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June 25, 2006 by Jim McCrea 1 Samuel 17:la, 4-11, 32-49; Mark 4:35-41 Several years back, an accident caused a Japanese fishing trawler to sink in the Sea of Japan. Fortunately, the crew was rescued from the water and brought to safety. Naturally, an investigation was held to discover what caused the accident. Each of the crew members was questioned, and they all told the same story. But that story was ludicrous that the entire crew was immediately thrown into jail for lying to the authorities. You see, the crew claimed that a cow fell out of the sky, hitting their boat in the dead center and shattering its hull, which caused the boat to sink within a matter of minutes. Who ever heard of a flying cow? Obviously, they had to have been operating their boat under the influence of alcohol or drugs to have come up with such a ridiculous story. So the crew was sent to jail until they were willing to tell the truth about what really happened. And that's the way things remained for several weeks until the Russian Air Force informed the Japanese authorities that the crew of one of its cargo planes had stolen a cow that had wandered onto the edge of a Siberian airstrip. The plane crew had forced the cow to get into the plane's cargo bay and took off, figuring they would be supplied with beef for quite some time. However, they weren't prepared to handle a rather angry cow that began to thrash about inside the cargo hold, causing the plane to begin to sway erratically from side to side through the air. They had to do something to save the plane and themselves, so at an altitude of about 30,000 feet, the jet crew jettisoned the cow out of the cargo hold as they were flying over the Sea of Japan. That's where the poor cow had its fateful rendezvous with the fishing trawler. There used to be a theology that said that God was the source of everything in life - all good, all bad and everything between - because God is all-powerful, so clearly nothing can happen unless God not only knows about it ahead of time and gives his permission, but even actively plans and produces it. That, of course, makes God the author of everything from minor problems like the time you were 8 years old, fell off your bicycle and skinned your knee, all the way to such global evils as the Nazi Holocaust. I don't know about you, but I just don't believe that God is responsible for everything that happens in this life. That simply doesn't allow for the activities of free will. Or those random, unexpected acts - like a flying cow dropping out the sky and radically altering your plans. Those times when you're celebrating the end of the school year only to have someone else's inattention to their driving lead to your being laid up for the summer. Those times when the bodily organs of a friend become so deeply damaged that they simply shut down, leaving you with just memories and a powerful sense of loss. Did God cause those things to happen? I don't think so. Will God be with us as we go through them? Absolutely. When we're faced with our own versions of a Goliath, we will inevitably find that God provides the smooth stones and the calm assurance we need to face down our problems. And while we aren't given the ability to say, "Peace! Be still!" to those life-threatening storms in our lives, God does provide the faith we need to ride them out. Let's think about that storm in our gospel lesson for a moment. There were 13 men on the boat in that storm, 12 of whom had spent the majority or all of their lives in the vicinity of the Sea of Galilee. They knew the geography of the area, which - at nearly 700 feet below sea level - causes severe storms to develop without warning. But more than that, four of the disciples in that boat were professional fishermen who made their living working on that very lake. They were intimately familiar with all the quirks of that body of water and had ridden out countless storms without incident. Clearly, this storm was different. There was something about its intensity that placed it into a whole other category than those they had endured in the past. And yet, in spite of that intensity, Jesus was somehow able to snooze peacefully away in the back of the boat. Either he was so utterly exhausted that nothing could have awakened him or he simply didn't have a care in the world. But then the mother of all storms came calling and the disciples - even the professional fishermen among them - suddenly felt that they were in over their heads - almost literally. So they woke Jesus up. The fact that the storm made even the professionals afraid leads some commentators to suggest that this was a supernatural storm - some form of demonic attack designed to catch Jesus and the disciples off guard. I don't really think that that was the case, but it interesting that the words Jesus uses to calm the storm essentially mean, "Shhh! Be quiet!" Those are words similar to the ones he uses when faced by a man possessed by demons who insisted on telling the crowd who Jesus was. However, to me, a more interesting perspective lies in finding a psychological understanding of how the storm impacted the disciples. Here's how Anne Le Bas describes it: "But this story isn't just about [physical] sort[s] of storms - they only come now and then, after all. I think its real power is in what it says about the other sorts of storms we face. The storms of illness, unemployment, relationship breakdown, the death of someone we love. Many of us, at some point, will have had that terrifying feeling of being out of our depth, in danger of being swamped, overwhelmed by the demands of our lives and the emotions we feel. "Sometimes we'll have woken up in the morning and thought, 'How on earth will I get through this day, this