Fear and Troubled Waters

God be in my head, and in my understanding; God be in my eyes, and in my looking; God be in my mouth, and in my speaking; God be in my heart and in my thinking; God be at my end, and in my departing. Amen. Please be seated.

It is a good Sunday morning and all is right in my world when my parents have made the drive up from Edinburg and we get to spend time together, but this Sunday is particularly special, because my dad will celebrate a very special milestone birthday in a few days: he will be 75 years young. And so it means a great deal that he is here to listen to me preach this morning. You’ll hear this from me again, but I wanted to be sure to say it now. Happy birthday, daddy.

Every day when I go to drop off or pick up Ellie Cate at Daycare, there is a wonderful sign that I see and adore: children may not remember what you said, but they will remember how you made them feel. Oftentimes, church debates and seminary classes are focused on theological issues - and certainly the major shifts in church history like the Reformation have been driven by weighty issues. And going to seminary is WONDERFUL for finding all kinds of obscure topics about which people will debate passionately, but at the end of day, the life of a parish or any other community of God doesn’t often hang on the specific theology of the priest or pastor because the Church isn’t made up of a group of ideas we all agree to - the Church is made up of people and it’s life hangs on how we treat one another.

The story of Jesus calming the stormy sea is one one of the most well known Gospel stories, but like many Bible stories, it can be interpreted many different ways. Absolutely, it is a story about fear and faith in the face of troubles, but there is a more subtle meaning as well. You see, in crossing over to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, Jesus was leaving his own community and going out into the world of the Gentiles - the Others. Outsiders. He was taking his message to people his community was unsure deserved to hear it. He was doing something new and different and it made people upset and uncomfortable.

Change is scary. And when confronted with sudden and unexpected change, oftentimes a storm of emotions will rise. How many of us have come to church and become flustered or discombobulated because someone was sitting in “our” seat? Or gotten upset because someone proposed a change to the way “we always do thing?” What about a vestry veteran being annoyed by a new vestry member wanting to come in and change things up? Perhaps you want to see more young families in church, but get annoyed when they make too much noise. Or maybe you think the noise is fine, but it’s all that running around they do - or that their parents do to keep them from hurting themselves - that you find objectionable. I get it. It’s unsettling when things are different than you are used to. When things don’t go the way you’ve planned. Or the way you think they should.

Of course, the story of Jesus calming the storm reminds us of a much earlier story of a supernatural storm - Jonah, one of my favorite books in the Bible. With Jonah - I have always loved the reluctant prophet grumbling about, pouting and protesting as he tries to avoid obeying God’s call. He, like Jesus, seeks refuge and respite on a boat traveling away from his people and customs. His boat is also beset by a supernatural storm. He too goes and proclaims an unexpected message to a people many (including Jonah himself!) thought were unworthy to hear it. When Nineveh repents and is spared destruction, Jonah is beside himself. He challenges God, saying, essentially, “see! I knew you weren’t actually going to destroy these people. It would have been better if I’d never come because I look like and idiot!” God says “Should you be so angry?” And Jonah makes a booth to sit in and watch the city to see what - if anything - happens next. God makes a bush to grow up tall enough to give Jonah shade from the sun beating down on his head, but the next morning, a worm destroy the bush and Jonah is again beside himself with anger. God says, “is it right for you to be so angry about this bush?” Jonah says “yes, angry enough to die.” God responds, “You are so upset about this bush, over which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and it perished in a night. And should I not be so concerned about Nineveh, a city in which there are 120,000 souls?” Yes, losing the plant giving Jonah shade made him uncomfortable - God doesn’t deny it. And I think with the heat we’ve all been living with over the past few weeks, we can all have some sympathy with Jonah’s crankiness. But God gives Jonah some tough love and tells him that he needs to put it into perspective and to get over it. That the lives of those 120,000 are more important than Jonah’s personal comfort.

The poetry of Job follows closely behind Jonah on my personal favorites list. It’s easy to talk about God’s blessings when everything is going well, but what do we do when things go wrong? And if God is all-powerful and all-loving, then why do terrible things happen to good people? What happens to Job over the course of the previous 37 chapters before our reading this morning, is horrific. You see, in the beginning of the book, Job has a pretty perfect life. He has a large flock of cattle, a wife, and a several children. And Job is a devout man - he praises God for everything he has received. But at a gathering of heavenly beings, God is challenged by The Adversary - which is Satan in Hebrew - who points out that it’s easy for Job to praise God when things are going well but who bets that Job will curse God if things go badly. And so everything is taken from Job: his livelihood, his children, his marriage falls apart, his health is taken away and Job is left in misery sitting in the ashes of his former life with nothing but a broken piece of pot to scratch his diseased skin.

