The Rev. Dayle Casey
The Chapel of Our Saviour
Colorado Springs, Colorado
June 21, 2009

Proper 7 – B
Job 38:1-18
2 Corinthians 5:14-21
Mark 4:35-41

We are justified, put in right relationship with God, by faith. But what is faith?

The queen, in Through the Looking Glass, says that faith is believing six impossible things before breakfast each morning. If so, then faith is itself one of the impossible things we’re asked to have.

But perhaps faith is not believing impossible things at all, not even one. Perhaps faith is something quite possible.

Kirsopp Lake says that faith is not “belief in spite of evidence,” but “life in scorn of consequence.” And Alexander Vinet adds that “faith does not consist in the belief that we are saved; faith consists in the belief that we are loved.”

The assurance that we are loved – that confidence and trust in God which makes it possible to live without fear of the consequences of life, because God loves us regardless of circumstance, and will not abandon us. That’s what faith is.

So if you are enjoying smooth sailing in life, if this pleasant and peaceful Sunday morning reflects life as you know it, then this sermon may not be for you. On this beautiful June day, it’s easy to sit in this lovely church and think good thoughts about the world. But most of us know, don’t we, that life being what it is, the rains are sure to come and the winds are sure to blow, and sometimes we can all relate to the line in “Ol’ Man River” – “I’m tired of livin’ and scared of dyin’.” Life is like that.

Life was certainly like that for Job. Job grew tired of living. “After all that has happened to me, why should I live?” he asked. Job was a just and righteous man, but what was his reward? Only pain and poverty and misery. So, as time passed, as disaster after disaster befell him, Job grew tired of living. He began to lose the courage, the desire, the confidence to go on living in a world that wasn’t fair and just. The circumstances were miserable. Life “born of woman is short-lived and full of trouble,” he grumbled. So he asked God to take his life. He was tired of living!

On the other hand, as for the disciples in the boat with Jesus that day as it was being thrown about in the storm, they were scared of dying. They looked at Jesus in astonishment as he slept while the storm raged. They were amazed that Jesus was able to live, and even to sleep, without regard for circumstance, without fear of the consequences of life. And they shook Jesus and said, “Teacher! Wake up! Don’t you care if we perish? Aren’t you scared of dying? Or are you just tired of living?”

And Jesus stood up. He rebuked the wind and the waves and said, “Peace. Be still.” And the winds died, and it was calm. And Jesus said to his disciples, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?”

In the 38th chapter of his long story, Job is finally brought to his knees, awestruck by the One who has control over the wind and the seas. “Who is this who speaks?” asks God. “Who is this who darkens counsel with words without knowledge? Where were you, Job, when I laid the foundations of the earth, and set the limits of the seas and said, ‘This far you may come, but no farther; here is where your proud waves stop’? Tell me, Job, if you know so much and understand these things.”

And in the boat with Jesus the disciples were just as awestruck as Job, Mark says, when, in the end, they realized that they were in the presence of One who asked the same kinds of questions God had asked Job. Fear and awe is what the disciples experienced when the realized that they were in the presence of One who not only has control over the wind and the seas, but even had power over fear itself because fear had no power over him, because he could live life in scorn of the consequences of life, because he knew that he was loved.

Like Job and like the disciples, we are on a journey we didn’t choose. We have been given the gift of life, born of women. Each of us has been granted his three-score and ten years to live, and sometimes it seems only misery and trouble. But God asks us to live it. God asks us to live it with him. God asks Job to take life on God’s terms, not on the terms Job thinks God should grant. And we, we this morning are in the middle of the lake with Jesus. And like a great, turbulent sea blown by the winds, the world around us is an enormous storm of waves and rising, pounding water.

And yet Jesus is calm! In fact, he seems to be sleeping. And we shake him and say, “Teacher! Wake up! Aren’t you scared of the storm? Aren’t you scared of life? Don’t you see what’s going on in the world, and even in your Church? Don’t you care if it kills us? And Jesus asks, “Why are you so afraid. Don’t you know that you are loved?”

