Year B - Proper 7 - June 24, 2018

The Rev. Kenneth H. Saunders III

St. James Episcopal Church

Greeneville, TN

Year B - Proper 7 - June 24, 2018

• Job 38:1-11
• Psalm 107:1-3, 23-32
• 2 Corinthians 6:1-13
• Mark 4:35-41

I don’t mind saying that storms can be scary things! I have a bit of storm fear left over from 1989 and the infamous Hurricane Hugo. That category 5 hurricane that made landfall at the Isle of Palms… a barrier island just off the Charleston, SC peninsula. I was living and working in Charleston at the time and I was considered “essential personnel.” So, I left when the last folks were evacuated… I was able to travel as far inland as Kingstree, not far from Columbia, and rode out the storm huddled in the center of a small house with 2 great friends.

Regardless of the 3 of us being there together, with each other, comforting each other… we were terrified… and we prayed… A LOT! At one point I think we literally felt the house lift off of its foundation and set back down… 

Now, was raised on the water. I have generations of salt water in my blood. I have been through some pretty serious storms in my life… storms that came up out of nowhere. As the sky blackens and the wind picks up and the small boat we are in took on water… I’ve been through some pretty serious storms… But I the worst I have ever been through was Hurricane Hugo.

So I’m a little afraid of storms. ok… I’m A LOT afraid of storms. But that’s ok for me to say…

Not so much for our Gospel Writer, Mark. It wasn’t necessarily good for him to say… “A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat against the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped.” It wasn’t good for the writer to tell us that the disciples were so worried they went to Jesus, who was asleep on the stern and woke him up… In their fear, they ask Jesus “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”

They were afraid of the storm… and for professional fishermen in that day and time and culture, them fearing the storm was considered a great weakness. So great a weakness, it would have been considered dishonorable. So, by admitting their fears to Jesus,

by going to him, as he was lying there on the stern of the boat asleep, they were bringing dishonor on themselves and their teacher.

But storms can be scary and make us do irrational things. They can push us to a state of panic and fear regardless of how much we’ve prepared or thought it through. Storms can sneak up on us, as they come out of nowhere. They sneak up, and cause us to take in and understand just how powerful the forces of nature really are.

Job also finds himself in a bit of a storm this morning as he perceived that God answers him out of a whirlwind. As Job challenges God, he learns and begins to understand the might and majesty of the creator of everything that is, everything that was, and everything that will be.

Storms happen all the time. And they don’t always involve clouds, lightening, thunder and wind. Sometimes storms happen because of the events we are going through... when the chaos starts to grow and we lose control and things start spinning around us. The anxiety and fear starts to rise. It can feel like we’re being swamped, but there is no water. It can feel like were being tossed about, but there is no boat. Never the less, the storm still exists.

Mostly we experience the storms that we have no control over. Storms of violence and hatred acted out by others. Storms of injustice and oppression against those on the fringes of society. And storms are scary things - scary when we don’t know what to do, scary when we feel there is no shelter.

Jesus was on the back of a boat that was being tossed about by a violent storm. A storm that came up all of a sudden on the Sea of Galilee. A storm that I wouldn’t think would be strange to these fishermen, in a region of the world that was prone to these pop-up, violent storms.

But, regardless of how horrible the storm was, or how much it tossed the boat around, or how much these skilled seafaring men were afraid, Jesus slept! There on the back of the boat, Jesus was resting in peaceful slumber. 

And when the disciples woke him up, he got up and rebuked the wind, and spoke to the sea,

PEACE, BE STILL! And the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm.

Maybe the storm wasn’t as bad as the disciples originally thought. Or, maybe Jesus was the only one who was not afraid. We don’t know, we weren’t there. All we know, is that Jesus of Nazareth spoke and the wind stood still, and 11 able-bodied men were trembling in fear.

Storms are scary things… they can cause us to act out, and bring dishonor to ourselves and others, but Jesus can calm storms. The lord of restoration, can make all things right. Jesus can calm storms. 

We could sit here this morning and probably name thousands of storms that we’ve experienced in our lifetime. If we sit and think about the storms in our life. The ones with wind and rain and thunder, and the ones without. The ones that possibly came up over the mountain that we can see in near distance as the lightening struck and cracked. We can take cover and prepare, but we can’t always avoid the storm.

