Göttinger Predigten
Choose your language:
Göttinger Predigten im Internet hg. von U. Nembach
Donations for Sermons from Goettingen
The 4th Sunday after Pentecost, 06/21/2015
Where Is He Anyway?
Sermon on Mark 4:34-41, by Walter W. Harms
35 On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” 36 And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him. 37 And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. 38 But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” 39 And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. 40 He said to them, “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?” 41 And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”
I don’t remember many of the sermons that I hear (I am retired), but I rather recently heard a couple of statements from a sermon that really stuck with me. I hope a lot of the messages you hear stick with you! Maybe even this one will!
The pastor was talking about the future of the church to which I belong. He said: “Remember: ‘apart from Jesus you can do nothing’, and ‘be surprised.’” He wasn’t talking just about the church but our personal lives as well.
He wasn’t talking just about “happy” surprises either. He mentioned sickness, the break up of relationships, death, money problems, as well as those events we get all happily excited about.
So often we forget about the relationship we have with God, not only when bad things, or events we think are bad, but also when we met unexpected joys and pleasures. We may ask: why is this happening to me? Or, perhaps, why doesn’t God give me “good stuff” all the time? We really wonder what God is supposed to be all about, anyway.
Why in the world doesn’t he step in and do something when “bad” surprises happen to us or others? Doesn’t he know, doesn’t he realize what we are going through? The same may be true for us when we hear about Christians being slaughtered in Near East countries, or when Christian places of worship are ransacked and desecrated.
How are we to react when God seemed to have deserted us? Yes, I know we all think that he is always with us, but that certainly doesn’t help much when we or others face catastrophic events that turn our lives topsy-turvy.
Most of us believe that God is a loving God. The only problem seems to be that he is sleeping when events that seem to threaten come charging in our direction. As in the reading that is the basis of this meditation today, as Jesus was, he seems to be asleep in the boat!
What is this story about anyway? Were the disciples, these intimate followers of Jesus just to take it while the boat was being flooded and the danger of sinking imminent? It seems to me that they did what we do in times of crisis. They went to the source of help; they shook Jesus awake and asked him if tehe didn’t care that they were perishing.
Have you ever been in a boat or on a ship when there was a real possibility of the end coming very shortly? I haven’t ever gotten wet from waving lapping up on the ship but my wife and I did have “scary” moment. We were going to Japan as missionaries. We were young, married just over a year. We took a freighter, a 10,000-ton vessel (It’s really quite a small ship) because we could take a few more pounds of freight than the mission board of our church allowed. It was bad enough leaving our families and the USA for 5 years back then, with no telephone contact, no Skype, no internet, just letters. We were going across the ocean at its widest point to get from San Francisco to Japan, because of cargo on the decks. The captain didn’t want them damaged from excess moisture.
Somewhere along the journey one night the ship began to list, not up and down, but to one side. At one point in the middle of the night the ship listed so far, we thought it would go over! I knew the end was coming. It would be the end! I know I prayed the Lord would give us an easy death, but that wasn’t to happen.
The ship returned to an upright position for a ship. We learned the next morning that the captain had been using the fuel from one side of the ship causing the list. (He was a Lutheran from one of the Scandinavian countries. We suspected he was enjoying the bottle a little too much!) A real surprise for us landlubbers! The point is how were going to deal with all the surprises that lay ahead of us in a country, foreign to us and so much more? Believe me living in a foreign country gives you more surprises than you can imagine before you go there.
What was really going on with the disciples of Jesus? Surely the fear of death was there. Surely they knew that Jesus had the power to deliver them, after all he had just fed 5,000 men with a few morsels of bread and a couple of dried fish.
Why does Jesus tell them: “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?” When Jesus says this to them, he is not telling them fear is not going to be a part of their normal live. He is telling them they are missing something in their faith-life.
What they were missing was this. They did not trust that Jesus would take care of them! That’s a pretty bold statement for me to make. After all, they did shake him awake, to get him to do something about their situation and he did. So what was missing in their faith and, I believe, so often in ours?
They really didn’t trust Jesus yet! They didn’t trust him fully. They had little confidence at this time that he could handle and would handle the situation they found themselves in.
And we have to ask ourselves? Will Jesus handle, will God handle all the surprises that are going to come in our lives? What will he be up to in our lives?
The answer is I don’t know. I can’t tell you, but before you get up and leave, I will tell you what I do know about the God we come to worship together every Lord’s day.
He did not spare his own Son, his only Son (I have said before: if I had to sacrifice one of my 3 sons to get you to heaven, guess where you would go?). When this Son prayed that he wouldn’t have to go through the torture, humiliation of being mocked and ridiculed, the agony of dying and death itself, his Father didn’t give him an answer he wanted to hear. He didn’t grump, throw up his hands in despair, “quit the church,” or complain that his Father wasn’t dong right by him.
Why? Why would he do it? Why? He did it all for us. T
The cross is that sign for each of us today that he is more concerned about each of us that we can imagine. He is going to see us through life, through death and the grave and bring us to the wonders that we cannot even imagine of heaven itself. Talk about a surprise ahead of us!
Surprises will come to us! Apart from Jesus, we will be in a leaking ship with no hope. We will lose sight of land and rescue. We will believe we are the captain of our fate and the masters of our souls. We will despair of life at times. We will believe that we have it made at times. But apart from Jesus we do nothing.
We hang on to Jesus because, if we are honest with ourselves today, we too often think we know what is good and bad for us. We are no better that a deceived Adam or Eve, who thought they would be able to distinguish what would be good for them. They collapsed into a sinking ship of “I’ll do it my way” and were rescued only by a promise of complete restoration at some future time and event.
We know that event. It’s the events we celebrate during Holy Week and Easter. It is our future, if we will believe it when “surprises” come into our lives.
We will always, always have more than a little bit of something missing in our faith in Jesus. But, praise the Lord, he will supply what we lack. And by his undeserved kindness, we will reach the final destination whole, complete, safely! Amen.