(The following sermon was preached at First Lutheran Church, Kearney, NE on June 20/21, 2009)
Well, I don’t think I need to describe to anyone here the fear that goes along with being caught in the middle of a storm. For me, the Hallam tornado back in 2004 was a little too close for comfort. Here in Kearney, strong storms did a number right over in Dryden Park and destroyed a lot of people’s roofs. This past week, we once again were reminded of the power and fury of severe storms and tornados throughout the state of Nebraska – many of us getting to see the fool-hardy people drive essentially straight into that tornado in Aurora.
So we are certainly no strangers to storms and the threat they pose in our lives. Of their destructive nature and how quickly they can alter or even end our lives.
Therefore, it’s really not too difficult to know what the disciples were feeling and going through when they were on this boat and caught in a storm. They were fishermen. They knew the dangers of the sea. People were killed on these waters when storms came up. I think we all might say, their fear was justified!
And yet… here’s Jesus, sleeping. Could not have been an easy task sleeping through that either – with the boat tipping to and fro, rain lashing against the sides, the waves tossing it up and down, the winds battering it from all sides. If nothing else, it had to have been undoubtedly noisy!
Yet… Jesus slept. And the disciples are kind of put out by the fact that Jesus is sleeping. “Don’t you care that we’re perishing, Jesus?”
And, we’ve all been there, too, haven’t we? We’ve been in that boat with the disciples. We’ve been in the middle of one storm or another and feeling like God is kind of asleep at the wheel when we’re in times of distress.
I remember as a kid, I was about three and this was back in the days before parents watched their kids 24/7. I grew up as part of a generation that didn’t wear bike helmets and our parents let us wander around outside and in the house by ourselves quite frequently. Well, we lived on an acreage and my mom was outside mowing. My dad was a doctor and he was upstairs sleeping after having worked one of those nightmare 24 hour shifts in the emergency room.
Well, I’m not sure exactly what I was doing, but somehow, I managed to fall down the basement stairs, smack into the brick wall that was at the bottom, and managed to separate the skin an muscles in my chin from the bone. So I started bleeding quite profusely – and screaming equally profusely. I made my way back up the stairs, and went and stood on the front porch, blood dripping down the front of me, screaming my head off, wondering why was no one paying attention to me? My mom was off mowing somewhere so who knows where she was – and my dad was upstairs… asleep. Didn’t anyone care that I was perishing? (Because of course, in my 3 year old mind, if there was that much blood, you were gonna die.)
So I get what the disciples are thinking here. Jesus is asleep at the wheel, not paying attention. He’s obviously not caring what’s happening to them… Right?
How many of you have seen the movie “Bruce Almighty”? Remember that part when Bruce gets a little cranky with God and informs him “Everyone’s doing their job… but YOU!” Seems that way, doesn’t it? When we look around our world today – we have a hard time seeing what exactly God is up to, what he’s doing. Seems like he’s taking a nice long siesta while injustice after injustice happens, while bad thing after bad thing happens.
Well, the disciples will have none of this – they’re going to go wake Jesus up, by golly! “JESUS! Hello! We’re in trouble! Don’t you care??”
What Jesus does next then is somewhat odd, wondrous and perplexing all at the same time. He walks out, goes “Peace! And be still.” And the storm ended! Then he turned and looked at his disciples and said, “Do you still not have faith?”
What a perplexing response. What’s Jesus’ point here?
Well, part of the point lies in why Jesus was sleeping in the first place. Jesus… was at peace. Jesus was totally calm. Jesus wasn’t worried about the storm. Not because he could control it – because he obviously had no intention of stilling the storm initially, but only did so once the terrified disciples woke him up.
He wasn’t sleeping because he didn’t care… he was sleeping because he was at peace. He was in full communion with God. He trusted God and so he had no fear – even in the middle of a violent storm.
