"Jesus and the Storms of our Lives"

Luke 8: 22-25

Seventh Sunday after Pentecost + July 31, 2011

Reverend Dr. David C. Brown
Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ
400 Glenwood Drive, Chattanooga, TN 37404

What were you feeling as you came to worship this morning? If you were like most Americans, if you were like Barbara and me, you were feeling a deep sense of fear about the future of our country. This tragi-comedy of errors being played out in Washington has left us emotionally drained, in a state of dread about what the next news report will bring. What has gone so terribly wrong in our country? While I have my own strong beliefs about who is most responsible for bringing us to this brink of financial disaster, I will not misuse the freedom of this pulpit for a political diatribe much as I might wish to do so. It would be pointless anyway, given current political realities. The voices of ordinary Americans crying out for commonsense and compromise are being ignored by those who claim to represent us.

In very truth, it may be too late to do anything. When I lived in Niagara Falls, New York at the beginning of my ministry, the church I served was only a mile or so from the upper Niagara River. The falls themselves were a few miles farther down the river. That part of the Niagara River was a great place for recreation: pleasure crafts, fishing, water skiing. But if one took the trouble to look ahead or listen carefully you would have seen a rising plume of mist as well as heard the distant roar of the Falls. And just to be sure you didn’t miss these natural warning signs, there were large billboards in the middle of the river warning that if you passed that point, the inexorable flow of the current would carry you over the Falls. You simply wouldn’t be able to escape destruction.

Sadly, now and then, either from carelessness or foolhardiness, some people didn’t heed those warning signs and they and their boats were swept over the Falls. Only on one occasion that I know of were two children spared from death: a little girl was snatched from her father’s boat as it went past horrified spectators standing on the brink of the Falls and, by an incredible miracle, her brother was so lightweight he was swept over the falls and into the river below like a cork where he was rescued by the Maid of the Mist. Sadly, his father was killed.

Harry Emerson Fosdick, the great liberal Protestant preacher in the earlier part of the Twentieth Century, used to say that the story of the river, those warning signs and the danger, was a parable of human life. Heed the warning signs of what is likely to happen before it is too late to have the ability to make changes.

I am very much afraid that some of our national political leaders are in danger of making that tragic error by not heeding the warning signs given them by so many wise and thoughtful people from Wall Street to Main Street. If they don’t, we will all be swept into disaster and all that will be left is to assign responsibility and blame; poor comfort, indeed.

I said that many of us came to church today with these feelings of anxiety and dread and discovered that this is a healing service. I had expected to preach on the story of Jesus healing the Gerasene demoniac with the somewhat frivolous sermon title: “Jesus’ Health Care Plan.” In a few moments we all will have the opportunity to seek healing for ourselves and others for whom we feel deep concern but for me, at least, the greatest prayer for healing I have today is for our country, sick from political discord, and racked with pain that we all feel. That is why I turned to the passage just before this healing story in Luke, to the story in Luke 8:22-25, Jesus calming a storm.

On the surface this is one of several miracle stories in the Gospels attesting to Jesus’ power over the forces of nature. But whether we believe such miracles are possible, let’s first look more closely at the story.

After a very tiring period teaching and healing along the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, Jesus and his disciples – a few of them, at least, because the fishing boats of that day were not that large – began to sail to the eastern side of the Sea. Jesus was exhausted and fell asleep in the bow of the boat even as a storm swept down the lake. While the Sea of Galilee is not large – only about twenty miles long and ten miles wide – it is subject to sudden violent storms. I know, because an excursion boat my son, David, and I were traveling on was caught in one of those storms. Passengers were thrown all over the deck. The storm described in Luke was even more severe.

The disciples, experienced fishermen, were terrified. It looked as though the waves would swamp their boat and sink it. They woke Jesus up, shouting, “Master, Master, we are perishing.” In Mark’s version of this story the disciples don’t just wake Jesus up, they accuse him: “Teacher, don’t you care that we are perishing?” Jesus does care. He rebukes the waves and calms the storm. Interesting word there: rebuke. To rebuke is to discipline sharply and severely. Keep that in mind, please. For now, notice how the story ends. After the calm, Jesus asks his disciples: “Where is your faith?” Still afraid and amazed, they don’t answer him but only talk to each other, “Who is this that he commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him?”

Now we come to the important part of this message, probably the hard part for most of us. In a liberal church, few of us believe in nature miracles. The most we can say is this story is a description of what earlier Christians believed about Jesus: that he was a divine miracle worker. But whether we believe that or not, what possible relevance does that have for us today?

It has everything to do with us. These stories of the Bible, so encrusted with myth and miracle and legend, are true stories. But they are true not about what may or may not have happened 2,000 years ago but what is happening today. Today, we are in the boat of our country along with all our fellow Americans. The storms of these days are threatening to destroy us, emotionally, physically, financially. Doesn’t it feel as though we are on the brink of disaster? It does to me. We have every reason to be terrified. And in our terror we want someone to save us. But who can that be? Politicians? They

were the ones who got us into this mess. They don’t seem to have a clue as to what to do. Shall we try to save ourselves? Forget that one, too. After the last election, we lost the power to save ourselves.

There is only One who can save us and that is God in Christ. No, I don’t mean that we ought to pray for a miracle, political or financial. That simply isn’t going to happen. What we have to do is recognize that even in this terrible storm there is One with us who is greater than all storms. God in Christ is with us. God in Christ will rebuke not only the storms but also us. As a nation, as individuals, we have behaved foolishly and irresponsibly. No wonder we are in a storm. This is not the time to blame anyone, even those who bear the most responsibility for causing it. This is the time to trust more deeply than ever before that our only hope in this life and in the life to come is the love and power of Almighty God. Without that hope we really are sunk. But, thank God, God in Christ will not let us drown. There is one here whom even the winds and waves obey. That must be our unshakeable hope.

Let me close by sharing this hope with you in the form of a true story. In August of 1914 when Ernest Shackleton left England on his famous attempt to cross Antarctica, his ship was crushed in the ice and his whole party stranded with three small boats. Partly by sailing and partly by sledding, they managed to get to Elephant Island at the mouth of the Weddell Sea.

There Shackleton left most of his men with two boats for shelter while he and two companions started across nearly 1,000 miles of open sea. His aim was the island of South Georgia which they managed to hit! (Though the wrong side.)

Now, Shackleton and his companions had to cross an unexplored mountain range 9,000 feet high. The next 36 hours were terrible. They were not mountaineers but sailors. Yet they reached the top of the range at the end of the day.

There at the top they were trapped. They could not cut steps down the sheet side of the cliff. “We’ll slide,” said Shackleton. The three of them sat on their coils of rope, held fast to each other, and took off into the darkness. When miraculously they reached the bottom safely, Shackleton’s only comment was, “It’s not good to do that sort of thing too often.” Later they walked into the whaling station they had been seeking.

Later Shackleton wrote about the experience and said he had the curious feeling that there were four men, not three, on that perilous trek. He said nothing to the other two sailors, but one remarked to him, “Boss, I had the feeling on the march that there was another person with us.” And the third sailor agreed.

Know this and never forget it: no matter what storms may come in life, we are never alone. There is always One who is with us. And you know who that is, don’t you?