Thank you for inviting me to be with you today. As I stand here, I’m mindful that you are sitting like Jesus’ first disciples, in the nave. The nave, the main body of the church, gets its name from the Greek word for ship, naos. It’s where we get our word “navy.” The imagery of the church as a ship is ancient and powerful. We see it in the ribbed, vaulted ceilings of so many churches. We are all in the ship, and God is in charge. Somehow, in this ship, we hope to be safe.
But so often it doesn’t work out that way. Life has storms. We face times when we are rightly afraid of drowning. Our mortgage way be underwater. We may be up to our necks in debt, or in work. We may look back at our life and see where our ship has sailed, and we missed it. Loved ones die, and we feel ourselves sinking. As we face global warming and climate change, we may literally be faced with water where before the ground was solid.
How do we respond to those storms? Usually, our basic instincts come to the fore.
We try to outrun the storm, to row harder.
Or we turn back to the safety of what we know, even if it hasn’t worked so well or times have changed.
Or we get mad. We blame God, or other people, or ourselves. That part of us that thinks there should no storm in our life gets into action.
The people in our lives may try to help us at this point. They may help us outrun the storm or run for safety. They may help us blame others, mistaking that for comfort. But rarely can they make the storm go away entirely.
In the Gospel for today, the disciples are upset. The storm is rising, their feet are wet, and Jesus is asleep. Instantly, they think the worst. Doesn’t he care? They’ve been following him, listening to him, watching him perform miracles. Now he’s asleep. Doesn’t he care?
The disciples don’t have to ask this question. They don't have to think he doesn't care. They could wake Jesus and say, “we need your help.” They could say, “we’re afraid.” But they immediately go to a story of abandonment. “He may be powerful, but he doesn’t care.”
We see in the Gospels that despite all that they witnessed Jesus do and say, over and over his disciples doubted him or ran from his message. The very ones who were closest to him struggled just like everybody else to trust in him when they were confronted with something that they didn’t understand, or something that instilled fear in them.
I think many of us in the ship of church find ourselves in this place during storms. We grow up hearing that God is all-powerful, and all-knowing, and all-loving. So when storms come, we have to wonder: is one of these not true?
When our beloved ones die too young, when people live in slavery or oppression, which part of God do we let go of?
Many people decide that God doesn’t care.
When we believe God doesn’t care, we take back our lives. We rely on ourselves again, on our ability to outrun the storm. Or, if it’s clear the storm is winning, we despair. Then we have two problems: we have the storm, and we have our sense of abandonment.
Perhaps Jesus is not the one who is asleep.
Perhaps Jesus can sleep through the storm because he is awake to God. He trusts so deeply, he is so united with God, that he does not fear.
This word, “Do not be afraid,” is one of the main themes of the Bible. Over and over, God and God’s messengers say, “Do not be afraid.”
They don’t say, “There’s nothing to be afraid of.” That would dismiss us. There is a lot to fear, but we don’t have to be afraid. The storms are real, but so is God’s love. Jesus is fully awake to that love, and to the power of that love, and so he can sleep in the storm.
The faith that would keep fear at bay is a faith that does not reduce God to a pacifier. God’s power is not like human power. It is not about making the world to our specifications, eliminating danger, or following our judgments of how things should be.
God’s power is the steady flow of love that can strengthen us through the storms. Our task is not to outrun the storm, but to stand firm, awake to God’s loving presence.
This is what Jesus knows. When he asks about the disciples’ faith, he asks us to dig down past our instinctive responses to storms, to hold fast to the handrails and ropes of our faith so we don’t make matters worse.
We may feel fear, but we don’t have to live in fear. We don’t have to obsess. We don’t have hunker down and control everything.
We don’t have to get angry or bitter.
We can open our hands and our hearts.
We can take a deep breath, maybe have a good cry and a cup of tea.
We can pray to know what to do, and do it.
We can breathe peace, as Jesus did.
In this ship of church, we can hold one another. We can pray for those who are struggling, and let them know they aren’t alone. We can offer help, as we are gifted. We can tell stories of times when we thought the water would overwhelm us, times we survived. And we can eat and drink together, and find refreshment. Together, we can wake up to God’s presence within and among us.
May this church be that ship. May you find here the faith that does not give you all the answers, but strengthens you to ask the questions that matter. May God be with you.