Just like the disciples in the boat who were afraid, we too follow Jesus, but it doesn’t mean that we won’t have storms in our life or that our storms are any less than anyone else’s storms. It is true that the disciples panicked when the storm arose, but they had enough faith to do something very productive – they asked Jesus to help them. 

See, Worry is always useless, but prayer is always effective. I told you, when I was sitting in the middle of that house in Kingstree SC… I prayed… and I prayed HARD! 

Although when we pray, we may not get what we want, but we will always get exactly what we need. Jesus can calm storms. The words spoken by Jesus in the passage this morning, even after he was accused by his disciples of not caring, were words of PEACE and STILLNESS…

Peace, Be Still! Jesus speaks peace to the violence of the storm, and stillness to the raging of the sea. Like the disciples, we are challenged in the midst of our storms to rediscover our faith in the promise of God’s calming word. Peace, Be Still. Say it with me, “Peace, Be Still.”

Peace, Be Still! it’s all we need sometimes, breathe deeply and simply say Peace, Be Still

“Peace Be Still” 

Poem by Doretha Barwick

When winds of doubt are wailing

and storms on my head fall,

it's on my knees that I get down

and on my Master call.

For Jesus slept through the fierce storm

and He could calm the sea...

the winds that stopped at His command

will also stop for me.

For it is in my Jesus' name

I call when in distress,

and Jesus comes and whispers soft,

"Be still...and I will bless!"

Year B - Proper 4 - June 3, 2018

The Rev. Kenneth H. Saunders III

St. James Episcopal Church

Greeneville, TN

Year B - Proper 4 - June 3, 2018

Deuteronomy 5:12-15 Psalm 81:1-10 2 Corinthians 4:5-12 Mark 2:23-3:6

I remember when I was growing up, my sister and I always had a specific bedtime. A bedtime that got later as grew and matured and we became more responsible. This bedtime rule was made for our own good… and when my mother or father said, “it’s time for bed,” we knew they meant business. Many of you probably had a bedtime… and as you grew, this bedtime hopefully became more flexible…

Good parents always set good rules for us… boundaries that are intended to help guide us along the way, until we gain maturity and responsibility. The responsibility to maturely participate in society and set our own rules, but remembering why they are there in the first place.

It’s very easy to look at the lessons today and think to ourselves after we hear the reading from Deuteronomy yeah… I know that one, “remember the sabbath and keep it holy…” it’s one of God’s rules. It’s one of the BIG TEN. And then, after we hear the reading from Mark, go… Wait a minute, didn’t Jesus just break the rules by letting his followers pick grain on the sabbath and didn’t he heal the man’s withered hand?

Couldn’t they have gotten something to eat somewhere else? And the man’s hand was already withered, why couldn’t Jesus have waited until sun-down to do the healing? 

Well, it’s easy for us to think that Jesus broke the “rules” if that’s the limit to how we think of them… as rules… The Pharisees sure thought they were rules… they thought they were to live their life by the letter of the law of Moses, precisely keeping every rule and mandate to make sure they would be counted among the righteous of God’s people. They were all caught up as the authorities in the religious establishment of the time and anyone who was seen “breaking” the rules would surely have to answer to them.

And as Jesus always does, he takes the opportunity to teach in the midst of his predicament. At first glance to us, it seems that Jesus is purposely being the bad boy that possibly won’t go to bed on time… he’s called out by the Pharisees because he’s breaking the rules. It looks as if he’s in total disregard for what it says about the Sabbath. He causes so much conflict in this short passage by the end, there are several groups are so upset, they are conspiring to kill him.

Jesus does two things in our reading from Mark’s Gospel that seems to ‘more than irritate’ the Pharisees…

First, Jesus allows his followers to pluck heads of grain on the Sabbath as they were making their way through the grain fields… When confronted, Jesus compares himself to the great King David who ate the bread of the presence in the sanctuary the bread that was reserved for only the high priest. 

Second, Jesus heals the withered hand of a man, in the synagogue, of all places, and of all days… on the Sabbath… it was a simple request of having the man extend his arm that was hidden in his robe.

