Sermon for the 7th Sunday of Ordinary Time

“Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?” (Mark 4:40)

In his first Inaugural Address, back in 2001, George W. Bush concluded with this comment in a letter from John Page to Thomas Jefferson, written after the Declaration of Independence: “Do you not think an angel rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm?” Bush said this after what many assumed had been a stormy time in our national life that would not be matched for a long time. Could he have been more wrong?

Particularly in the last nine months, the storms of our life as a country have become personal storms: savings lost, getting laid off, having to lay people off, notices of cut-offs and evictions. Then there are the storms that happen every day, mostly to other people, but sometimes to you and me: the death of those we love, broken relationships, haunting memories, failing health.

You don’t have to be in the middle of the water, with the wind swirling around you, to be in the middle of the storm. The storms of our lives frighten us, as they frightened those fishermen. We and they want desperately to avoid them, or get out of them as fast as we can. And sometimes Jesus rebukes those storms and they pass us by. But if Jesus’s rebuke of his disciples tells us anything, it says that there is grace in passing out of the storm, and in passing through it. And what Jesus did for his disciples, and said to them, out on that stormy water, he also does for us and says to us in the middle of our storms.

We and they see Jesus sleeping, so much at peace that not even a storm threatening to sink our boat and leave us to drown in poverty, sadness and death, can get him to wake up. And so we fishermen turn to a sleeping Jesus in perfect peace while are baling water, and demand that he wake up. And then we yell at him, "Do you not care that we perishing?!" And so Jesus "rebukes" the evil forces that would suck the peace, the confidence, the faith and trust out of us. And then he turns on us, and he demands to know, "Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?"

That doesn't feel very affirming or comforting. But it is truthful. And before we get our backs up at Jesus's rebuke of us, we might want to remember those times we have chosen comfort over truth. Jesus doesn't say, like a mother or father to a nightmarish child, "There's nothing to be afraid of." He doesn't tell a soothing lie to give false comfort. He knows the difference between, "Don't be afraid," and, "There's nothing to be afraid of." He also knows that if we have faith in him, if we trust in God, then we will make it through the storms of our lives, and find blessing upon blessing on the other side: or that we may sink, all the way to the bottom of our worst fears, and find blessings there.

A scene near the end of John Bunyan’s classic allegorical novel The Pilgrim’s Progress finds the chief character, Christian, the archetype of a person struggling to lead a life of faith, nearing the end of his symbolic journey. This journey requires him to cross a great and fearsome river. He is desperately afraid. Together with his friend Hopeful, they wade into the waters with trepidation. Bunyan has Christian cry out, “I sink in deep Waters; the Billows go over my head, all His waves go over me.” Hopeful replies with what may be among the most grace filled words in all of literature; “Be of good cheer, my Brother, I feel the bottom, and it is good . . .”

That is what Jesus says to each one of us, and to our land: Trust in me, wherever you end up, be it the shore or the bottom. For I am with you and wherever I am with you, it is good.