When the Storm Hits

Sermon by James W. Crawford

Fourth Sunday in Lent, March 17, 1996

John 6:14-21

John's church struggles amid a terrible storm. He and his church are a Jewish sect and they confess their faith in Jesus-Messiah amid violent times. The Roman tyranny brutalizes and oppresses the Jewish people. This Roman oppression breeds Jewish revolution. Jewish terrorists attack Roman barracks. Jewish guerrilla squadrons harass the imperial guard. Jewish propaganda vilifies these colonial outsiders. Jerusalem seethes with resistance, rebellion, hatred of these Roman empire builders. The city is in chaos, riddled with conflict, oppression, terror, subversion, brutality.

In 70 A.D., the Romans decide to solve this pernicious problem. They level the city. They burn it. They wreck it. Amid a firestorm of destruction they lay waste and ravage the heart and soul of Jewish identity: the Temple. For Jews, it is like the end of the world. They are decimated, thrown into dispersion, almost in collapse, driven to oblivion.

 How salvage themselves? How bring some sense of unity and identity back after this ghastly destruction? They design a unified religious code. All the crazy religious and messianic movements within Judaism, (and there were scores of them; Judaism, to use a modern term, was a "Big Tent") all these movements must be crushed and an orthodoxy imposed so unity might become the order of the day. Thus, the Jesus movement within Judaism must be wiped out. The Jews who believe Jesus, that Jewish blasphemer, executed by the Romans as a traitorous criminal, those who believe Jesus to be Messiah must be expunged from the synagogue. So long as these "Jews for Jesus," if you will, exist, Judaism will remain splintered, its integrity eroded. Unity can come only through uniformity. And thus, John's Jewish sectarian church finds itself not only threatened by the ferocity of Roman vengeance, its Jewish world lying in ruins; it finds itself also the enemy of a new Jewish orthodoxy established by necessity in tumultuous times in order to save Judaism.

Out of this horrendous, this violent, this vengeful atmosphere, John tells the story of disciples amid an ominous darkness, rowing through a violent storm, getting nowhere, about to go under. John depicts a paralyzing fear among the crew in the boat. And then--incredibly, dazzlingly--he gives us Christ walking on the sea, offering words of assurance: "It is I, do not be afraid." The story concludes as that frightened crowd welcomes Jesus into the boat and finds themselves pulling safely up onto the shore at their destination.

Do you see what this narrative is all about? Can we catch John's spectacular vision? He is affirming a sure and certain presence standing with us amid those moments we can describe only as devastating storms tossing us about, threatening to sink us. John's story of Jesus walking on the sea is not an image inviting us to analyze some sort of natural anomaly. It is not an arbitrary exception to the law of gravity. It is an image, a narrative, a proclamation that when the storm hits, and fear and confusion, and maybe even terror, threaten to undo us, there is One who rides out the storm with us, One who does not prevent the storm, but bears with us through it. When the going gets rough, when the love of God seems furthest away, do not be afraid, for the love of Christ rides with you, bears with you, sustains you through the worst of circumstances.

You see, this passage is John's answer to those of us who ask the question, "O God, where can I find you? Where are you as my life unravels, the seas roll, the boat leaks, the tiller is stuck, the ship sinks. Where are you? Do you care? Do you give a darn?"

I wonder. Does our chaotic world bear some resemblance to John's? I am reminded of a pastime Linda and our daughter Betsy are experts at. They possess both the persistence and the vision to assemble complicated, nearly impossible puzzles. Toss them a thousand-piece puzzle of uniform color and variegated shape, and they will do it in record time. My own gifts at puzzle assembling, boggle playing, spatial relations are simply pathetic: slow, plodding, miserable, done, if at all, only amid torrid imprecations and language not fit for a Christian pulpit. But, in life I find it is even more difficult to find the right pieces to fit the puzzle. Just as I think I have found the perfect piece, it changes shape, or the place it is supposed to fit is not quite there anymore. Just when everything seems to be coming together, something goes haywire and the pieces slip through my fingers or dissolve into thin air.

It is something like a story a colleague of mine tells. He sees a mother at a toy counter examining a mechanical toy. She asks the clerk behind the counter, "Don't you think this is just a little too complicated for a child?" "Oh no," replies the salesman, smiling. "That's an educational toy. It's especially designed to adapt a child to life in the world today. Any way he puts it together, it's wrong."

There are not a few of us sitting in this room this morning who feel that way about life: searching for pieces of a puzzle missing or lost. A toy with edges, couplings that just won't fit. Or, to use the image of the morning, finding ourselves at sea under a dark sky, rolling in hurricane winds threatening to sink our ships.

Last week, the New York Times ran a revealing and remarkable series on this process running across our industrial and business world called "downsizing." The series was not simply a statistical record of bottom lines, international competition, stock market figures, and jobs lost. It laid bare the stories of a dozen or so men and women and their families: competent, able, hardworking, committed to their employers; men and women who lost their jobs in massive nationwide layoffs. White collar, blue collar, managers, assembly line people, those with seniority, those new to the job market, those with Ph.D's, those with high tech skills. Do you know what moods riddle these articles? Can you guess what runs through them? Here is one man, laid off from Kodak, realizing as he passes a ragged man begging in downtown Los Angeles, that discarded workers come in rags and Ralph Lauren. The article uses expressions like, "steadily creeping unease," "the fading American dream," "keeping up a front." It describes long walks a spouse takes at night to prevent the family from seeing her tears. It alludes to anger over the untenable situation; it describes guilt that a pay check no longer sustains his family; it tells of depression caused by an identity rudely eroded; it illustrates shock over an assumed permanency shattered; it speaks of denial amid conclusive evidence that old ways will not someday return; it pictures cynicism in face of the company's abrupt action, and Fear! Fear! Fear of losing the house, losing the retirement, fear of losing all of it. As one frightened spouse says, "It's like standing outside the castle, watching the drawbridge go up."