Hasn’t the world always been a storm that only God has the power to calm? It was, as God reminded Job, the great storm of the deep that God calmed in the beginning when he spoke the Word of creation. “It was I,” God reminded Job, “who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb. And it was I who said to it, ‘This far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud waves halt.’” This was in the midst of the chaos in the beginning, when “the earth was formless and empty, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” It was then, in the beginning, that God rebuked the waters and said, “Quiet. Be still. Let there be light. And let there be order and life.” And there was.

But ever since then Adam and Eve and Satan and Job, and we ourselves, have stirred the waters with our words without understanding. “We want it our way, Lord,” we say. And in all the days that have followed – in Job’s day, in the days of Jesus in Nazareth, and in our own day, too – men and women have lived in the storm, lived in the disorder of a world of sin and pain and grief. And sometimes the storm makes us “tired of livin’ and scared of dyin’.”

It’s a tiredness and a fear that leads us to double and triple lock our doors, rather than go out in the wilderness and join Moses in the journey to freedom and life. It’s a tiredness and fear that leads us to suspect the stranger if he smiles at us on the street. It’s a tiredness and fear that makes us afraid to go out after dark, and so leads us to abandon our streets and even our schools to the gangs and the drug dealers , because we lack the courage to reclaim our streets and schools for the purposes of life.

So the storm of life rages around us. And we are afraid of dying, and so too, sometimes, we become tired of living.

And Jesus asks us, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith? Do you not know that God is the God of all circumstances? Don’t you know that ‘God-forsaken’ is an oxymoron? Fear not. Don’t you know that ‘I am with thee; O be not dismayed! I am thy God, and will still give thee aid; I’ll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand, upheld by my righteous, omnipotent hand.’”

“Quiet. Be still” God continues. “When through the deep waters I call thee to go, the rivers of woe shall not thee o’erflow; for I will be with thee, thy troubles to bless, and sanctify to thee thy deepest distress. When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie, my grace, all sufficient, shall be thy supply; the flame shall not hurt thee; I only design thy dross to consume, and thy gold to refine. The soul that to Jesus hath fled for repose, I will not, I will not desert to its foes; that soul, though all hell shall endeavor to shake, I’ll never, no never, no never forsake.” And there is a great calm, and peace is recreated. And Jesus asks, as he has asked before, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still not know that God loves you and holds you in his hand?”

But where is God?

God is here. God is not only at the seat of eternity and at the beginning of creation. God is also here, even here in the storms of life, St. Macarius reminds us. St. Macarius, a fourth-century Egyptian monk, reminds us that “the heart,” like the boat the disciples were in with Jesus, “is but a small vessel, and yet dragons and lions are there, and there [also are] poisonous creatures and all the treasures of wickedness. Rough, uneven places are there, and gaping chasms. [But] there likewise is God. There also are angels, there life and the Kingdom, there light and the apostles, there the heavenly cities and all the treasures of grace. All things are there.” In the heart.

What storm of the heart can the assurance of God’s presence and love calm for you today? What fear can the reassuring promise of God’s love relieve for you?

The fear of dying is not the only fear that sometimes enslaves us, and holds us hostage and makes us tired of living. There are all sorts and conditions of fears. There is the fear of adversity and struggle. There is the fear of failure, and there is the fear of success. There is the fear of not being useful, and the fear of being used. There is fear like Job’s fear, the fear of illness and disease and pain. There is the fear of living.

But there is something that drives out fear, St. John reminds us, and that is love. Perfect love drives out fear, for there is no fear in love. And with no fear, there is calm, even in the midst of the storm.

For over thirty years Roger Kahn wrote about the heroes and champions, the characters and clowns of baseball. And Kahn was once asked what he considered the greatest moment in baseball.

“It was in 1947,” said Kahn, “early in Jackie Robinson’s career with the Dodgers. This terrible anti-black feeling was building and building.” Fear had the people in its grip, like a great storm. Fear of those different from ourselves, fear of change, fear of freedom, fear of living. “The Cardinals threatened to strike rather than play against Robinson. The Dodgers had been thrown out of a hotel, not in the South but in [the City of Brotherly Love].”

And in the midst of the storm, the Dodgers went to Cincinnati to play the Reds, and as the Dodgers took the field the Cincinnati fans hurled horrible insults and racial slurs at Robinson, who, they thought, by playing first base for the Dodgers, was threatening the world as we had known it.

