Who Hid The Life Preservers?
Year B, 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time • Sermon • Submitted
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Fear
Fear
Fear is the emotional response to a perceived or real, danger or threat, to the physical well being of a person. The danger or threat may be present or in anticipation of a future event. Fear causes a change in the functioning of certain organs in the body and often a change in behavior such as hiding, freezing, fleeing and even attacking.
Fear can be a powerful motivating emotion. President George Bush effectively used it in his reelection campaign by creating the “Homeland Security Advisory System” that would indicate the existing level of danger from a terrorist attack. Whenever his popularity in the polls dropped, Homeland Security raised the level for a potential attack. The voting public believed that President Bush could handle another 911-type threat more effectively than Sen. John Kerry.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote an essay on fear in January 1933. The first republic created after WW I was about to collapse. Fear gripped the hearts of the nation caused by The Red Tide from the East, Russia and its communism. There was open fighting in the streets of every major German city. Hitler had seemingly overwhelming support and the Nazis were creating social chaos.
Fear is, somehow or other, the archenemy itself. It crouches in people’s hearts. It hollows out their insides, until their resistance and strength are spent and they suddenly break down.
Fear secretly gnaws and eats away at all the ties that bind a person to God and to others, and when in a time of need that person reaches for those ties and clings to them, they break and the individual sinks back into himself or herself, helpless and despairing, while hell rejoices.
Jesus knowing the heart of every woman and every man, knows that we all struggle with such emotions and the menace they potentially possess. Given that I really do wonder what he meant by his rebuke of the disciples. To me it was a very harsh question. The disciples had had limited exposure to the miraculous powers of Jesus. They had seen him drive out evil spirits, heal many who were sick, including a man with leprosy and a paralytic but they had never seen him display power over nature. Why should they expect him to calm the storm? Or, and even more outrages thought, why should he expect them to calm the storm? So why shouldn’t they feel scared? Their lives were in peril.
Debbie Thomas extends the meaning of the word “drowning” to include all the ways in which we find ourselves. Pete Seeger sang a protest song in the 60s entitled “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy.” It was a story about a platoon of GIs who returning to their base. The Captain was absolutely convinced that the Big Muddy, a.k.a. the Mississippi River was shallow enough to cross but the platoon found themselves waist deep in Big Muddy. Sometimes that is how life appears. We are stuck in the Big Muddy and the water is rising.
Of course we feel afraid as we face climate change and school shootings. Of course we feel afraid when broken marriages, sick children, unfriendly neighbors, grinding jobs, and financial uncertainty threaten our lives. Of course we feel afraid when biology or trauma betray us into anxiety, panic, and depression.
Thomas suggests that we need to understand this second question through the lens of the first. “Teacher, don’t you care that we are drowning?”
What is the implication of this questions? That Jesus does not care If he cared he would be in the bow bailing water or looking for the life preservers or helping to take down and store the sail. If he cared they would not have to seek him out. He would be trying to come up with some type of solution to safe them. He would not be sleeping.
I have been in many different situations in which the storm winds were howling and the waves were tossing my life one way and then another. I have accused God of not caring on more than one occasion. I created an image of God who is cold-hearted, loveless, and to whom I am expendable.
But I have learned that in the midst of every travail where the way out seems murky and hidden; even in those situations that our my own fault I know that there is still hope because there is One who may appear asleep but is waiting for me to call him.
Christ is in the boat. He is being tossed about just like me. The waves have drenched his garments. He is there waiting for me to say “Thy will be done.” He is the One who makes the fear inside us recoil. He puts to flight our anxiety. Hope swells when we name the One who overcomes our fear and puts it to flight.
and say “Thy will be done.” He is the One who makes the fear inside us recoil. He puts to flight our anxiety. Hope swells when we name the One who overcomes our fear and puts it to flight.
Bonehoefer writes:
We name the One who overcame fear and led it captive in the victory procession, who nailed it to the cross and committed it to oblivion; we name the One who is the shout of victory of humankind redeemed from the fear of death—Jesus Christ, the Crucified and Living One.
He is the Master and Lord of fear. Our trembling emotions must submit to the calming presence of his will. Our fear will grow pale and fade when we call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
No sooner have I offered that prayer and been heard than Fear shrinks back. The waves subside. The sea becomes calm and the boat rest on the quite surface.
Sometimes we find ourselves back in the boat with the storm raging around us. It is easy to lose hope in these circumstances. Our voice seems to weak to ask for help. The One who is waiting seems to be in a deeper state of sleep. We lose heart. He lose the joy of living. Our whole body aches from the coldness of the water.
But he does not move. He does not leave the boat. He waits. He is the One who will say
“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
Christ will always remain in the boat in the midst of every storm you encounter. Learn to recognize the signs when the velocity of the wind changes from a gentle breeze to a steady but foreboding flurry. We must be prepared to trust him because whenever he climbs into the boat, we can expect a storm. The world and the enemy try with every tactic available to flip him out of our boat. Those who oppose him will do anything to shake our confidence; to capsize the boat. But for those who turn to him with the storm raging they will find that even the winds and the sea will obey him. Our natural response will be to fall on our knees before him and say this is no man, this is God.