St. Paul’s – Proper 7 – June 23,2024
“Teacher – do you not care that we are perishing?” (Mark 4:38)
Several years ago, Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote a very popular book, “Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People” A few years later, popular Christian writer Phillip Yancey wrote “Where is God When it Hurts?” In almost 46 years of ministry, I have encountered many sad or angry people who lost their faith because they went through a very difficult personal crisis and did not feel that God was there for them. As one angry young man said to me after his father was shot and killed in a domestic dispute, If there is a God, he don’t care thing about me and my family”Many people have at least one experience of feeling like there is no God, or if there is a God, the Holy One is asleep at the wheel.
In our Gospel lesson, the disciples experienced a God asleep at the wheel moment – Jesus napping while the ship is sinking. Sometimes we have to look at this story and decide if it’s about imitating Jesus. We look at the disciples and think, Well, here they are making things worse by getting upset, allowing their fear and panic to control their actions. Jesus, on the other hand, stays calm in a crisis. And because he keeps himself under control, he exerts control over his surroundings. Therefore, we should be like Jesus. Makes a relative degree of sense, doesn’t it? After all, the didn’t the Bible say, If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs…? No, wait, that was Rudyard Kipling – but surely that’s the point of this story, isn’t it?
Well, no; it’s not. Neither the writer of the book of Job nor the evangelist who wrote Mark is interested in our ability to keep our heads, and stand on our own two feet, and face adversity with calm resolve. As important as all those things might be at times – they are not the message here today. Vanderbilt Divinity School professor Liston Mills often said that there is only one important theological question, Can God be trusted? Is God awake and alert, or asleep at the wheel? That is the question that the disciples are asking in the gospel lesson. They have seen demonstrations of Jesus’ power to heal and cast out demons, they have left their homes and families and jobs because they think he might be the Messiah. But here they are, in danger of losing their very lives, and there he is asleep in the stern, literally asleep at the wheel. Of course they cry out, . . . .do you not care that we are perishing?
Can God be trusted? The Bible says that God can indeed be trusted, that God does most certainly have this situation, and us, well in hand. The hard part is trusting God’s larger plan for the world and the divine goodwill toward humanity in the midst of our sometimes perilous personal circumstances and what is going on in our world.
A story is told of St. Teresa of Avila. She had been on a long, overnight journey in an uncomfortable wagon through a drenching rain-storm on a bitterly cold night. When she arrived at the convent, she struggled to get out of the wagon, then slipped on a wet cobblestone, landing on her bottom in a large mud puddle. She sat there a moment or two, then looked up into the sky and said to God, It is no wonder you have so few friends, you treat them so badly.
But consider this: in Mark’s story of the storm, the obvious (but wholly overlooked) fact is that Jesus is just as present in the raging water as he is in the soothing calm that follows. Despite the disciples’ inability to perceive it, there is no point in the night when God is absent or even distant. In that vulnerable boat, surrounded by that swelling, terrifying water, the disciples are in the intimate company of Jesus. He rests in their midst, tossed as they are tossed, soaked as they are soaked.
I think I will spend the rest of my life seeking this one grace — the grace to experience God’s presence in the storm. The grace to know that I am accompanied by the divine in the bleakest, most treacherous places. The grace to trust that Jesus cares even when I’m drowning. The grace to believe in both the existence and the power of Love even when Jesus sleeps. Even when the miraculous calm doesn’t come.
In his great tenderness, Jesus waits until the nightmare is over before he invites his disciples to take spiritual inventory. Why are you afraid? he asks them. I don’t read his question as an accusation. I read it as an invitation to take stock, to reflect, to learn, to grow. Why are we afraid as Christians? What false assumptions do we harbor about the character of God? Are we more interested in God being with us, or doing things for us?
You need not panic, though the situation may appear bleak. The Lord of the Church is in the boat with you. You need not forsake your witness. The Lord of History is in the boat with you. You need not become immobilized. The Lord of the storm is in the boat with you. That is the promise.
So, when we find ourselves wondering Why do bad things happen to good people? or where is God when it hurts? or is God asleep at the wheel”or does God care that we are perishing?
The Bible says God can indeed be trusted. God does most certainly have this situation, and us, well in hand. The hard part is trusting that fact and the promise. The writer of Job reminds us that God is the creator of all that is—that before we were, God is. It’s not exactly, I made everything that ever was and ever will be—how dare you question me? It is a reminder that to believe is to trust in God’s larger plan for the world and goodwill toward humanity in the midst of our sometimes perilous personal circumstances. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
Will the storm clouds dissipate immediately? No guarantee. Will you no longer have to struggle with problems? It is never promised. Will you henceforth prosper, as the T.V. ministers assure you? Probably not. Well, you say, it doesn’t sound as though the promise that is given is all that great. Perhaps not. But it got Noah through the storm. It got the Jews through the wilderness. It got Mary through her pregnancy. It got Jesus through the crucifixion, and it will be sufficient to get you through the night.
With the disciples, we are reminded that God in Christ can indeed be trusted, God in Christ is here with us, God in Christ is not asleep. God has got this. God has got this, indeed!