PEACE!  BE STILL!

A sermon by Rev. Dr. Jack E. Skiles

June 21, 2009

Job 38 1-11; Mark 4:35-41

There are for me no Scriptures more fun, more invigorating and foundational to my spirituality than the two we are being asked to lift before us this morning as we try to make sense of our lives and faith.  I would want to remind us this morning that I believe in taking the Bible seriously, not literally.  Both the story of Job in the whirlwind and Jesus stilling the storm on the Sea of Galilee have great spiritual messages when freed from the literalism that has long confused interpretations of these stories.

I suspect that few biblical characters are more ingrained in our psyche than this fellow named Job.  People who don't even know the Bible have an essence of this story in their normal vocabulary as they talk about having or needing the patience of Job or they discuss someone who has the suffering of Job.

The Book of Job was written as a piece of religious fiction by an ancient Jewish writer to make a theological argument in story form against something that the mainstream religious leaders of his or her day were insisting upon as literal truth.  So popular was the story that it eventually wound its way into the Hebrew Scriptures, the Jewish Scriptures.

Here is the theological or religious question that the author of Job wanted to question.  It is still an appropriate discussion for us today as we ponder whether God favors the righteous, law abiding, and faithful subjects of God with a good and prosperous life.

That was then, and too often is now the religious test: If you have lived a good life, followed the Ten Commandments, honored your father and your mother, not envied your neighbors donkey or Lexus and all of the other laws embedded in our religious history, then you will be happy, healthy and have heaps of money.  It was then and is today known as the prosperity gospel, and implies that God rewards the faithful with success and good health and a home in heaven and the right to claim that God is always on our side.

This religious concept gets fabulously abused not only by those of us who have great personal wealth and believe we deserve it but also by larger groups of people, like nations and blocks of nations who assume because they are the status quo that God wanted us to be in control of so much or else we wouldn't have it.  Churches too often assume that God is more in their sanctuary than anyone else's and that success means God has been blessing us. 

The story of Job seeks to show in story form how ultimately futile is the belief that any of our successes in life come as the result of God showing us special favor.  Job was pathetically religious and faithful and lost everything—his wife and his kids were killed, his property stolen and destroyed, and he ended up with the worst case of boils, with dirt blowing into them, and still he remained faithful to God.

The point of the story that comes from God speaking out from the whirlwind is that faithfulness and spirituality are not disciplines wherein we are rewarded by God with a good, safe, healthy, and prosperous life, but that our spiritual disciplines enhance our lives as we love mercy, show compassion and walk humbly with those who have great needs.  We are called to be faithful, religious, spiritual creatures because that enhances our existence, makes us better people, develops our character and by extension makes the world and its people and creatures better because of our loving actions of concern born from the essence of God's soul through ours.  We are left with the maxim in Job that the more we have in this world, the more we are called by God's spirit to use what we have in the service of God's loving concern for the least of these in society.  No matter how big and powerful and successful we are, Job discovers this truth: God is holier and bigger still and has a plan beyond our most earthly successes.  Job is told, “Be still, be humble and know that I alone am God.”

This is a statement similar to that we discover in Mark's Gospel story this morning, where Jesus wakes up and the storm is tossing the boat in which he and the disciples are riding dangerously close to destruction, and Jesus declares, “Peace!  Be Silent!” and the storm subsides.

There are at least two or three points to this story that I would like to lift up and one of them is this:  Don't try to literalize this story and act like Jesus.  If you are in the midst of a storm of nature and there is a tornado, seek shelter for yourself and others.

You remember with me that Mark's Gospel is not a biography or even most likely a first person account of someone who knew Jesus.  Legend or tradition says that Mark's gospel, the oldest known, was a written account by someone who knew Peter.  We know, generally speaking, when it was written and to whom.  It was penned just after the total destruction of Jerusalem and the last time there would be a primary Jewish population in Jerusalem for nearly 1, 900 years.  The year was 70 and the  early followers of Jesus had quite possibly just  witnessed the killing of a vast majority of the  early disciples and apostles that Roman imperialism saw as no different from the average Jew in the area.  Mark's community was scared, oppressed and Mark wanted to remind them of who Jesus was and what Jesus could do for them today in the midst of the storms of social and personal upheavals that were rocking their world.

It is not so obvious to the casual reader of Mark that Mark includes two times where Jesus calmed a storm, and it is safe to suggest that it was not a literal storm on the Sea of Galilee either time.  The Romans had and were still killing every Jew in sight.  Many suspect that Mark's community had escaped active Roman slaughter by moving north up to Antioch in Syria . 

Both times that Mark reports that Jesus is heading across the water and a storm brews, Jesus was crossing over to Gentile territory, he was taking his brand of Judaism outside to the Gentiles, which was anathema to the conservative orthodox Jews of his day.  What does one compare such a move to today?  Many traditional, politically conservative folks in our country were very upset with President Obama's traveling to Egypt and speaking with and to the Muslim world with such respect and honor and dignity.  In this world it is far easier to think of others as enemies to be hated, distrusted and changed rather than as equals whose religions and political systems deserve respect and honor. 

Every time that Jesus crossed over to Gentile territory with the Jewish concepts of God, there was a storm happening not only from the direction of the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the Temple hierarchy, but from his own group of disciples who undoubtedly felt threatened not only by the Gentiles whom they have been taught to hate and understand as little more than pigs, but they were feeling threatened by their own religious and national leaders, who were accusing them of treason and disloyalty to God. 

