July 12, 2015 – Storms from John Knox Kirk on Vimeo.

A sermon preached at The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on July 12, 2015.

Isaiah 43:1-10
and Mark 6:47-52

One of the things that is new to me
as your pastor is spending these summer months going through
the lectionary with you.

My last church spent the Summer off lectionary,
doing one or another sermon series
and so I’ve never spent these summer months
walking so deliberately though these texts.

And when you do that, new things emerge.
What is striking to me that I never really noticed before
was how focused Mark is, like a laser beam,
on Jesus’ concern for the interior well being of those encounters:
you can see it in pretty much every encounter we’ve seen this summer:
the leper, cured
the paralytic, walking again,
the crowds, listening to stories of seed and sun and nourishing rain
Jairus and his daughter, the woman hemorrhaging in the crowd
all of them. There is some external need met,
but so much more so…internal healing…

And no less true this story, stuck quietly in middle of the gospel,
between a miracle of feeding the multitude and another
tale of Jesus healing the sick
this story, about Jesus and the storm:

 When evening came, the boat was out on the lake,
and Jesus was alone on the land. 
When he saw that they were straining at the oars against an adverse wind,
he came towards them early in the morning,
walking on the lake.
He intended to pass them by.
But when they saw him walking on the lake,
they thought it was a ghost and cried out; 
for they all saw him and were terrified.

But immediately he spoke to them and said,
‘Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.’ 

Then he got into the boat with them and the wind ceased.
And they were utterly astounded, 
for they did not understand about the loaves,
but their hearts were hardened.

May God bless to us our reading,
and our understanding,
and our applying of these words, to how we live our lives. Amen.

///
So, It takes only SIX verses to tell:
There was a STORM.

The translation in Mark calls it “an adverse wind.”
The Old Testament calls it “chaos.”
There is always a storm in the Bible…and in our lives.

Be it illness or tragedy or loss
pain or confusion or despair–
–it is that force of disorder that leaves us broken and shattered.

It turns out that the Bible is much more preoccupied

with the threat of CHAOS, with our STORMS—
–than with SIN and GUILT—
–those things that we seem to spend so much time fretting over…

We work very hard to devise some understanding of FORGIVENESS.
But…the STORM is NOT so easy.

I was thinking about all this this week
when the Girls and I ate dinner in our basement Monday night
flashlight and weather radio nearby
as the tornado sirens went off
and our own adverse wind swept through the heartland.

But the STORMS we human beings deal with
are more than the literal meteorological events.

The STORMs of our life produce an ANXIETY within us
that NOTHING seems to calm.
It is a sense of deep helplessness–because you cannot touch it,
and you cannot manage it,
and you cannot control it,
and you cannot predict it—
–and it blows into your life
and blows loose ANYTHING it wants to.

And it strikes me: The Jesus we encounter in Mark is really speaking to THAT. [Read more…]