A woman died and went to heaven. At the pearly gates, she asked St. Peter, “How do I get in?” “Spell the word love,” said St. Peter. She correctly spelled love and Saint Peter welcomed her into heaven.
About a year later, St. Peter asked her to watch the gates of heaven for him that day. While she was watching, her husband arrived.
“I’m surprised to see you,” she said. “How have you been?”
“I’ve been doing really well. Do you remember that beautiful young nurse who was taking care of you in the hospital? Well I married her and she was very special. Then we won the lottery. I sold the little house we used to live in and bought a huge mansion. While on vacation, I went boating and got in a terrible storm and drowned. How do I get in?”
All you have to do is spell one word,” the woman said.
“What’s the word?” her husband asked.
“Czechoslovakia.”
Have you ever been in a violent storm at sea? When I was in high school, a friend of mine had a small sail boat that we took out on Lake Erie one beautiful day. He was the boater; I was a novice. We got into the middle of the lake, and the sky began to darken, so we started to make our way back, but didn’t make it back before the storm began.
My friend knew I eventually wanted to go to seminary, so he calmly suggested that if I had an appropriate prayer, now might be the time to say it. That’s when I really got concerned!
Lake Erie is a shallow lake, and even minor storms cause fairly large waves, not unlike the Sea of Galilee, also a shallow lake. Very quickly we were in a life-threatening situation. The boat was tossed to and fro, and with every wave it could have capsized. We couldn’t see the shore. I prayed fervently. My friend was an experienced boater, though, and eventually we made it to shore, thanking God that we were all right.
Jesus needed rest. So he told the disciples it was time to get away, and the way to do that was to go to the other side of the lake, where there weren’t crowds of people. When he got in the boat he went to sleep; he was so tired that the storm didn’t wake him. But the disciples feared for their lives. Keep in mind that several of them were experienced fishermen and knew when there was a real threat.
They wakened Jesus. He calmed the storm and then chastised them for their lack of faith. Jesus could not only teach and preach powerfully, could not only heal people and even raise the dead, but also he had power over the forces of nature. Even wind and seas obeyed him.
Now, there are some in the congregation who believe this is just another pious tale. There are those who can accept the spiritual teachings of Jesus, but find it difficult, even superstitious, to believe that Jesus did anything supernatural. That attitude’s nothing new. Thomas Jefferson, for example, concocted a “gospel” in which he took out of the four accounts of the Gospel all things supernatural—no water turned to wine, no walking on water, sight to the blind, raising of the dead, and certainly no calming of the sea. There’re even Christian biblical scholars who begin their scholarship with the presupposition that anything supernatural in the Gospel accounts must be explained away.
For those who hold those beliefs, which are no more provable than what they negate, I say, to borrow a phrase from J. B. Phillips, “Your God is too small.”
Our faith in Jesus doesn’t rest on any one of the things I’ve mentioned, but it does rest on the greatest supernatural event of all—the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. The God who was able to accomplish that, would be able, in Jesus, to do everything else attributed to him. A faith in Jesus that won’t allow for his complete uniqueness, including that which is supernatural, is a convenient faith that allows one to revise the foundations of the faith to suit one’s own sensibilities, rather than to submit oneself to that which has been revealed. And yet, that’s where much theological thinking is today in our seminaries, where the object is to re-image Christ. As someone once said, “In the beginning God created man and woman in his image, and ever since we’ve been attempting to return the compliment.”
But there’s another level to the story of the calming of the sea, and that level is—are you ready for this?—metaphorical. The same Jesus who has power over the forces of nature is able to calm the storms in our lives. You may have lost your job, you or a family member may be ill, your marriage may be rocky, your child may be having trouble with drugs, you may have just broken up with your boyfriend. Many, if not all, of us have a storm going, of some sort, most all of the time.
Whatever the problem, there’s nothing that can happen that will defeat us if we put our faith in Christ. Here is where the metaphor ends. That doesn’t mean that when you have faith whatever storm you’re experiencing will cease. It might, but on the other hand, you may not get the job you wanted, or be cured; your marriage may still be rocky, your child may still be addicted. What you will be able to do, no matter what the outcome, is withstand anything that life brings with that supernatural peace that passes understanding. I can’t prove it, but I believe it.
I didn’t have that kind of faith when I went through that storm on Lake Erie, but I do now, by the grace of God, and I pray God will grant us all that faith that calms the storm.
Sermon preached by the Rev. Fredrick A. Robinson
Church of the Redeemer
Sarasota Florida
5th Sunday after Pentecost
24 June 2018