Jesus it seems feels very at ease and at peace with his movements to share his faith and time with non-Jews.  He is asleep in the boat.  In Jewish writings of the time, to be asleep is a common metaphor for trusting in God, at peace with what God is calling one to do. 

In each story when Jesus and his buddies return back to a Jewish port, the ride home is a peaceful one.  It seems that reaching out to the rest of the world and bringing a message of hope, compassion and mercy and kindness results in much smoother sailing than they had in their anxiety crossing over to meet with strangers that they had been taught to mistrust.  Surely, there is truth here for us both personally and in the larger groups in which we live and act.

Almost always when reading, studying the Bible, the Hebrew and the Christian Scriptures we do best when we seek to see the nearly always present political and social statements being made as well as focusing in on the personal spirituality that is also present.  I for one would be hard pressed to tell you which are the more important.  We are persons who live in a world.  We are not islands.  We are part of the social structure and our faith, if adequate, must speak to the whole.

The story of Jesus calming the sea has so much to teach us on our most personal spiritual journeys.  The storm can symbolize any sort of threatening occurrence in life:  acute anxiety, depression, worry over our own health or that of another, anger, and despair over financial troubles, guilt, fear of the unknown future, death.  Those who were in the boat with Jesus had their anxieties and they called to Jesus for help. 

In times of stress we call out to God for help.  In the story when the calls of help aroused Jesus, the storm subsided immediately.  But interestingly, there is a question that comes our way after the storms quiet down.  Jesus asked, “Why were you so afraid?  Have you no faith?

The disciples with Jesus were mere beginners at dealing with anxieties and issues that following Jesus brought to bear upon their lives then and continues to bring to bear upon us today.  Experience led them forward to discover that living faithfully, following the call of God in our lives, will lead to storms that are like squalls on the Sea of Galilee .  They blow up fast and furiously, we experience their very real fury, but then they pass by. Life goes on and we have hopefully learned and grown to trust that when God call us we are never left alone.  Jesus in remaining calm and seeking peace was modeling a faith response that we would do well to emulate.

I don't know this, but it could be that the disciples were a little put off with their doing all the work and Jesus sleeping over on a cushion.  Maybe they wanted some sympathy, after all misery does love company.  When I read this story and the disciples cry out in the midst of the raging storm, “Master, don't you care that we're going down?”  A little sympathy please!  But Jesus did not give them sympathy he gave them peace.

God does not call us to tasks alone or to situations that are beyond our skill.  That is not to say that everything that happens to us is of God.  People end up a lot times in life way over their heads, but you know as well as I do that more than not, they dove in the deep end where the signs clearly said, “NO DIVING.”  And others of us, simply put, have unfortunate things that happen to us.  God does not make bad things happen.  Bad things happen and God is always present with us as we walk through them.

Mark Twain once observed that his life had been filled with terrible calamities, most of which never happened.  God will call us to the deep waters, but never without help.

“Have you no faith?”  God does not cause the storms of life but God is present in them, understanding our fears, seeking to resource with us the options available.  We are co-creators with God, partners.  So, we must do our part, which may be to start bailing water and crying out to God.  That means we are responsible to bring about peace by choosing peace, picturing a peaceful outcome and following the very well-outlined ways of Jesus' appropriate actions.

We must first walk into that which we are called to do, trusting that God will fully meet us there.

One of my favorite true stories of all time comes from the famous Scottish preacher, Alexander McClaren.  He tells a story about himself as a 15-year-old in the early 1800's, living in a village outside of Glasgow .  He was sent to work out of his village, into the city of Glasgow, to earn his way to college and also to find income for his family to survive.

His mother walked him to work the first day by way of a glen, a Scottish term for a valley or ravine.  This particular glen or ravine, it was said by the folks of the valley, was filled with evil spirits.  Anyone who walked through the ravine risked being filled with those evil spirits.

When Alexander got to Glasgow he realized for the first time that when he walked home alone at week's end he would have to walk back through that Glen.  He said he worried himself sick on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and half the day on Saturday.  When he got off work at noon and started the multiple mile walk home he said he was just exhausted with worry and when he reached the edge of the ravine where the mountains began to go up strongly tall on either side that the evening fog and midst had already began to fill in the glen and he said, I just could not do it.  I could not walk into the abyss.

And then suddenly, he heard a voice.  And the voice calling out through the heavy fog said, “Alex, it's your dad.  I've come to walk through the ravine with ya.”

God bids us walk and to trust that God is going to meet us to journey through the ravine together, through the valley of the shadow of death, through the crazy impossibilities and slammed doors.  God is always saying, “Start moving and put your hand in mind, even though you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, fear no evil, for you are with me.  I'm with you even till the end of the age.  I've come to walk with ya.”

Try out the words of Jesus when next you feel alone, scared, confused, and anxious.  “Peace!  Be Still.”  Adversity turns many bitter.  Jesus seeks to help us use adversity, which is inevitable, to be that which builds a closer relationship with God in which we can find healing and hope for a future.

God desires for us to find peace of mind in this world, a peace that passes all understanding.  Thomas Kelly said, “A life that is daily awakening the Christ within us is astonishing in its completeness.  It joys are ravishing, its peace profound, its humility the deepest, its power world-shaking, its love enveloping, its simplicity that of a trusting child. 

Peace.  Be still and know that God is an ever present help.”  God is calling out everyday, “I've come to walk with ya.”

Amen.