But when the storm of abuse reached its peak, Pee Wee Reese, the Dodger shortstop, called a time out. Reese himself was a Southerner. He had grown up just down the river in Louisville, Kentucky, in the midst of tremendous racial prejudice. And Reese walked across the diamond to Robinson, and with the jeers and insults of thousands covering his own head as well as Robinson’s, he put his arm around his black teammate and “calmly glared the bigots into silence.” And that, writes Kahn,” gets my vote for the greatest moment in the history of American sports.” Greater than any home run ever hit, greater than any touchdown pass or three-point shot.

In the midst of the storm, Jesus reassures us with the promise of the presence and love of God, so that our fear might be calmed, so that even in the storm we might live abundantly, confidently, in scorn of circumstance or consequence.

Jesus did not come to save us from the storm. He came to give us life in the storm. Just as God gave us life out of the chaos in the beginning. Just as God gave Job life out of the whirlwind of his world. Just as God gave the disciples life in the midst of the storm in the boat. And just God gave life to Pee Wee Reese and Jackie Robinson in the midst of the fury of their world. The confidence and courage to live in the storm with God – that’s what faith is. “Do you still not have it?” asks Jesus.

A man who was held hostage in Iran several years ago, and who was later released, said that the greatest fear the hostages had, month after long month, was not that they might never be released. Their greatest fear was not even that they might die. Their greatest fear was hell. Their greatest fear, which resulted from their lack of contact with the world, was that they might simply be forgotten, abandoned, forsaken, lost, unloved.

C. S. Lewis speaks of that same hell. He tells of waking up in the middle of the night when he was alone in a house in a remote place, and everything was absolutely still and silent. Lying there in the deep silence, Lewis was aware of the presence of nothing but himself. And as he lay there he broke into a cold sweat as he wondered if this wasn’t what hell must be. Lewis wondered, he said, if the logical consequence of living life only for oneself alone wasn’t exactly what he was experiencing at that moment – to get what one asks for when concern for self is one’s only concern, to get what one asks for, to get yourself and nothing else, to find yourself utterly alone in the universe.

Isn’t that the greatest of all fears? Not the fear of the storms of life. Not the fear of adversity. Not the fear of gangs. Not even the fear of pain or disease or death or dying. But the fear of not being loved, the fear of being forgotten, abandoned, forsaken, left to meet fate, whatever that might be, utterly alone.

But the promise of God on the Cross trumps that fear: “The soul that to Jesus hath fled for repose, I will not, I will not desert to its foes; that soul, though all hell shall endeavor to shake, I’ll never, no never, no never forsake.”

Earnest Gordon saw this faith lived out in a man named Angus. It was in a Japanese prison camp during World War II. In the camp, Gordon says, the prisoners had what they called “muckers.” A mucker was a pal or a friend with whom you shared whatever little you had in those miserable circumstances.

In the prison, there was a man named Angus whose mucker was near death. But Angus refused to believe that his mucker would die. So Angus supplied him with a blanket by giving him his own. Angus did everything possible to save his mucker’s life. He lived in scorn of consequence to himself. He lived by taking his own meager rations and giving them to his friend. As a result, Angus’s mucker recovered. But Angus died, of starvation complicated by exhaustion.

“He had mucked in with everything he had,” wrote Gordon, ”even his life.” And some in the camp thought it was foolish and senseless. But to Angus’s mucker it was love and faith, the promise and gift of life.

And that’s the way of God. It was the way of God with Job when God spoke to Job out of the whirlwind. It is the way of Jesus with us when he walks his way to the Cross. It is the promise that we are not abandoned to live in the storm alone, without hope, because God loves us, so that even in the midst of the greatest of storms, we too might know the courage and love of God himself, and live.

When, finally, Job was able to let go of his concern that the world should be the way he thought it should be, rather than the way God gave it to him, he trusted God in scorn of consequence or circumstance, and lived.

Faith is not believing in impossible things in spite of evidence. Faith is the gift of living in the assurance that God is God, in the assurance that even in the midst of the storm you are loved.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.