruction. “Don’t you care,” they cried. His reply is the same now as then: “Yes I care, and I’m with you. Now sail on.”

Last thing I would share with you this morning is subtle: Jesus does not promise to calm every storm in your life. But he does promise to calm you, in every storm you face.

One of the great preachers in all the history of the Christian church was John Wesley, who was born 300 years ago this week in England. It is estimated that Wesley rode 250,000 miles around England on horseback, giving 40,000 sermons in his life, most of them in the open air, often with hostile protestors heckling him as he preached. But he and his brother so persevered in their work that the Methodist Church took root and flourished both in England and in America. Today there are some 70 million Methodists around the world who can trace their roots to one man’s efforts for Christ.

John Wesley was hardly someone who let his fears rule his life, but sometimes even his courage gave out.

Wesley came to the American colonies several times, and on one of his Atlantic crossings a fierce storm broke out, pitching and tossing his ship around as if it were a bathtub toy. While Wesley and the other passengers clung to their bunks and no doubt cried to God, “Don’t you care that we’re about to drown?” a group of Moravians on their way to their new homeland calmly held their daily prayer service and sang praises to God.

Watching these Moravians, so obviously unperturbed by the howling wind and crashing waves, Wesley realized that he was witnessing a truly waterproof faith.

After, he prayed that God would grant him, also, sufficient faith to ride out life’s storms with such confidence.

What made those Moravians so calm in the face of a life-threatening storm? It was the same trait that the disciples in Mark’s story so badly lacked: total trust in Jesus Christ. After stretching out his arms and stilling the storm, Jesus turned to his companions and chastised them.

By their cowardly cringing and crying out in fear, they had revealed the shallowness of their faith.

Although they had been specially chosen for this journey, they had missed the boat.

We all have been specially chosen for this journey of faith. But when it comes to trusting God’s promises, will we, too, miss the boat? David wrote in his Psalms, “When I am afraid, I place my trust in you.”

Paul wrote in his letter to the Philippians, “I have the strength to face anything, by the power that Christ gives me.”

Ernest Becker, in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book. “The Denial of Death,” writes that all of our fears—the fear of rejection, the fear of abandonment, the fear of failure, the fear of separation and loss—these are all just manifestation of our real fear, the fear of death.

He may be right. Certainly the disciples were afraid of death. So how do we overcome this fear, how do we calm the demons of fear within? There’s only one antidote to that poison, my friends—faith.

Bishop Warren Chandler, whose name was given to the school of theology at Chandler University, was on his deathbed when one of his close friends asked him the question that all mortals, men and women, must answer: “Are you afraid? Do you fear crossing over the river of death?”

And Chandler replied, “Why? I belong to my father, who owns the land on both sides of the river.”

In life, and in death, and in life beyond death, we belong to God, and he is with us. That is our great salvation hope.

This morning I want you to understand that if you are immobilized by some fear in your life, God cares. He cares because that fear is interfering with his destiny, his will for you. It is Christ’s perfect love that casts out fears. At the foot of the cross you can be embraced by his loving arms and really understand those words from the old hymn, “God will take care of you, through every day, in every way.”