“Fasten your seat belts tightly, it's going to be a bumpy ride!”  I just flew in from Singapore Friday night, and on the flight from Tokyo to Minneapolis, those were the sobering words of our pilot as we prepared to take off.  The weather was quite stormy outside, and I could tell that a number of my fellow passengers and I were more than a little concerned.  In the calmest of weather, it’s still something of a miracle to me that something as huge as a Boeing 747 can fly; I couldn’t help but wonder what the high winds and surrounding thunderstorms would do to us.  But I had little choice except to put my faith in the Captain, and the engineers at Boeing.

As he was making the announcement, I was reading the Gospel for today, where the winds and the waves were causing major fear and anxiety among the apostles.  Some of you may already be aware that I make my living designing ships.  Big vessels that carry tens of thousands of tons of bulk cargos like stone, coal, cement, iron ore, oil, asphalt, materials like that.  While I was thinking about the miracle of a 747 getting off the ground, it occurred to me that to anyone who doesn’t understand totally the principles of hydrodynamics, it can seem miraculous that anything that weights 10 or 15 or 20 thousand tons or more floats!  And then if you add a stormy wind and driving rain on top of that, well, you can see the similarities here.

  So I understand a little of what the apostles must have felt when they encountered a squall at sea.  I can imagine the waves lapping over the side of the boat, the water sloshing on the floor.  The wind picks up, the waves increase.  But Jesus is sound asleep, slumbering in the stern, apparently resting quite comfortably; St. Mark records that he had a cushion under his head.  Not a care in the world, you might say.  But the apostles are panicking.  It’s the Poseidon Adventure, circa 30 AD, or if I’m politically correct, ACE.  Of course, no one’s ever accused me of being politically correct, but that’s another homily!  “Teacher,” the apostles ask Jesus, “do you not care that we are sinking?”  But I suspect that they are not just “asking” him.  He wouldn’t have heard them over the wind and the storm.  No, they are desperate.  They are most likely screaming, in a state of panic. “Wake up! Help us!”  St. Mark describes the miracle of what followed in one brisk sentence: “He woke up, rebuked the wind and said to the sea ‘Quiet! Be still!’”  And to their utter amazement, the words of Jesus at that moment are enough.  The storm subsides.   St. Mark reports that Jesus wonders what all the fuss was about; wonders why his nap was disturbed.  He looks at his apostles and heaves a sigh. “Do you not yet have faith?” 

It was so easy for the apostles then, and it is so easy for us today, not to have faith — to doubt and to live in fear.  Our lives are as unpredictable as the weather.  Life is a challenge.  Parents have to deal with their children growing up in a world that is often hostile to the values that we hold sacred.  Kids have to live with parents who often don’t understand the excitement and attraction that certain things in our society often have on young people.   Every life has its violent squalls that come up suddenly, threatening to sink our boats.  The waters rise, the wind howls.  And we feel helpless, we are flooded with anxiety and worries: there are bills to be paid, children to be fed, sicknesses to be treated, deadlines to be met, and sorrows and disappointments to be grieved over. The boats of our lives are tossed around like corks by forces we can’t comprehend, and that we are powerless to control. 

How often, like the prophet Job, do we look to the skies and ask:  “Do you not care that we are perishing?”  Certainly, the early Christians — those for whom St. Mark wrote his Gospel — must have asked that question again and again, as they faced persecution, arrests and slaughter. The small fishing vessel that was the early Church led by St. Peter, was constantly at the point of capsizing.  But it didn’t.

And the answer then, as now, was so simple, but so hard.  Have faith.  Trust. Believe.  747’s can fly.  Huge ships can float.  Mark was saying: The One who calmed the squall will be with you.  He was then, and he is with us still, as we journey like the apostles from one shore to another, through unpredictable seas.  Who knows where the Church is headed —or where our lives will take us?  But God remains ready to calm the storm with his words and his power:  Quiet!  Be still!  How often our hearts need to hear that all will be well; we just need to trust in God.  When the wind is at its worst, God hasn’t abandoned us.  He will awaken at our call, and calm the storms that frighten us.  We need to trust Him, we need to remain faithful.

But I wonder if we apply the same standards of faithfulness to our spiritual life as we do to other areas of our life?  If our car starts once every three times, is it reliable?  No.  If the paper carrier skips delivery each Monday and Friday, is that person trustworthy?  No.  If we stay home from work a few times a month, are we dependable employees?  No.  If our refrigerator stops working for a day or two every now and then, do we say, “Oh, well, it works most of the time?” I don’t think so!!

While we expect faithfulness and reliability in many things, great and small, shouldn’t our reliance and faithfulness in God be comparable?  Faithfulness must characterize all our dealings with God — not part time faithfulness, but daily, deliberate trust.  Only such a daily effort will prepare us for when disasters come our way.  Even when panic chokes our hope and fear threatens our faith, we must always remember that a much greater power than panic or fear is sleeping soundly in our sinking boat.

There’s a great scene from the film Forrest Gump that I think relates really well to our readings this morning.  In the movie, Captain Dan loses both of his legs in a battle that he believes was a sign of his failure as a leader.  In his anguish, he wishes that he had died on the battlefield.  He is mad at God, mad at life, and mad at Forrest Gump for his unshakeable faith in goodness.

One day, Captain Dan was on a shrimp boat in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico when a hurricane loomed.  He lashed himself to the ship’s mast as the brutal storm advanced.  In this way, Job-like, he was determined to withstand the fury of the storm in order to come face to face with the ultimate bearer of life and death – God himself.

Some of us may be tempted to run and hide when life’s storms come our way.  Others, like the apostles in our Gospel today, get paralyzed with fear and worry.  Others, like Captain Dan in Forrest Gump, in the ultimate act of faith, take on the storm head on, and in doing so, experience the forceful presence of God in the winds that we are so tempted to fear.  They can do this because they have faith.  May God grant us all the strength and courage to be strong in our faith, confident that we walk with our Lord; and that all will be well.

        God is so good……Amen?  AMEN!!