Mark 4: 35-41; "Peace! Be Still!" in a world rocked this week by a senseless killing in God's house!

            When I started out this week with the Gospel reading from Mark, I thought that it would be an nice way to raise up the uncertainty of the process that we here at Immanuel are going through with respect to the call process and how it bring anxiety, just like in the boat.

            It wasn’t till I woke up Thursday to hear the news about a small group of people in their worship space, in their sanctuary…in God’s house and the tragedy that occurred did this reading really begin to have deeper and truer meaning. Through this tragedy our Gospel reading brings emotions to the forefront of who we are as children of God.

            I mean, we can relate to these people in the boat. They are just sitting in this boat riding along with Jesus, everything seemed to be going pretty well. He was teaching and they were listening. I can imagine there is some break time from the teaching because Jesus is now sleeping in the back of the boat. This storm…powerful storm comes up and starts going at the boat.

            The people begin to get nervous. It starts out with winds picking up. I can imagine they are a little nervous and as the winds get stronger, so do the waves. The waves start beating on the boat. Just as all this is happening, the people on the boat…or boats…get scared. It is nothing to be ashamed of but these people are not dealing with a quiet lesson on some topic. They are nervous because now, their lives are at stake.

            If the boat goes over, what’s gonna happen? I would hope that the disciples would be able to swim. But they are even scared. Makes sense because the boat is taking on water! They better know what to do because they will not have a choice pretty soon because they will be in the water. The chances of them getting through this are looking dimmer, every passing moment. The outcome is not looking too good for these people!

            SO what do the people do, they go wake up Jesus and there he is. Imagine him sleeping like a little baby as the boat is being tossed all over the place, it is starting to take on water, and he didn’t even come out to see what was going on. I would think after the first heavy roll he would have landed on the floor of the boat or rolled into something (I have done that before and it is not fun).

            But Jesus doesn’t skip a beat. He gets up and rebukes the wind. He says “Peace! Be still! That is all it took and the wind stopped, not went to a gentle breeze, but stopped! That is all it took, three words, for this moment of chaos that was headed to disaster and possibly death to cease! Three words “Peace! Be still!” After that, no more words, just calm in the sea. Then he turns to the people in the boat “why are you afraid? Have you still no faith,” Jesus asks.

            That is a stunning moment right there. I don’t know about you but when Jesus turns to me and says that I would be frozen! Notice the people don’t respond? Who can blame them? Jesus just went at them to ask where is their faith; expecially, after what has been going in Jesus life and these people are following, yet they still don’t know who this Jesus is NOR do they have faith in Jesus.

            We can relate to the people in the boat. There is one slight difference, though, we know who Jesus is because we can read the larger stories about Jesus through the Gospels, Paul’s letters, and the Old Testament. When we have all that information AND we have promises from Jesus we can still lose sight of who Jesus is. When we encounter problems in our lives, we begin to feel that boat rocking in our lives. The events in our life can make it feel like our boats..our lives and our faith are getting swamped and taking on water. We can get so consumed by outside events that we might start getting nervous, feel a separation from God…from Jesus.

            We might even get to the point where we cry out, “Don’t you even care, Jesus! Things are getting so bad and where are you!” I have to admit that this was one of those weeks and Charleston, South Carolina was one of those events. Believe it or not we are connected to that church in several ways: Both our names are Immanuel (E or I makes no difference), two of the pastors killed graduated from an ELCA Lutheran Seminary in Columbia, S.C., and the shooter was ELCA Lutheran. We are most importantly connected as the body of Christ to the victims and the shooter.

            I got to the point this week where my boat was angry, faith was feeling like it would be swamped and consumed by this particular water which was evil. I go angry AT GOD! I asked the same questions the people in the boat asked, “Don’t you care, God?! How could this happen!”

            It was on Friday morning that I heard the response. Debbie Dills is her name. I don’t usually lift an individual up in a sermon but I do believe God used her to speak to me and hopefully many more people. In her way, she spoke Jesus’ Words of “Peace! Be still!” She told how she recognized this shooter and contacted authorities and he was captured. Throughout all questioning, she kept saying that it was a God thing. She witnessed that as scared as she was…maybe her boat of faith was being stretched or felt like it was sinking…she heard God’s Word “Peace! Be still!” and she contacted authorities.

            I heard one newsman say a voice inside her head. That is not what she said! They plaid it over and over again and she used God’s name as the one who she gives her life to and who gave her the strength…God! In a moment of being scared, she was still and let God’s peace come to her so that she could hear and rely on God to do what she did.

When I heard this, I had to stop…stop my anger…my disbelief…my crying to God! I had to stop so that I could hear. What I heard was family and friends of these victims…these church leaders, children of God looking at this man through a camera lens to say “I forgive you.” They, too, were still enough through their shock, pain, and mourning to be still so that they heard and were able to say those words “I forgive you.”

As I was listening to all this, I started listening even more. I began to think, “how often do we allow ourselves to hear “Peace! Be still?” We come to worship and do the same things that we have done before. We go through motions because it is what we are taught…because it is the way we have always done things…or because that is what we do as Lutherans. How often do we ask a question about how we do worship? How often do we allow ourselves to be open enough to hear the words of confession as we speak them? Do we, me included, hear “this is my body given for you?” Do we hear in that Peace and being still God’s words “I can calm this sea and you won’t perish because I love you too much?” Do we hear “be still and know that you are a beloved child of God?” Do we hear “be still and do not fear for I will be with you always?”