week, with all I have to get done, with all I must face?' Little things will feel impossible - the straws that break the camel's back, and we'll be terrified that we won't be able to cope. "That's what the disciples were feeling as the storm raged around them. They hadn't sunk - yet - but they could see that they were going to, and there was nothing they could do about it. No wonder they were panicking. But what does their experience have to tell us that will help when we face our own storms? "[...] As the storm rages outside them, another sort of storm rages within, shouting to them that they are useless, failures - even at sailing. They should have been able to cope with this storm. They are fishermen - this is what they do. They had been so confident when they set out. [It's as if they had told Jesus] 'Put your head down, Jesus, we're the experts here. We may not know much about theology, but sailing is our thing.' But they couldn't even get this short journey right. "The storm is telling them that they can't cope, that they are about to die, and, worst of all, that they are alone. When they wake Jesus up, what is their cry? Not 'Help us!' but 'Don't you care...?' That is their worst fear - not that they are drowning, but that they have been abandoned. "We probably all know what storm voices sound like. When things go wrong, what do we think to ourselves, what are the messages that shout loudest in us? Often it is things like 'I must have done something very wrong to deserve this,' or 'What a fool I am, I should have seen this coming.' or 'I'm useless - I always thought I was, but now I know it,' and, like these disciples, the storm voices often tell us that no one cares, that we are all on our own. "These messages of blame, powerlessness, hopelessness, abandonment sap our courage, confidence and resolve - the very resources we need in times of trouble. And soon we find we are being pulled under by despair and panic. They are usually voices we have learnt to hear from childhood, the voices of family and society, and they are very deep rooted." Think for a moment about the original readers of the gospel of Mark. Those early Christians lived in a time when they could be subject to the death penalty for simply following Jesus. Well, the reality was that no one really cared whether they believed in him or not. All anyone cared about was that all members of the community did their civic duty of worshipping the emperor and the gods of Rome. After all, they were thought to be the ones who had given the Roman world the blessings of peace. After that, if anyone wanted to believe in additional gods, that was perfectly fine, as long as they helped keep the Roman gods appeased. Those gods were a capricious lot and you could never quite tell what would set them off. So, on the theory that it's better to be safe than sorry, citizens all over the Roman empire would burn a pinch of incense to the gods in the superstitious hope that that would be enough to allow their village or town to live in peace for another year. And yet Mark wrote to remind Christians that the God they followed was the only true God, and that the so-called gods of the Romans and the Greeks and the other countries were mere illusions. Therefore, the miracle of Jesus calming the storm was, in one respect, a way of demonstrating his true divinity. The story shows that Jesus is the true Lord over all of Creation and so is uniquely worthy of being worshipped. But this story was also intended to be a means of reassuring people that even as they went through the storms of life - even when it might seem as if God didn't care and they had been abandoned - the reality was that God had never left their side and that God had the power over even the most frightening of events. And so this story was powerfully reassuring for those early Christians as they were marched off to face the gladiators or the lions because of their faith. Of course, those of us living in modern America don't have to worry about being persecuted for our faith. However, we too are vulnerable to storms in our lives. And when those times hit us, we are just as quick to feel abandoned as the disciples were during that storm. Therefore, this gospel lesson offers us a level of reassurance, too. As one author (Shawn Stapleton) puts it: "Too often it feels like God is asleep in the stern while our backs are breaking with buckets of water, just trying to keep the boat afloat. 'C'mon God!' we shout, 'Grab a bucket!' But when we cry out, God doesn't grab a bucket. God doesn't bail water. God parts the sea. God stops the wind. God flattens the waves. Too often we find ourselves looking at all the water at the bottom of the boat, and we fail to see that the storm has stopped. "[This story tries] to help those of us in the boat focus on the work God is doing, rather than on the work we feel we need to do. In those moments when we don't feel like we can lift another bucket of water, and we are ready to go down with the ship, [this story] help[s] us focus on the blessings of God, the calm seas and the gentle breezes. God does the work; [this story] help[s] us see it. "Our charge is to remember that we are not forgotten. We are never in the boat alone. Storms will continue to ravage the world. Our lives will continue to be a struggle, and all too often, it will feel like God is either unaware of what we are going through or that God simply doesn't care. But just when we think we are about to go under, God will take action - and probably it will be something we never would have expected. One thing is certain: We shouldn't ask God to bail water while the waves continue to crash into the boat." Instead, we should praise God for his presence in all circumstances. Amen.
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