This fits then with Jesus’ question when he gets done stilling the storm… why don’t you have faith? Because the person of faith… doesn’t need the storm stilled. You’ve probably in the past heard all kinds of nice metaphors about how “well, this is God stilling the storm WITHIN us…” Perhaps that’s one way to look at it. But I think Jesus’ point instead is the person who has faith doesn’t need the storm stilled, because their faith gives them peace. They have peace and calm in the midst of the storm that is raging. CAN God stop the storm? Sure. But the person of faith rides that storm out, having faith and trusting God.
The person of faith has peace.
Now peace is no easy thing to come by. Just ask H.G. Wells. H. G. Wells was one of the best educated, most creative men of our time. He also happened to be an atheist, and said in his autobiography: “I cannot adjust my life to secure any fruitful peace. Here I am at sixty-five still seeking for peace...Dignified peace...is just a hopeless dream.”
H.G. Wells figured something out – he had figured out that “peace” was not something he could muster within himself.
Peace and calm in our souls comes from something H.G. Wells was missing – faith.
And that peace that comes through faith can come at really unexpected times. Some of you here have met my mother, but what most of you don’t know is my mother is a MAJOR worry wart. This woman freaks out over the “what ifs” of every possible situation you can think of. And she has some pretty debilitating fears as well. (She’s not here this weekend, so I get to pick on her a little bit) I remember as a kid she was so terrified of heights that she had to literally crawl back to the car when we were standing atop a waterfall in Yellowstone Park.
So, the following story I find just an amazing and inspirational story of faith in regards to my mother. On March 5th of 2006, my parents were flying in a small, single engine aircraft from Lincoln, Nebraska to Palm Springs, California. Along the way, they stopped in Winslow, Arizona to get some fuel before continuing on their way.
Now, my dad had just had a brand new engine put in this airplane. It only had like 10 hours flying time on it. Well, as they took off from the runway in Winslow, Arizona, got about 200 feet into the air… that brand new engine… died. Only, my mom didn’t realize that’s what had happened at first.
As they were going along, she noted that they suddenly weren’t getting in higher. Frowning, she turned to my father and said: “Ron, we need to be higher.”
My father’s response was, a very terse, “I know!”
Mom looked out over the homes that they were only fifty or so feet above by now and looked back at my father and said, “Are we going to crash?”
My father let out another very strained, yet simple, “Yes!”
Now, if you knew my mother, you probably would have expected her to just have flipped her lid and started screaming or some such thing. But she didn’t. She digested the information and the reality that they were probably going to smash into one of those homes below or smash into the large bluff that lay directly ahead, one or the other. Then she noticed my dad was slowly trying to turn the airplane out over the desert.
Very calmly she said, “Oh… well, don’t stall… and do you want the landing gear down?”
Her calm words of advice my dad has admitted were very helpful. He was so busy with other things that those two things were very important for him to hear, and actually… he decided maybe he did want the landing gear down. In retrospect – by putting the landing gear down, that probably saved them from being hurt worse than they were. When they “landed” they rolled across the bumpy terrain for a while before the landing gear collapsed and at that point they just began spinning out of control, ripping the wings off until they hit a barbed wire fence. Strangely – that barbed wire fence caused more injury than anything else as my mom managed to get tangled up in it when she was trying to get out of the plane. That hurt her worse than the actual crash!
But looking back, when I ask her how she stayed so calm, she just shrugs and she goes, “I knew at that moment, I was in God’s hands. Whatever happened – it was out of my control. But I knew God was there with me, no matter what happened.
Now that’s not a peace you can go in search of, it’s not a peace that you can find on your own. It’s a peace that has to be given to you – by the one who controls all things.
It’s a peace that comes only through faith. Mr. Wells never found peace, because he never had faith.
So peace… and be still. Amid life’s storms – your faith will allow you to sleep at night, knowing Jesus is on the boat, or plane, or whatever storm you’re weathering… with you. Jesus is present, and you’re in His hands, no matter what happens. Peace, and be still.
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