4th Sunday after Pentectost-Proper 7B

Proper 7B June 21, 2015 Our country has been reeling this week since a gunman opened fire on a bible study at Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. I have seen outbursts of horror, outrage, anger, and fear, as we all seek to find some sort of meaning in such a senseless tragedy and as we as a society yearn for a meaningful conversation on how we might prevent such acts of violence and hatred in the future. One of the gifts of our tradition, I have found, is our lectionary—a systematic process for reading most of the major portions of Bible in a three year period. We are fortunate to have the lectionary because it provides us with a way to have conversations with scripture and our lives and our world that aren’t subject to the whim of the preacher. Our gospel today is not one I would have chosen to give us good news in the light off the Charleston shooting, but in spending some time with it, I believe it has a great deal to offer us in that way. It is a passage that confronts fear, and fear is what is at the heart of such hatred, such tragedy. So I’ll begin our conversation with the gospel today by asking you to think about this question: Do you think the disciples are more afraid before Jesus’ stilling of the storm or after? Think about it for a minute. The gospel clearly indicates that they are terrified during the storm. They are so terrified that they wake the sleeping Jesus with a frantic question: “Do you not care that we are perishing?” And Jesus wakes up and calms the storm, and then he says to the disciples, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” Notice what Jesus does not say here. He does not say, “Do not be afraid,” even though that is a prevalent refrain all throughout scripture, especially when people are encountering God or God’s messengers. In this instance, Jesus is not rebuking the disciples because they are afraid. He knows that there is much in this life to be afraid of: isolation, pain, illness, meaninglessness, rejection, losing one’s job, money problems, failure, illness, natural disasters, senseless acts of hate, and death. “Have you still no faith?” he asks them, because in and through faith we learn and hold fast to the reality that while there is much for us to fear, those things do not have the last word. God is mightier than any of those, even death, and God’s promise through the person of Jesus is that even when we do endure the fearsome things, God does not abandon us to them. God is with us, and God’s power is such that God can redeem even the most horrible, fearsome acts. That’s the disciples fear before the calming of the storm. But what about the question I asked you, “Do you think the disciples are more afraid before Jesus’ stilling of the storm or after?” Did any of you think that they might be more afraid after? Why? What would the disciples have to be afraid of after Jesus’s calming of the storm? I read a book several years ago that I was just reminded of recently. It’s the book Peace Like a River by Leif Enger. In the beginning of this book, the main character and narrator, Reuben Land, tells of the apparent miracle by which his father saved his life when he had just been born. He reflects on how often we tend to domesticate miracles, using the word to describe all manner of things that merit our attention and appreciation but that are not, finally, truly miraculous. He then goes on to press that distinction: “Real miracles bother people, like strange sudden pains unknown in medical literature. It’s true: They rebut every rule all we good citizens take comfort in. Lazarus obeying orders and climbing up out of the grave — now there’s a miracle, and you can bet it upset a lot of folks who were standing around at the time” (Peace Like a River, 3). Then comes the part that is especially pertinent to us today, both in light of our gospel reading and in light of the shootings at Emmanuel. “Quoting his sister, Reuben says, ‘People fear miracles because they fear being changed.’ Which is the source, I think, of this other kind of fear that stands somewhere between a holy awe and mighty terror: the fear of being changed. And make no mistake, Jesus is asking the disciples to change. In this very moment he is drawing them from the familiar territory of Capernaum to the strange and foreign land of the Garasenes. And he is moving them from being fishermen to disciples. And he is preparing them to welcome a kingdom so very different from the one they’d either expected or wanted” (David Lose at www.davidlost.net) When the disciples experience the miracle of Jesus’s calming the storm, they are confronted with a choice. The rest of Reuben’s quotation gets to the heart of this: “People fear miracles because they fear being changed,” he says, and then continues, “though ignoring them will change you also.” The disciples are offered the choice of allowing themselves to be transformed by this new encounter with Jesus, or they can refuse. But they cannot stay the same either way. So, what do you think is the miracle that confronts us in this moment, as individuals? As a congregation? As a society who has witnessed horrible acts of hatred and un-comprehendingly generous forgiveness from some of the families of the victims? How is God encountering you and calling you to the other side of the lake, to change, to a new and different imagination about what it means to be a people of faith in our particular community and circumstances?