And that is just a piece of it facing many of us. We are in a boat in the middle of the storm, some of us afraid of ourselves, some of us afraid of others, some of us fearing disease or disablement, others the collapse of a loving relationship. Some of us fear growing older, still others are terrified of change. Some of us frightened by what may be happening to our families or to our loved ones, others of us scared of some self indulgence, or habit, or addiction taking over our lives or carrying off someone we love as we stand powerlessly by. Some of us are fearful of retirement, others of us afraid of our own pending deaths or the death of someone close to us. A storm, out of control, threatening the core of our very existence!

 Does anybody care? When the storm hits, does anyone know or really grasp what we face? That is our question this morning. John tells his battling, struggling church--he tells us--that amid our struggle and turmoil someone stands with us even as the ship rocks and shudders. He tells us that even as the world goes through its radical changes threatening us and turning things topsy-turvey, and yes, perhaps even more profoundly, that as we pursue a way of life in this world reflecting the life of Jesus Christ, so we will know rejection, resistance, a sense of abandonment and futility as if we row on a turbulent lake in a hurricane.

So does anybody care? Are we left to swing it by ourselves? And we come again to the foot of the Cross for clues to answer our desperate question. When John and his reeling church ask the question it goes like this: Who really cares when Jesus dies? If anybody cares, where is the evidence? All we see is a bloody mess. And the Gospel answers: At Calvary indeed, we see the most Godforsaken of circumstances. At Calvary we see the failure of love to make a difference. At Calvary we see a world run amok with economic, political and religious forces out of control putting to death for what they claim to be obvious and rational reasons the best and most decent life ever lived. And the mystery of our hope lies in the faith that even amid this travesty of justice, this cruelty, this unfairness and God forsakeness we see and know by that empty Cross there is One who stands by us even amid catastrophic circumstances. The love of God is there all the time. That is our faith. It does not promise we can avoid the storm. It does not prevent unfair or terrible things from happening to us. It does provide assurance that when the worst happens we are not alone. That is hard to believe sometimes when the wind hits, the waves rise, the sky darkens, the boat flounders. Yet when the going threatens to shatter our flimsy little crafts, the Gospel embraces us with a promise: "It is I, do not be afraid."

Can you believe that? Is this vivid affirmation of John real to you? to me? Can we confess in extremity with John Carmody, stricken with a deadly melanoma - brooding, searching, reaching - finally praying, "O God, I need my death to be your unmediated action. I need to think of this terminal illness as your touch, your increasingly intimate embrace, your deliberately chosen way of freeing me from bodily limitations so that I might become lost and found in your infinity . . .

 Yes, come God, my death. Kill in me all that resists you, who are love. Teach me finally to love my life, my body, my world, now that they are ending. Help me to place them all in your keeping." "It is I. Be not afraid!"

Or can we hear the voice of that wondrous African-American woman, Mother Pollard, whom Martin Luther King Jr. tells us carried him through the worst furies of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, its fearful resistance and brutal threats. Remember her? Mother Pollard, walking the streets of Montgomery, Alabama, during the strike answering the question of whether or not she was tired, with one of the luminous quotes of the century: "My feets is tired, but my soul is rested," and then discerning fear in Dr. King during those frightful days, seeking the source of his discontent, wondering whether the Black folk were troubling him or the White folk getting him down, assuring Dr. King , "I don told you we are with you all the way." And finally saying, radiantly, ebulliently, "But even if we ain't with you, God's gonna take care of you." Three nights later King' house was bombed and he testifies Mother Pollard nurtured in him a new courage and trust in a God he says, "who is able to give us the interior resources to face the storm and problems of life." Is it any wonder the heart of our faith is called "Good News?" "It is I. Do not be afraid!"

In a moment we are going to sing one of the great hymns of the African-American tradition, "Precious Lord, Take My Hand." It was written by the giant of the Gospel Hymn, Thomas A. Dorsey. In 1932 Dorsey's beloved wife Nettie died in childbirth and the tragedy overwhelmed him. He was deeply wracked, and as he said, "beat up" by these deaths. And he wrote: "We never really miss anyone until they are gone for good. I missed Nettie on every turn of the way. When I came in after a hard day, there was no one to greet me at the door. When I sat to the table to eat, there was no smiling face across the table and I had to eat alone. When I retired for the night, there was no goodnight kiss. I became so lonely I did not feel that I could go on alone. I needed help; my friends and relations had done all they could for me. I was failing and did not see how I could live."

Well, Thomas Dorsey tells us how he lived. And as we close this morning, it seems to me his marvelous hymn reflects our constant prayer; it sounds our persistent plea: when the storm hits, it offers to each of us a steadfast, redemptive, glorious promise:

Precious Lord, take my hand,
Lead me on, let me stand,
I am tired, I am weak, I am worn;
Through the storm, through the night, lead me on to the light:
Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home.