Preached as sermon at Croydon Minster on Sunday 20th June 2021. Readings: Job 38.1-11; Mark 4.35-41.
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Last Friday morning I was standing in a
queue outside the Lidl on Church Street, in the middle of a heavy downpour,
waiting for the shop to open.
The great thing about a priest wearing a
clerical collar is that people react. It’s either by studiously ignoring you;
or being pretty rude; or being really rather pleased to see a priest and
engaging in conversation. To be honest sometimes those conversations can be
pretty off the wall and, at other times, really heart-warming and
transformative.
So it was that I stood in the rain - dog
collar on and umbrella in hand - when a woman struck up a conversation. As we
talked, both getting soaked, she spoke about her experience of lockdown.
She talked about her faith and about the
church.
She said how the lockdowns had brought her
to a greater realisation of her need for prayer and the sense of the power of
God working in her life. She sought a power greater than herself in the great
storms of life.
The storm of the pandemic blew up as if from
nowhere, catching us all off guard.
Sometimes, of course, we know a storm is
coming. Storms, literal or metaphorical, are disorientating and frightening.
That’s true of a mental or physical health
episode, or when addiction or dependence just can’t be shaken off, or when
money has run out, or debt becomes overbearing, or when life just crowds in on
us.
So that woman in the queue had sought help from
God in the storm she faced. Prayer became her lifeline and kept her in touch
with the peace of God which passes all understanding.
She could not still the storm, but she knew
someone who could!
That takes us to this morning’s gospel
reading.
Jesus has been teaching the crowds about the
Kingdom of God (Mark 4.26-34). There were so many people who wanted to hear him
that he had spoken from a boat as the crowd stood on the lakeside.
By evening Jesus was clearly exhausted, so
they set off away from the crowds on the tranquil Sea of Galilee. And Jesus
fell asleep.
Then the storm blew up.
If you have been to the Holy Land you will
know that the Sea of Galilee, which is a large inland lake really, is open on
one side and surrounded by hills.
Storms can blow up very quickly on the lake,
just as they can in our lives too, out of nowhere, and they disrupt and
frighten.
The wind squalls around and waves crash in
on those in the little boat.
Let’s just observe the detail for a moment.
Jesus is asleep, but the experienced fishermen, well used to the storms on
Galilee, are the ones who panic, they are ‘at their wits’ end’ as our psalm
today put it. (cf Psalm 107.23-29). That psalm is a good commentary on the
gospel reading.
What’s going on? What can we extract from
this passage as we ponder the storms of life, the confusions, the sense of
being tossed about and at the mercy of forces beyond our control?
As our first reading from the book of Job
makes clear we fool ourselves when we think we are in control, when we have
everything sorted, ordered just as we want it.
An ancient heresy, known as Pelagianism has
a modern form: it’s when we say ‘I’ve got it all sorted, mapped out, planned.
By my own effort I will overcome’. It is when we believe we don’t need the
grace of God.
But, God asks Job, rhetorically, ‘Where were
you when I laid the foundation of the earth?’
In other words, you won’t find salvation
within yourself, but you will when you reach out in faith and trust and cry out
to me.
As Psalm 107 says of ‘they that go down to
the sea in ships’ (23):
So
when they cry unto the Lord in their trouble: he delivereth them out of their
distress.
For
he maketh the storm to cease: so that the waves thereof are still’ (Psalm
107.28,29)
It is when we acknowledge our dependency
upon God in the storms of life that we will find our true haven, our place of
rest, tranquillity and shelter from the storms.
Storms will blow up again, personal,
national, global and spiritual, but we know where to cry out.
As the psalm again says, ‘Then were they
glad because they were at rest, and he brought them to the haven they desired’
(Psalm 107.30).
They woke the sleeping Christ and found
peace: ‘peace. Be still’.
Christ sleeps, not because he doesn’t care
that we are perishing, but rather that he embodies a deep peace and
tranquillity that is of God and available to us in union with the Divine Life.
Here we see Jesus truly human; truly divine:
gently sleeping; firmly speaking and rebuking the storm. No wonder the
disciples ask, agog, ‘who then is this?’
This is the Lover of your soul: Jesus
Christ, the image, the presence, the power of God who can calm the storms in
your life too.
We call upon him to receive the peace of God
which passes all understanding, the peace flowing from the altar, the peace we
come to meet now in this ship of faith, meeting Christ in the Blessed Sacrament
of the altar:
Sweet
Sacrament of rest,
ark
from the ocean's roar,
within
thy shelter blest
soon
may we reach the shore;
save
us, for still the tempest raves,
save,
lest we sink beneath the waves:
sweet
Sacrament of rest.
‘Sweet Sacrament, divine’, Francis Stanfield
1835-1914
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