Sermon-June 25th 2006
Last week I spoke to a friend of mine in Minnesota who told me that he had gotten into an accident. He was driving his motorcycle down one of the many highways in the Twin Cities when the front wheel all of a sudden came off. I don't remember all the details of what happened after that but the bulk of his injuries were incurred in his legs and some on his upper-body and some on his hands. He is not going to be able to walk for at least three months, if he has to have surgery, it could be up to six months.
He confessed to me that, after all of this he went through a brief period where he was angry at God wondering if hadn't already been through enough. Let me assure you this is a person who has had a lot of struggles in his life. But he said that soon he could see the Spirit was changing the way he looked at his situation. You see, he wasn't wearing a helmet, and yet his head did not receieve so much as a scratch. Soon he was realizing that he should be incredibly grateful to God that not only was he alive but that he didn't incur any brain damage. He told me that, looking back now on the anger that he was feeling, he now realizes that Satan works just as hard to get us to doubt and question God's mercy as the Holy Spirit does find eternal hope in God's mercy.
He realized that Satan and sin try to fill us with the same doubt and anxiety that the disciples were filled with in today's Gospel passage. Fortunately we also see in today's Gospel lesson that in the face of storms and chaos, Jesus is calm.We can live in the hope and promise of knowing that there is no storm too fierce for our Lord. We can rest assured that He is always there ready to calm the storm.
Think about what was going on here. Jesus wasn't just being calm, He was sleeping. Here they were on the Galilee in the midst of this storm, and the disciples, many of whom are fishermen, are panicing. Many of the disciples that were with Jesus were fishermen, so you would have to think that they had seen some pretty fierce storms. So this must have been a pretty severe storm that they were in the midst of, and yet they were panicing. But Jesus, a carpenter, is sleeping in the face of this storm.
So, caught in this state panic what do they do? They go and wake Jesus up and say "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" Jesus wakes up and commands the wind and the sea to calm down by saying "Peace!! Be still." He then turns around and shows the disicples their complete lack of faith by asking them why they are afraid do they do not have faith.
Now, it’s easy to condemn the disciples here for their lack of faith. After all they had the benefit of knowing Jesus in person. They had the benefit of walking, talking and living with Jesus. How could they have doubted? But remember, this was before the cross, the resurrection, and Pentecost.
So yes, they had the benefit of being in the actual, physical presence of Jesus, but there are two primary advantages that we have now, 2000 years later that, at that point, the disciples did not have. First, we have the Holy Spirit speaking to us through God’s Word, through the sacraments, and through each other. Second, we have the advantage of knowing the end of the story. We know that this was all leading to the cross.
Yet how many of us, in the face of turmoil, in the face of catastrophe, in the face of something like a motorcycle accident that would take us off of our feet for 3-6 months would also, like the disciples on the sea or like my friend Randy, go through at least a brief period of time where we wondered about God’s faithfulness to us in Christ? Indeed the lack of faith of the disciples is also our lack of faith.
Indeed we have the advantage of knowing where the story was going, so in other words we know who Jesus is. We have the advantage of knowing the answer to the question the disciples asked upon seeing Jesus command the seas to be still when they asked who Jesus is that even the sea obeys Him.
To say the least, the disciples were struggling to see Jesus as anything more than a humble carpenter, teacher, and friend. They were struggling to see the Messiah and the Savior. They were struggling to see that this man who was peacefully sleeping in the middle of what must have been a horrendous storm was actually the living incarnation of the God that we read about in our OT lesson for this week.
In fact they are driven to have the same wonder about Jesus that Job was driven to have about God. God had allowed Job to be greatly tested by Satan. Job lost his family, his animals, and finally Satan was allowed to afflict Job with a horrible disease, which was probably Leprosy.
In the midst of all this, Job is visited by three friends who, granted never waver in their faith, but show their own misunderstanding by telling Job that God is punishing him and that he must confess his sins, although they can’t even think of what sins Job would have to confess. After going through all this and probably more, Job was finally driven to complain of what seemed to him to be God’s indifference and lack of compassion toward Job’s plight.
