Trusting Jesus Doesn't Cut It

"Why God won’t you rid me of this disease?" "Why God won’t you produce food for my family to eat?" "Why God won’t you cure me from this addiction?" "Why God did you let that woman beat me and break my back and put me in the hospital?" These questions and many, many more much like them were asked of me every week while I was serving as chaplain at Bellevue Hospital in New York. Things only got worse as I finished my chaplain’s education. The economy visibly tanked, millions have lost their jobs and livelihood, families are choosing between feeding themselves and healing themselves because they can’t afford to do both. The list could go on and does as each one of us has our own personal storms that we are dealing with every day whether it is physical, mental or spiritual.

Herein lies the problem with merely saying, "Just trust in Jesus." We may ask or even guilt ourselves into believing that because we suffer in our lives it is because we do not have enough trust in Jesus. We may even start to believe that if we have more wealth and ease in life we are better Christians and those that are poor and sick in life are that way because God isn’t blessing them because of lack of faith. To put it a different way, we may be lead to think that because I was able to keep my job in this current depression God is blessing me but not the 10 other co-workers that got layed-off. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Let’s look at the text again to see where we went wrong. The story starts off like many we ready Sunday to Sunday… in the middle of a larger story. Jesus has just finished teaching his disciples and the crowds in parables. The parable that directly precedes our text for today is the parable of the Mustard Seed. In this parable Jesus compares what to a mustard seed? The Kingdom of God. Then Mark goes on to say that Jesus explains everything to his disciples privately. So, when we meet up with Jesus and the gang today the disciples should be fully aware of whom Jesus is and what he has come here to do. Jesus decides that it’s time to get away from all the confusion and crowds for a little bit and go across the Galilean Sea. Jesus plus 12 get on a boat heading their direction and Jesus proceeds to go down below to meditate and sleep, as he often likes to do after dealing with large crowds in Mark’s gospel. As they are traveling a large storm brews and attacks the ship. The disciples, some being fishermen, would have been used to such storms on the open water but this storm was of particular magnificence. Terrified that the ship would be destroyed, the disciples seek Jesus’ help. They aren’t afraid to seek Jesus’ help nor are they afraid Jesus won’t be able to help them at this point they are merely afraid the ship will sink. I know I’d be afraid and franticly asking this Jesus guy to help out. But to the disciples complete amazement—and here is where the real fear comes in—Jesus not only prevents the ship from sinking but he completely calms the storm. At this point the disciples are trembling with fear before Jesus and he asks them, "Why are you afraid?" He doesn’t ask why they were afraid but why they are currently afraid. His follow-up question is in the same present tense, "don't you have faith yet?" leaving off the rest of the question so no one else on the boat can hear him "don’t you have faith yet [that I am the messiah]?" This is where our story ends, with the disciples being found ignorant again of Jesus’ true identity and Jesus continuing on with them anyway.

So, the gospel message is not in Jesus chastising the disciples for not knowing who he is because that is a broader literary tool that Mark uses through his entire gospel but rather it is in the fact that the disciples actually went down into the ship to get Jesus up. I found a sermon of St. Augustine’s about our gospel lesson for today and it has a really nice quote I’d like to share with you. "When you have to listen those that abuse you, it is as if you are being buffeted by the wind. When your anger is aroused, you are being tossed by the waves. So when the winds blow and the waves mount high, the boat is in danger, your heart is imperiled, your heart is taking a battering. On hearing yourself insulted, you long to retaliate; but the joy of revenge brings with it another kind of misfortune--shipwreck. Why is this? Because Christ is asleep in you. What do I mean? I mean you have forgotten his presence. Rouse him, then; remember him, let him keep watch within you, pay heed to him.” In this quote Augustine doesn’t say that bad things won’t happen to you but rather he warns against the types of reactions to these events that will cause you shipwreck.
We can clearly see from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians today that even he suffered great storms both literally and figuratively during his faithful ministry. Paul says, "as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger." It is the community’s reaction to these events that shows a wide awake Jesus within the depths of their hearts. They reacted with, "purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and [trusting in] the power of God." So, it is through allowing Christ to be our example that we can emerge from the storms of life.

Life is and will be filled with things that threaten to overturn our lives into chaotic waters. Life is scary and seemingly chaotic at times, it is painful and sometimes filled with a suffering that cannot be simply wished away or gotten rid of through positive thinking. It is the wonderfulness and messiness and dirtiness of the created world around us in all of its infinite possibilities. There is suffering in life and it is when we have awakened Christ within ourselves that we can begin to react to that suffering in ways that will keep the ship afloat. But this reaction is not limited to simply a personal type of piety. We are not on the boat alone. It wasn’t just one disciple that went down to wake Jesus up. It was all the disciples.

It is together as the community of Christ that we are called the body of Christ. We as the church are Christ’s hands and feet, his love and compassion as well as his miracle makers. As Christ awakens in our hearts we can free ourselves from the tendency to try and be isolate from each other in an attempt to protect what limited resources we have in times of trouble. We can turn from the question of how we can save ourselves to how we can help our neighbor. With Christ awakened in our own hearts we can hear the call of the world around us to wake up from our own slumber within the church.

As a community we help each other through the trials and joys of this life. The church becomes the vehicle by which the storms of this world can be calmed and individuals can be saved from sinking ships. It is not some fanciful, magical Santa clause God in the sky that is calming storms if only we have enough faith and trust in Jesus but rather it is real human interacting and acting with an awakened Christ in their hearts that will calm the storm and ease the fears of this life and of this community and of this world.

So, the question I have for us all is have we awakened Christ in our hearts so that our fears may be calmed. If so have those fears been calmed enough so that we can heal our community that is suffering as well as the suffering world around us by the power that Christ has placed within each of us? I believe they have and so we go forth in joy.

Amen.