I think in order to understand this passage, we need to look a little deeper at what’s going on. Why is Jesus doing these things? Who or what is he trying to provoke? And Why do the Pharisees think he is so dangerous… Dangerous enough to kill him?

I think there is more going on here than these infractions on the sabbath… The struggle over the Sabbath rule points to a deeper and more dangerous conflict.

First, I think that we need to give the Pharisees a break… Preachers seem to jump to condemn them all the time... We need to realize that all the Pharisees are not these hard-hearted repressive folks that want to condemn everyone to hell. The Pharisees were only enforcing the “rules” as they understood them… but they also knew that Jesus, was offering the world a new vision of life and a new vision of God. And this was a threat to them.

Second, Jesus wasn’t just being a bad boy… stirring the pot. Jesus was proclaiming, by word and example a new way of understanding who God is… and this too was a threat to the religious establishment.

Jesus proclaims, that God is not confined to the “rules,” either our rules about God…  or our rules about the ways we perceive God… I said last week, when feebly attempting to describe the indescribable, as it pertains to the Godhead of the Holy Trinity… I explained that God is relationship… Relationship in God’s self… and in relationship with creation.

So, in Jesus’ proclamations about the Sabbath, he is redefining our relationship to God, and reconfiguring our relationships as individuals, and as society… and that reconfiguration is threatening. Threatening so much, that the Pharisees think that their only option is to make him go away… eliminate the threat… to eliminate Jesus by killing Jesus.

They were so fixated on the rules that they thought pointed them to righteousness… that they failed to realize the intent – why the rules where there in the first place… The difficult truth here, is that they would rather kill Jesus than be transformed by his love…

Change and transformation is always difficult… especially if it challenges or reconfigures our relationship to God. it’s one of the continuing struggles that continues to be a reality in the church today… but as we grow and mature, as we learn and participate, and as we experience the love of Jesus in our lives…  then we become formed, informed, and transformed by the love of Jesus.

The question boils down to this… Do we prefer a dormant God who makes us follow a bunch of rules or who is subject to OUR rites, rituals, and rules? Or would we prefer an active, loving, forgiving, and life giving God who is present, relevant, and at work in our lives?

It’s not easy…  see, when we open ourselves up and let God get close… God starts to work on us challenging us to love deeper. Deeper than we have ever loved before. Making us see things differently, challenging us, like Jesus challenged the Pharisees, going against the status quo, pushing our comfort zones…

It’s then when we often retreat… retreat into the known and comfortable… and there, we start to build crosses of our own – crucifying Jesus all over again. It may be easy and comfortable for us, but it is dark and we end up lashing out and condemning what we see as different or against the rules.

What did Jesus do that was so bad? Did he pluck the heads off of the wrong grain on the wrong day? Did he heal someone who we thought didn’t deserve to be healed? Jesus tries to change the idea of the Sabbath from being an oppressive rule… a rule that denies food to the hungry or healing to the sick… and He teaches us the original idea of the Sabbath… The idea of rest, restoration, rejuvenation, healing and revitalization… originally set as a reminder that we belong to God. 

We belong to God, not the other way around… We belong to God… not to our labors, or the money generated by our labors, or the money spent from our labors on consumer products that we think might help us feel better…

We belong to God… And our lives are meant for God…

Jesus reminds us that that the Sabbath was made for us to help us remember that we belong to God… and that we need to be still, rest, and remember that… We were not made for the Sabbath… we were not created in the image of God to be oppressed by a legalistic interpretation of what it means to follow the rules…

Jesus’ love for us is always forming us and transforming us into something new: St. Paul reminds us as he tells the Corinthians that we are: “afflicted in every way, but not crushed; 

perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.

As we grow into the likeness of Jesus and mature in spirit and truth we are forever being replaced by the Christ that dwell within us… so that it is no longer we who live, but Christ.

Rules are not bad things… they help us remember. They help bring order and structure to the chaos of our lives… But they are not intended to be oppressive or cause us more chaos…

Brothers and Sisters, Remember the Sabbath and Keep it Holy… Set it apart, and rest…

and remember that you are made by God and remember that you belong to God.