And then, in today’s lesson, God speaks to Job in a whirlwind. He reminds Job that He is the God who laid the foundations of the earth, and made the clouds and the stars in the sky, and made the sea. He also shows Job that He is able to control all of creation by reminding Job that He put the boundaries on all of creation. So if He can put boundaries on creation and control creation, He can certainly control the affliction that Job is suffering, and ultimately he relieves Job of his suffering, and blesses him even more than he was blessed before and He condemns Job’s friends for pretending to understand God’s motives.
Now, in the Gospel lesson, the living incarnation of this same God who created and can control the heavens and the earth and had mercy on Job is now in the midst of the disciples in this boat on the sea. But the disciples don’t understand that and for that reason they wake Jesus up and He sees them in this state of panic and, following the pattern that God showed in Job, He first shows the power that He has over creation by calming the storm and then He rebukes the disciples for their lack of faith and they are left to wonder who this was that even the wind and the sea obey Him.
The disciples didn’t get it yet. They still didn’t understand who this was. They didn’t understand it because He wasn’t done yet. He had not taken their sin to the cross yet, He had not defeated death yet in the resurrection, and He had not sent the Holy Spirit to work through us, His church, so, as the body of Christ, we could be the living emodiment of the risen Christ.
They lacked the same understanding that Paul had in the second lesson for today from 2nd Corinthians. In this lesson, Paul speaks of being exposed to all kinds of hardships such as afflictions, imprisonment, beatings, riots, and labors. He wrote of this suffering because he understood that being part of the Body of Christ and proclaiming the Gospel, he was now on the receiving end of the misunderstanding that was extended by the disciples to Jesus and by Job and his friends to God.
In his witness, Paul suffered hardships the likes of which we couldn’t even begin to imagine. He lived in a culture where just to proclaim the name of Jesus would have been a crime that could have led to death. But he understood that Jesus never promised that we would not have hardships or challenges.
He understood that in Christ, God is faithful to us in the midst of our hardships, afflictions and even our doubt. He understood that in baptism Christ Jesus does not eliminate our struggles, but enters into them with us and gets us through them.
Paul referred to this later as the peace that surpasses all understanding. This is the peace that Job would be filled with, that the disciples would eventually be filled with, and that my friend Randy was filled with, and it’s the peace that in baptism you are filled with, so don’t panic because He is with you, even if sometimes it seems like He is sleeping.
Amen
He confessed to me that, after all of this he went through a brief period where he was angry at God wondering if hadn't already been through enough. Let me assure you this is a person who has had a lot of struggles in his life. But he said that soon he could see the Spirit was changing the way he looked at his situation. You see, he wasn't wearing a helmet, and yet his head did not receieve so much as a scratch. Soon he was realizing that he should be incredibly grateful to God that not only was he alive but that he didn't incur any brain damage. He told me that, looking back now on the anger that he was feeling, he now realizes that Satan works just as hard to get us to doubt and question God's mercy as the Holy Spirit does find eternal hope in God's mercy.
He realized that Satan and sin try to fill us with the same doubt and anxiety that the disciples were filled with in today's Gospel passage. Fortunately we also see in today's Gospel lesson that in the face of storms and chaos, Jesus is calm.We can live in the hope and promise of knowing that there is no storm too fierce for our Lord. We can rest assured that He is always there ready to calm the storm.
Think about what was going on here. Jesus wasn't just being calm, He was sleeping. Here they were on the Galilee in the midst of this storm, and the disciples, many of whom are fishermen, are panicing. Many of the disciples that were with Jesus were fishermen, so you would have to think that they had seen some pretty fierce storms. So this must have been a pretty severe storm that they were in the midst of, and yet they were panicing. But Jesus, a carpenter, is sleeping in the face of this storm.
So, caught in this state panic what do they do? They go and wake Jesus up and say "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" Jesus wakes up and commands the wind and the sea to calm down by saying "Peace!! Be still." He then turns around and shows the disicples their complete lack of faith by asking them why they are afraid do they do not have faith.
Now, it’s easy to condemn the disciples here for their lack of faith. After all they had the benefit of knowing Jesus in person. They had the benefit of walking, talking and living with Jesus. How could they have doubted? But remember, this was before the cross, the resurrection, and Pentecost.
