Sermon preached by the Rev. Fredrick A. Robinson
The Third Sunday after Pentecost
Have you ever been in a violent storm at sea? When I was in high school, a friend of mine had a small sail boat that we took out on Lake Erie one fine day. He was the boater; I was a novice. We got into the middle of the lake, and what began as a fine day began to look threatening, so we started to make our way back, but we didn’t make it back before it started to rain.
At that time in my life I knew that my plans included seminary down the road. My friend calmly suggested that if I had an appropriate prayer, now might be the time to say it. That’s when I started to be concerned about our situation!
Anyone who knows Lake Erie knows that it’s a shallow lake, and that even minor storms cause fairly large waves very quickly, which is not unlike the Sea of Galilee, which is also a shallow lake. In only a matter of minutes we were in a life-threatening situation. The boat was being tossed to and fro, and with every wave it seemed like the boat could capsize. It was also nearly impossible to know where the shore was. At least, I couldn’t see it. I prayed a lot during that time. My friend was an experienced boater, though, and eventually we made it to shore, thanking God that we were all right.
When I took a group to the Holy Land several years ago, we saw a 2000 year old boat that had been found in 1986 along the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee. Carbon-14 testing confirmed that it had been constructed and used between 100 B.C. and 70 A.D. It was 26 feet long and 7 feet wide and could carry 15 people. It is probably just this kind of boat that Jesus and his disciples were in as they were crossing the Sea of Galilee.
Jesus had spent a full day teaching and preaching. He was worn out. He needed rest. So he told the disciples that it was time to get away, and the only way to do that was to go to the other side of the lake, where there weren’t crowds of people. When he got in the boat he went to sleep, and he was so tired that the storm didn’t wake him. But the disciples were terrified, fearing for their lives. Keep in mind that several of these disciples were experienced fishermen, and should have known when there was a real threat.
We know how the story ends. The disciples wakened Jesus. He calmed the storm and then chastised them for their lack of faith. Surely they should have known that he would not let them perish. After all, he had told them that he wanted to go to the other side.
This story of the calming of the storm has two levels of meaning for us today. The first is the obvious. Jesus could not only teach and preach powerfully, not only could heal people and even raise the dead, but also he had power over the forces of nature. Even wind and seas obeyed him.
Now I know that there are some skeptics in the congregation who believe this is just another pious tale for gullible people. In fact, there may be some mothers and sons and daughters here today who are only here because their husbands or fathers asked it of them as a favor for Fathers’ Day. They may not “buy” this religious stuff at all.
There are others who can accept the spiritual teaching of Jesus, but find it difficult, even superstitious, to believe that Jesus did anything that a truly charismatic person of any age couldn’t do. That attitude is nothing new, of course. Thomas Jefferson concocted a “gospel” in which he took out of the four gospels all things supernatural—no water turned to wine, no walking on water, no sight to the blind, no raising of the dead, and certainly no calming of the sea. There are even Christian biblical scholars today, who are teaching our future clergy, that begin their scholarship with the presupposition that anything supernatural in the gospels must be explained metaphorically. In other words, it must be explained away.
I have no illusions that this sermon will change the course of that kind of thinking! But for those who hold those beliefs, and they are beliefs, no more provable than what they negate, I say, to borrow a phrase from (I believe) John A. T. Robinson, “Your God is too small.”
While our faith in Jesus does not rest on any of the things I have mentioned, our faith does rest on the greatest supernatural event of all—the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. I would suggest to you that the God who was able to accomplish that, would be able, in Jesus, to do everything else attributed to him. I also must say that a faith in Jesus that will not allow for his complete uniqueness, including that which is supernatural, is a convenient faith that allows one to revise the foundations of the faith to suit one’s own sensibilities, rather than to submit oneself to that which has been revealed—and that is a very slippery slope indeed. And yet, that is where much theological thinking is today in our seminaries, where the object is to re-image Christ. As someone once said, “In the beginning God created man and woman in his image, and ever since we have been attempting to return the compliment.”
But there is another level to the story of the calming of the sea, and that level is—are you ready for this?—metaphorical. The same Jesus who has power over the forces of nature is able to calm the storms in our lives. You may have lost your job, you or a family member may be ill, your marriage may be in a rough spot, your child may be having trouble with drugs, you may have just broken up with your boyfriend. You fill in the blank. Many, if not all, of us have a storm going, of some sort, most all of the time.
Whatever the problem, there is nothing that can happen to you or me that will defeat us if we put our faith in Christ. Here is where the metaphor ends. That doesn’t mean that when you have faith whatever storm you’re experiencing will cease. You may not get the job you wanted, or be cured; your marriage may still be rocky, and your child may still be addicted to drugs, although faith in Christ can also calm these storms. What you will be able to do, no matter what the outcome, is withstand anything that life brings with that supernatural peace that passes understanding. I can’t prove it, but I believe it.
John Wesley, an Anglican priest in the 18th century, was crossing the Atlantic, headed for Georgia, when a violent storm arose. He feared for his life, along with almost everyone else on board. There was a group of Moravians, however, who were not fearful. They stayed together as a group during the storm, praying, reading scripture, and singing hymns. Wesley was deeply moved by their faith and witness, and wanted that kind of faith himself. Later on in his life, he experienced the presence of God in a new way and in which he felt that he had been granted that kind of faith—a complete trust in God’s providence.
I didn’t have that kind of faith when I went through that storm on Lake Erie, but I believe I do now, and I pray God will grant us all that faith that calms the storm.