5th Sunday after Pentecost, 6/23/2024

Text: Mark 4: 35-41, 2 Corinthians 6:1-13

Grace, Peace, and Mercy from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Oh the stormy seas of life. How the waves batter and shake us. Even the most experienced can see their footing stumble at the force of wild waters. There are good reasons why human beings of different cultures have often equated the experience of living with a voyage through an expansive sea. Events in our lives can feel like the calm of still waters, and they can also feel like the disciples in our Gospel reading today, clinging to any corner of the ship, to any sense of safety that we might possess, crying out to God: “Lord, do you not care that we are perishing?” How many things in life can provoke this cry in us. Yet, it is in the crucible of this experience, in the depth of this cry before the silence of God, or more appropriate to our text, when it seems that God is sleeping on our problems, is that we experience the reality and sustenance of our faith.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., during the beginning of his civil rights struggle, had a moment of crisis, when the waves battered and threatened to overwhelm his whole life and drown him. If you are familiar with Dr. King’s biography, you would know that when he went public with his struggle, he faced numerous death threats, attacks to his home, he was physically assaulted, beaten, arrested, dehumanized. Not unlike the Apostle Paul, who underwent similar travails for the sake of the Gospel, Dr. King as “a servant of God had commended himself in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, and hunger” for the sake of Gospel-infused justice and truth. There was one night that is called his conversion moment. After receiving death threats against him and his family, he was reminded of his utter weakness, his vulnerability in the face of the storm, Dr. King had to call on that sweet Name by which many who called on it had received strength and hope to withstand the waves. He sat in his small kitchen that dark night and prayed aloud. “I am here taking a stand for what I believe is right. But now I am afraid. The people are looking to me for leadership, and if I stand before them without strength and courage, they too will falter. I am at the end of my powers. I have nothing left. I’ve come to the point where I can’t face it alone.” At that moment, I experienced the presence of the Divine as I had never experienced God before. It seemed as though I could hear the quiet assurance of an inner voice saying: “Stand up for justice, stand up for truth; and God will be at your side forever.” Almost at once my fears began to go. My uncertainty disappeared. I was ready to face anything.” After this experience, Dr. King’s house was bombed. Him and his family were unharmed. He faced what came next with calm bravery.

It is no wonder, that our sending hymn today, Precious Lord, Take My Hand, was Dr. King’s favorite hymn, and the last one he had requested for the service he was heading to before he was assassinated. This hymn by Thomas Dorsey is a raw expression of confession and trust. It is a song by which we confess that we are vulnerable beings, weak and in need, and thus take up the promise of the hand outstretched towards us in Christ. Dorsey penned this hymn in the wake of his wife’s death at childbirth, truly a storm that he needed God to lead him through it. Both Dr. King and Dorsey witness to Faith not as spiritual ability, but as life groaning, yearning and ultimately trusting in the God that speaks to us in Jesus Christ. Faith is a gift, which springs even in our faithlessness, It can rise from our cry of help, an from it grows a constant hope for God’s steadfast care for us in the midst of our most arduous trials. It is the embrace of our complete truth in relationship to a God of Love and Salvation. We often are so constrained by our penchant for self-reliance, that we deny the fact that we actually need help. In our stubbornness, we deny God to be God for us.

The disciples in the tempest fall into such denial and lack. For a moment, they cannot see God as for them, even while having Jesus right there with them. Overwhelmed by the tempest, they can only see their vulnerability, and I do not blame them, that would be me also. It is the most human of scenes, by which our ship of life is being tussled about like nothing, and we see Jesus sleeping in the corner in perfect calmness. This text both rebukes and consoles us. Yes, we cry out without faith, but likewise it is restored by the presence of Jesus among us. When we realize who this Jesus is, God for us, God in the flesh, then we can start looking at our situation differently. Our natural human state is often to be anxious, our trust is tenuous, but Jesus is asking us to confront our weaknesses with faith in God’s help, even to the point of sleeping during a storm.

So the waters are getting wilder and wilder, and the anxiety of the disciples is heightened to it’s great pitch, right at the moment of death, and Jesus sleeps. The disciples frantically wake him up, to put His eyes upon that near-death scenario. And He “rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm”. Jesus might as well be also directing his rebuke to the disciples: Peace! Be Still! For their very lives reflected the violent storm. As the sea quietened, so did the disciple’s anxiety. In the wake of this moment of divine power, Jesus asks: “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”. By this moment, the disciples had already started to witness the power of this Jesus. The text puts a contrast in the midst of the storm: the anxiety and lack of faith of the disciples, and the calm rest of Jesus. In the scriptures, to sleep and be calm means to trust in the care of God. Jesus demonstrated this trust to them. A trust that can find rest within the belly of the storm. It is this faith and power that Jesus demonstrates, that signals for the disciples another sign of God’s Kingdom. Here is one that marks God’s presence with us and for us, the One that calms the chaos of the wild waters, and that holds us in the palms of His hands. It is precisely this trust and this care of Jesus, that fosters in us the life that Paul described in his letter to the Corinthians, and that Dr. King experienced that night at his kitchen table. That while they suffered all sorts of troubles, their faith and mission in God created something other than suffering in the midst of it: “as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see–we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.” The wild waters in Paul and Dr. King’s life, by faith and the power of the Holy Spirit, they did not overcome them, better yet, they grew love, mercy, patience, and holiness even in a desolate state.

Beloved, this does not mean that we in our walk of faith we should never feel anxiety. Of course, we will! The Gospel simply adds an accompanying voice, a voice that tells us to not fall into despair in the face of fear and anxiety; to not let not the wild waters disturb us. Let us cast all our trust in Him that has our lives in the palm of His hands. Hold fast to the life gained through the cross of Christ, remind yourself to whom you belong forever, walk in the light of the resurrection, by which God will always mark: Be still, be at peace, as the sea and wind obey, You are mine, I am with you. Fear and Death will not win. Trust and let love and mercy grow from the matter of your life. Precious Lord indeed is the one who allows us to rest, even while the world shifts and turns. He is our Light, our Hope, our safe harbor.

Let us pray:

Precious Lord, take our hand,

Lead us on, let us stand,

We are tired, We are weak, We are worn;

Through the storm, through the night,

Lead us on to the light.

Amen.