The Shepherd’s Voice

Readings for Sunday, June 21^st
Job 28:1-11
Ps 107:1-3, 23-32
2 Cor 6:1-13
Mk 4:35-41

The Shepherd’s Voice – Sermon Audio

Our Gospel text this morning seems to describe the life of a father. Who else but a father would say, “Let us go across to the other side.” Father’s typically like adventure. They are willing to go on a hike without a trail. Some spouses say they are the oldest child.

According to Dr. T. Berry Brazelton, a father’s involvement with a child increases the child’s IQ, the child’s motivation to learn, and the child’s self-confidence. In addition, children with involved dads are more likely to develop a sense of humor as well as an “inner excitement.” Dads are irreplaceable and a valued member of the parenting team.

But of course sometimes dads can also be found fast asleep in the stern of the boat.

Dads can also make fun of themselves. A mother was out walking with her 4 year old daughter. The child picked up something off the ground and started to put it into her mouth. The mother took it away and said “Don’t do that!”

“Why not?” asked the child.

“Because it’s on the ground,” said her mother. “You don’t know where it’s been. It’s dirty, and it’s probably loaded with germs that could make you sick.”

The child looked at her mother with total admiration and said, “Mommy, how do you know all this stuff? You’re so smart.”

The mother said, “All Moms know this stuff. It’s on the Mom’s Test. You have to know it or they don’t let you be a Mom.”

There was silence for a minute or so as the child thought this through. “Oh, I get it,” she said at last. “And if you don’t pass the Mom test you have to be the Daddy?”

Sometimes children really look up to the Dad and sometimes ‘not so much.’

Our Gospel text today is NOT about a mommy or daddy, or about who has power in a parenting relationship, but it’s about what God is trying to teach us in this simple story about Jesus calming the storm. There are 3 aspects of this story that are important.

1. First, storms come. Storms of life can be powerful and scary.
2. Second, we all react to storms of life, but we react differently.
3. Third, storms are powerful, but God is more powerful still.

We enter this story in Mark 4 and realize Jesus had been teaching the crowds and his disciples and was now ready to move on. I can kind of hear those Southwest Airline bells ringing in the background. ‘Want to get away.’

In this case it was not in search of adventure, but to get away, to be calmed.

Who of us after a hard days work doesn’t want to get away from the chaos of the day? Our lives can get very complicated at times, the over barring boss, the crying children, the brothers or sisters picking on us, the load we feel of a taking care of someone sick, a parent, a friend, a spouse. We’ve all felt like we need to go across to the other side Jesus’ words, for some peace, some relaxation. Jesus the human wanted the same thing here.

The text says “leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was.” They, the disciples are likely rowing across the lake. It’s a calm late evening day, and all of a sudden Mark says, “great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped.”

Mark often speaks with this dramatic tone. It’s kind of fun to notice that in the book of Mark. He often uses words like, ‘Listen!’, or ‘Immediately’ the girl got up or people who heard him were ‘astounded.’ I love Mark’s often sense of urgency as he tells this important story.

In our case ‘A great windstorm arose’ in other words this was a big storm. I think we can see by this story and by many other stories and parables that Jesus uses, life is full of the unexpected. Storms come and they are powerful and scary.

Joni Erareckson Tada – perhaps you’ve likely heard about her story. She called herself an “immature and headstrong teenager.” On July 30th, 1967 she was paralyzed from the neck down after a diving accident. One minute, life was robust, she was strong, healthy, and now she is paralyzed from the neck down, what a tragedy.

I have friends who have one minute had what looks like good strong lives to look forward to and then all of a sudden illness, injury, a car accident, a gunshot, being in the wrong place at the wrong time and life changes, storms come and they are powerful and scary.

Jesus was sleeping in the boat, a great windstorm arose and the disciples were scared for their lives. They, the disciples say, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”

When storms of life come, how do you react? The disciples here sound a little desperate, scared, worried about themselves and their existence. Of course this is pretty natural for most of us. It’s built into our very DNA, our brain stem/frontal lobe as humans. When life is threatening we respond in a fight or flight mentality. Is that reaction always the best one?

Ernest Gordon, a former chaplain of Princeton University, was a young British officer in the Second World War. He was captured by the Japanese and held as a POW in a brutal prison camp in Southeast Asia. It’s the same slave-labor camp that was dramatized in the classic Alec Guinness film Bridge over the River Kwai. In his wartime memoir Through the Valley of the Kwai (Harper, 1962), Gordon tells this story.

Conditions in the POW camp had degenerated into barbarous brutality. The guards beat the prisoners, and the prisoners try to beat each other out of food, water, a pair of shoes — any necessity that was in short supply.

One day a shovel goes missing. The Japanese officer in charge becomes enraged. He demands that the missing shovel be produced, or else. When nobody in the unit budges, the officer pulls out his gun and threatens to kill them all on the spot. It is obvious that the officer means what he’s said.

Finally, one man steps forward. The officer puts away his gun, picks up a shovel, and beats the man to death. The survivors pick up his bloody corpse and carry it with them to the second tool check/shed. This time, no shovel turns up missing in the count. It seems there was a miscount at the first checkpoint or tool shed.

The word spreads like wildfire throughout the camp. An innocent man was willing to die to save the others! From that day forward, the men began to treat each other like brothers. When the victorious Allies finally sweep in, the survivors, human skeletons, line up in front of their former captors. Yet instead of attacking them, they insist: “No more hatred. No more killing. Now what we all need is forgiveness.”

You can decide how you want to react to the storms of life. It can be an attitude of me, me, me or it can be an attitude of forgiveness. Forgive yourself first. You are human, you make mistakes, because we know God wants something better. Forgive others because God forgives you.

Joni Erareckson Tada the immature and headstrong teenager could have said I hate you God, could have said, ‘Why did you do this to me God?’ She did not.

The disciples even though they were worried about themselves, their very existence knew where to go for power. They looked to Jesus for help. Jesus awoke and said emphatically, “Peace! Be still!” The wind ceased and the seas were calm.

The first thing Jesus did was to use the power of the Father to calm the storm, to calm the rough seas, to create a spirit of tranquility. Sometimes as parents, as fathers or mothers we do this with our children, we calm the storm so our children have room to react, to respond to the storm in that child’s life. This same principle applies if you’re a boss, a spouse, a friend, a teacher –

Sometimes the most important thing we can do when the storms of life rise up like a great windstorm is to look to the Father, to God to bring about a calm in our storm. Without this calm, most of us cannot react in a positive way.

Once the storm, the rough seas were calm Jesus said, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” This is a deep statement with a direct assertion that faith affects or influences our lives.

God wants us to understand that storms come; the law of the asphalt jungle is harsh. We are going to naturally be afraid, but we must look to God, have faith in God for calm, for a place where our spirit can be at peace. Jesus showed his disciples by his words and his actions that they must have faith that God can calm any storm. Ultimately we know God is in control!

Joni Ericson Tada, paralyzed from the neck down said “I wouldn’t change my life for anything. I feel privileged. God doesn’t give such special attention to everyone and intervene that way in their lives.” Her new life in a wheel chair blossomed because of her faith.

Ernest Gordon, prisoner, almost a skeleton by the time the allies freed him said No more hatred – retribution, payback, vengeance is NOT the answer, what we need is forgiveness. God is in the forgiveness business. You decide how you want to respond to the storms of life.

Jesus said, “Peace, Be Still!” to provide a calm in the storm so the disciples could see that the only real power in life is the power that comes from God. So where do you find power?

Amen.

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