Job comes from a context and worldview that is deeply familiar to us today: you reap what you sow. People get what they deserve. When tragedies inevitably strike, consolation is found in the belief that the outcome is just because the victim must have done SOMETHING to deserve the punishment in some way. But Job has a problem - he KNOWS that he is innocent. He knows that he has commited no sin and has never disobeyed God in any way but still, there in the ashes he sits. All because of a bet and a deal struck between God and The Adversary. You are likely more familiar with this Adversary’s Hebrew name - Satan.

Job cannot see beyond beyond this narrow, neatly organized worldview, and so all he can see is the injustice in his situation. And so Job seeks Justice and leans on his legal framework to help him fend off the chaos threatening to utterly consume him. He challenges God to a legal hearing, convinced that if he has a chance to plead his case in court, then he will be vindicated and chaos will be defeated. Job demands to know why he must suffer even though he is innocent.

And our lesson this morning contains the first 11 verses of God’s answer, which goes on for four chapters, and spans the entire universe. God’s passionate poetry tells Job that he is thinking too small. Job thinks in terms of the courtroom, but God thinks in terms of the cosmos. God tells Job that his narrow human theories can never capture the complexity of the universe, nor can they contain the chaos because chaos is as much a part of creation as each and every one of us is.

God’s poetry in responding to Job is stunningly beautiful, but it never actually answers Job’s question or explain why Job has suffered so terribly. Barbara Brown Taylor observes, “Job’s question was about justice. God’s answer is omnipotence, and as far as I know, that is the only answer human beings have ever gotten about why things happen the way they do. God only knows. And none of us is God.”

Job’s question wasn’t answered, but his way of viewing God and the world was transformed. The comfort is not that everything is fair and just. It’s not. Life isn’t fair. It’s complicated and messy and chaotic and sometimes it’s really, really sad. Chaos and injustice is part of the price we pay for having free will. God has given creation a vote iBut here’s the thing: God answers. That’s the comfort. God answers. The chaos is still there, but God is, too.

The disciples are similarly challenged to confront their fears - but they are unable to pull themselves together in the face of the storm. Jesus admonishes them for their lack of faith, but He never says that they had no reason for being afraid in the first place. There are many things that people fear for many different reasons. Personally, I have a lasting phobia of thunderstorms from when I was a kid. People fear failure, rejection, illness. People fear aging. Loss of status. Death. And, of course, change. But I really think that the thing that people fear most of all is a lack of control. We like neat and tidy boxes. Those boxes are what got blown to bits by close encounters with God in Jonah, Job and Mark. Jesus calms the storm and the Disciples anxiety, but he doesn’t change the boat’s course. They are still going to the other side, but they are reminded that they are going together with God.

I love the TV show Numb3rs and one of the characters reminds the main mathematician that “When you’re working on human problems, there is gonna be pain and disappointment.” Job, Jonah, the Disciples - despite their piety, despite their personal relationships with God - they all failed to realize that while God cares about us and loves us, this doesn’t mean that things will always go our way. Because, at the end of the day, it isn’t about us. It’s about God. So the next time you find yourself annoyed because someone is in your normal pew or is doing something you find distracting - ask yourself: is this emotion coming from God or is this coming from The Adversary to challenge me in how I respond? The next time someone proposes an idea you find challenging or new, ask yourself, is the fear or discomfort I’m feeling standing in the way of my faith to see where Jesus is leading me and this community?

Change and growth are scary, but Jesus calls on us to sail on into it boldly by faith. We are called to set aside our drive for personal comfort and preferences and think about what is best for the community as a whole. It’s hard when chaos seems to reign. I have a busy full time job, an almost 2 year old, a dog, a cat, a husband, I sing, and preach and see my family. I am INTIMATELY familiar with chaos, and so I do understand how overwhelming it can feel. But what God is telling us is that we need to lean in to our faith in those chaotic moments. God is always more powerful than the chaos and God is always there with us in the midst of it. AMEN.