So yes, they had the benefit of being in the actual, physical presence of Jesus, but there are two primary advantages that we have now, 2000 years later that, at that point, the disciples did not have. First, we have the Holy Spirit speaking to us through God’s Word, through the sacraments, and through each other. Second, we have the advantage of knowing the end of the story. We know that this was all leading to the cross.
Yet how many of us, in the face of turmoil, in the face of catastrophe, in the face of something like a motorcycle accident that would take us off of our feet for 3-6 months would also, like the disciples on the sea or like my friend Randy, go through at least a brief period of time where we wondered about God’s faithfulness to us in Christ? Indeed the lack of faith of the disciples is also our lack of faith.
Indeed we have the advantage of knowing where the story was going, so in other words we know who Jesus is. We have the advantage of knowing the answer to the question the disciples asked upon seeing Jesus command the seas to be still when they asked who Jesus is that even the sea obeys Him.
To say the least, the disciples were struggling to see Jesus as anything more than a humble carpenter, teacher, and friend. They were struggling to see the Messiah and the Savior. They were struggling to see that this man who was peacefully sleeping in the middle of what must have been a horrendous storm was actually the living incarnation of the God that we read about in our OT lesson for this week.
In fact they are driven to have the same wonder about Jesus that Job was driven to have about God. God had allowed Job to be greatly tested by Satan. Job lost his family, his animals, and finally Satan was allowed to afflict Job with a horrible disease, which was probably Leprosy.
In the midst of all this, Job is visited by three friends who, granted never waver in their faith, but show their own misunderstanding by telling Job that God is punishing him and that he must confess his sins, although they can’t even think of what sins Job would have to confess. After going through all this and probably more, Job was finally driven to complain of what seemed to him to be God’s indifference and lack of compassion toward Job’s plight.
And then, in today’s lesson, God speaks to Job in a whirlwind. He reminds Job that He is the God who laid the foundations of the earth, and made the clouds and the stars in the sky, and made the sea. He also shows Job that He is able to control all of creation by reminding Job that He put the boundaries on all of creation. So if He can put boundaries on creation and control creation, He can certainly control the affliction that Job is suffering, and ultimately he relieves Job of his suffering, and blesses him even more than he was blessed before and He condemns Job’s friends for pretending to understand God’s motives.
Now, in the Gospel lesson, the living incarnation of this same God who created and can control the heavens and the earth and had mercy on Job is now in the midst of the disciples in this boat on the sea. But the disciples don’t understand that and for that reason they wake Jesus up and He sees them in this state of panic and, following the pattern that God showed in Job, He first shows the power that He has over creation by calming the storm and then He rebukes the disciples for their lack of faith and they are left to wonder who this was that even the wind and the sea obey Him.
The disciples didn’t get it yet. They still didn’t understand who this was. They didn’t understand it because He wasn’t done yet. He had not taken their sin to the cross yet, He had not defeated death yet in the resurrection, and He had not sent the Holy Spirit to work through us, His church, so, as the body of Christ, we could be the living emodiment of the risen Christ.
They lacked the same understanding that Paul had in the second lesson for today from 2nd Corinthians. In this lesson, Paul speaks of being exposed to all kinds of hardships such as afflictions, imprisonment, beatings, riots, and labors. He wrote of this suffering because he understood that being part of the Body of Christ and proclaiming the Gospel, he was now on the receiving end of the misunderstanding that was extended by the disciples to Jesus and by Job and his friends to God.
In his witness, Paul suffered hardships the likes of which we couldn’t even begin to imagine. He lived in a culture where just to proclaim the name of Jesus would have been a crime that could have led to death. But he understood that Jesus never promised that we would not have hardships or challenges.
He understood that in Christ, God is faithful to us in the midst of our hardships, afflictions and even our doubt. He understood that in baptism Christ Jesus does not eliminate our struggles, but enters into them with us and gets us through them.
Paul referred to this later as the peace that surpasses all understanding. This is the peace that Job would be filled with, that the disciples would eventually be filled with, and that my friend Randy was filled with, and it’s the peace that in baptism you are filled with, so don’t panic because He is with you, even if sometimes it seems like He is sleeping.
Amen
posted by Steve at 2:54 PM
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