IN this week that has been tragic, may we all know and hear Jesus’ words “Peace! Be Still. I will watch over your going out and coming in.” AMEN!

1 Corinthians 4:13 – 5:1 Sometimes Failure can be a good thing

            I have this guitar at home. It is a nice guitar and has this flat finish. Meaning, the wood is not all glossy. It looks a little plain and like no big deal. There were two of this type guitar at the store and when I was purchasing it, the salesman held the two up and asked which one I wanted. HE showed me this nice one that didn’t seem to have a speck on it. Then he showed me, same model, but this one has a noticeable knot in the wood, the grain of the wood arched around this knot. So, I had a decision to make.

            In our second reading, we find Paul, the letter’s author, in the middle of a very important statement. This statement that he is making is about failure and faith. It doesn’t seem that these two words would go together, but they do and Paul is in the middle of showing how they go together. It is the sense of failure of the cultural world. Corinth is a busy and happening place. There are all kinds of people coming in and out, trade going in and out; they get all the new cultural things that will change society.

            We know what happens in changing societies. Something that was considered new and fascinating one day is gone the next. We know that from our own experiences. People say and do things to keep up with the times; vocabulary changes, mannerisms change, and people change. In this time that Paul writes, any number of things are changing or in flux.

            In Paul’s society it is the society itself that defines what is good, bad, or indifferent. It is the culture of the day and the people who keep adapting that decide the people who are “in” and who is “out.” With businesses in Corinth, people have to promote themselves and their business because it is a competitive world out there. They gotta be better and get as much business as possible.

            And amid all this there is Paul. Paul in the eyes of the Corinthian people may not be such a good businessman. He is a tent maker, but he is no longer around. Paul might even be considered a really bad business person because he is not promoting himself or the tents he made. Instead of promoting his business, he is actually walking around talking and writing about Jesus! The people in Corinth might call him more than a bad businessman, they might call him a failure; because he is not doing anything to forward his tents but is talking about something else entirely!

            Paul doesn’t shy away from that. IN fact, Paul acknowledges that he is not focusing on the business side of what he does. He doesn’t look for the newest fad, doesn’t need to keep up with the trends of Corinth. He is not going to let that society judge who he is. He proclaims himself broken, afflicted, persecuted, and struck down. HE throws all these words out there to show that society can judge him all that it wants.

            But Paul does not allow that to define him. Just as he uses those words, he also uses their opposites: Afflicted but not crushed, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed. Paul is using this to illustrate the very clear point that his focus is not on the morals or culture of the town of Corinth. He is not allowing society to define him because Paul is showing us that he and the followers of Christ are part of a different community.

It is a community that is not defined by the societal and social mores of a town. It is a community that sees God in the world doing amazing things; healing sick people, raising the dead, sitting down to eat with people that non-believers or society has judged unclean, immoral, and plain outcasts. This community doesn’t seek personal advancement in stature, status, or righteousness. It is a community that embraces the grace of God in the world.

The community is the one that witnesses God through the Word and actions of God’s only Son, Jesus Christ. Paul puts the people who believe in Jesus and follow Jesus into the community…God’s community where status doesn’t matter. It is not any focus. Self-promotion is not needed; why? Because God already loves you. God loves them already; loves them enough for God’s son to be sacrificed for the brokenness, the mistakes, and the hurtful things that people in this community do. AND because of that, Paul proclaims that the communities faith grows strong and proclaims the Good News of God and the actions of Jesus.

Paul states that this thing called faith is strengthened knowing that they are part of the believing community that holds that God has done wonderful things for them no matter how broken or undesirable they MAY THINK THEY ARE!

I don’t know about you, but it sounds like a freeing community. Being free from the power of sin and death. Not having to wonder which trend that you will have to adopt this day or that day simply to keep up. It could be freeing knowing that as many mistakes as we all make that there is room and a PROMISE of forgiveness? Brothers and Sisters in Christ, this IS the community that we are called to and a part of.

We are part of a community where we are who we are. We aren’t all made the same! We have different ideas, opinions, styles of clothes, music, etc. We are part of the community that knows being struck down but not destroyed, persecuted but not forsaken, perplexed but not driven to despair. We are part of the Holy Community because we have faith that Jesus Christ is the son of the living God. We have faith because of Jesus teaching us how to love our neighbor through healing and sharing meals…and going to the cross for our sake…the forgiveness of our sin.

We could call ourselves failures, just like Paul. We have the imperfections…the knot in the wood, by the way I did purchase the guitar with the knot in the wood, but it is not those knots that God sees. Because of our faith in Jesus Christ, we are not judge based on societal standards. We are called to give all that we are to God because we have faith that God frees us from the burdens of having to keep up with society, having to say and do the things that take us away from God, just to try and fit into the crowd. We are called into the community that shares God’s love with everyone we meet and proclaim our faith in God.

Today, Lily Elizabeth Haines, will be the newest member of God’s community. She comes as she is. She will make mistakes in her life and that is okay; because she is not expected to be perfect. She will have some knots, hit some bumps in the road, and have great joys. The best part of that is that we ALL will get to share with her, help her, and hopefully, guide her in a faith in a God that is not worried about the latest and greatest things; but wants her to know how loved and precious she is to her immediate family and her family of the body of Christ: AMEN!