DOES GOD CARE ABOUT THE STORMS?
(Preached on Sunday, September 19, 2004)
But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?"
-Mark 4:38
"The lake became progressively meaner, with ceaseless rises and falls (things I'd call neither waves nor swells) that began to thump us with a severity [our boat] had never encountered. Downtown Buffalo lay quietly a half mile off her port side. She labored up the crests, crashed into the troughs, and Pilotis couldn't stand without holding on; reading the chart to find a course to our harbor was nearly impossible, and the binoculars were of not more use than were we in a demolition derby. We had to shout over the tumult, and [our boat] was making almost no headway against current, waves, and wind."
So relates William Least Heat-Moon in his account of sailing across America, describing the distress of sailors caught in a raging storm.
After 3 hurricanes in four weeks battering the state of Florida, many of us are beginning to feel like such sailors.
We are beginning to wonder, like the followers of Jesus caught on the Sea of Galilee in a storm with Jesus asleep in the stern of the boat, does God care that we are perishing?
Does God care about the storms?
When life rages out of control, this question inevitably comes up and people have different means of responding.
Bette Midler had a popular song a few years ago that suggested that God watched us "from a distance."
Actually, that view was made popular centuries before by the Deists who assumed that God created the world, set certain processes in motion, then stepped back, leaving us to our own devices.
Storm at sea? Cancerous cells? Diseases of the body?
Sorry, there are certain natural laws that have been established, certain climatic processes, and when they converge, there are storms.
Nothing is to be done about it but prepare to ride it out.
Others take a much stronger view of God's involvement in the workings of nature. About 15 years ago a massive Hurricane threatened the East Coast and was
pointing right at Virginia.
Pat Robertson, head of the Christian Broadcast Network and founder of the fundamentalist Christian Coalition prayed that the storm would turn and not threaten their headquarters located in Virginia Beach.
And when the storm did turn and slam into New England, Pat trumpeted it as a result of God answering his prayers.
For centuries people viewed violent acts of nature, storms, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, droughts, floods, plagues and diseases, as judgments from God. They were punishments for sin.
Old Testament theologian and biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann suggests that in the Bible this view was changed with the story of Noah.
You remember that story, of God's punishing the wickedness of humanity with a massive flood, but saving Noah, his family, and two of every species of life to start over.
At the end of the story God renews a covenant with Noah and all created life and places the rainbow in the sky as a sign, not just for us, but for God, to remember the promise.
The promise God makes is to "never again" destroy all life with a flood. Brueggemann emphasizes that this "never again" means that with this promise God breaks the cause and effect relationship between sin and suffering.
The flood is the clearest example of how, if humans sin, God punishes with death and destruction.
The covenant with Noah now makes clear once and for all that suffering does not arise from God's punishment of sin.
Over and over again in the gospels, Jesus seems to make the same point.
He forgives people their sin and suggests that the son of man, that is, human agents, have the power to speak forgiveness to one another.
He heals people, without asking the cause of their illness, not concerned whether they did wrong to bring it on.
He suggests that when bad things happen to people it is not the result of their being bad people, but rather part of life; tragedies happen, buildings collapse, people are born blind and disfigured, and it is not the result of human sin.
And when this storm rages, he continues to sleep in the back of the boat!
Jesus sleeps not because he does not care about his companions in the boat with him.
Jesus sleeps because he knows the one who created the power of the storm is greater even than it and that same one holds him in strong, protective hands. Jesus sleeps on because of his supreme, serene confidence in the face of the storm.
Jesus sleeps because he knows that in the storm, God is with him; the storm does not mean God has abandoned him, or is punishing him.
Jesus knows, what Paul reminds us in Romans 8: "For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God."
The problem is, we forget that truth when the storms rage.
When the Hurricane winds are approaching and we are locked in our homes turned into caves by storm shutters; when the doctor looks at us and before she even speaks you can read on her face the word cancer; when you are startled in the night by the late telephone call and the voice on the other end says, "I have some bad news."
At those moments our faith is severely tested and we wonder "Does God Care?" We forget the truth of this story.
That God is in the boat with us and that God does care, not about the storms, but about us.
What the storms do is call us to faith, even though we cower like frightened disciples.
When the powers of chaos surround us and threaten to overwhelm us, Jesus calls us to conquer our fear with faith.
Remembering that God confronted these same powers of chaos in the beginning and overcame them to create the world and our lives.
This is not blind faith that grasps at straws for miraculous rescues, but rather faith that God is good; God cares for us; and God is always with us, even in the midst of storms.
Such faith knows that God will see us through.
It is not always with a miraculous rescue, overpowering the forces of chaos, as Jesus did in rebuking the wind.
Though he rebuked the wind in this instance, we should remember that Jesus didn't cancel Roman taxes, and he did not drive the Romans from his land, and he did not make people finally immune from sickness, and he did not outlaw death.
The cross reminds us of that truth.
But the resurrection reminds us that even in death God is with us and never leaves us.
The most powerful way this becomes real for us is when we stand together, do what we can, and care for one another.
Jesus was the embodiment of God in the flesh in the boat with the disciples. Even so, we are the embodiment of God, in the flesh, in life with each other. Just as surely as the storms of life will come, fear will raise its head within us at those times.
That is why we need to be in the church.
Because when our faith is not strong enough to see us through, we can then reach out and lean on the faith of those in life with us.
And one of the best things we can do to strengthen our own faith is not to focus on it, on our own fears and struggles, but to focus on others; to reach out, comfort, care for, help someone else through the storm.
The more we do that, the more we will discover together, the faith to overcome our fears, and the presence of God right there with us, together.