HOMILY: "Lover of My Soul"

A Meditation on Mark 4:35-41

Sunday, September 18, 2022

1.

The question in front of us this morning is something like the question of hope.  How are we going to nurture hope, cultivate and celebrate hope, in a generation of stormy weather?  Figuratively.  Literally.  Personally.  Collectively.  How are we going to pass hope along – to our children and their friends, to sojourners and seekers?  How are we – people of faith, disciples of Jesus – going to live hopefully and build hopefully and pray hopefully and resist hopefully?  When the storms are rolling through one after another, after another?  The question is hope.

You see, the moment that really intrigues me in the story this morning – is this moment after Jesus has stilled the howling winds and calmed the crashing seas.  It might be a moment of sweet relief, maybe even happiness.  Should be.  But his friends, his disciples are still afraid, they’re still freaking out, they’re still alarmingly anxious.  After he’s stilled the winds and calmed the seas.  After the crisis has passed.  Maybe there’s a moment of satisfaction; but it seems to have evaporated out there.  Pretty quickly.

And Jesus says to them – there in the boat, in the stillness and peace he’s given them; he asks: “Why?  Why are you still afraid?”

And I say it intrigues me because, in a bunch of ways, I’m in that boat too.  Maybe we all are.  Maybe that’s the church out there.  The gifts of faith are precious and real in our lives, and yes, here in our community.  I know I’ve received those gifts over and over again – not because I’m a saint or a superhero or any great sage – but simply and always because God loves me, simply and always because God breathes life into my spirit.  And every one of yours.  Shalom, he says to you.  Peace he plants in our hearts.  And this sense of God’s partnership, this experience of amazing grace fills us; I know it fills me, and awakens within me the deepest kind of gratitude.

So we’re in that boat together, right?  You may know that grace as Jesus (the Lover of Your Soul) or your higher power or Sophia or the Great I Am.  You may recognize that peace in scripture, in praise music, or maybe simply in your own very human and ordinary and sacred breath.  You may have hit bottom somewhere and found God waiting for you there.  Or you may have discovered God’s wonder, God’s beauty, God’s grace on a mountain top somewhere.  But God loves you, you know God loves you, with a persistent, expansive and forever kind of love – and that love steadies your nerves, wells up in your heart, fills you with peace.  

Until it doesn’t.    

Until fears whip up in your heart again, or depression swallows that peace whole again, or the cruelty of the world just demoralizes you.  And when it does, when all that happens, when the storm rises again, all that love seems fragile and flimsy.  And that’s when we get serious about hope.  That’s when you and I – friends of God – get serious about hope.  

And what does that mean?  What does it mean to live in the thick, warm, lively ecosystem of hope—even when, especially when it’s not clear where we’re going or when and how long that next storm’s going to blow through?  How do we tap in?  How do we name it and claim it?  And who do we look to for courage and love and inspiration?  That’s us in that little boat on the lake.  

The Welsh playwright Raymond Williams said: “To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.”  And somehow, somehow, that’s us.  Somehow, somehow, that’s got to be our calling.  “To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.”  Can we do that for one another?  2022.  Can we be that community together?  In a season of catastrophic floods in Pakistan and devastating droughts in the American West.  2022.  In an environment where governors ship immigrants from state to state like cattle or contraband.  When despair swallows peace, and when all that cruelty demoralizes our friends, can we “make hope possible”?  Can we – together – imagine communion and community?  Can we – together – embrace compassion and mercy and hospitality?  Can we “make hope possible”?  And what kind of God is going to do that with us?

2.

So the story.  Always, always, our hope is planted deep in this strange collection of stories.  Hope is about discipleship and community and the many ways Jesus embodies God’s grace.

So the story.  He says to his friends, “Let us go across to the other side.”  Let us leave the familiar behind – for a while at least – and see if we might meet siblings in stranger places.  See if we might build bridges across deeper divides.  See if we might plant seeds of love in faraway fields.  “Let us go across to the other side.”  These are curious crossings in Mark’s gospel.  Passages with a purpose.  And the ancient geography of the ancient region we call the Galilee is important here.  Because on the western shores, and up into the hills where Jesus was raised by Nazareth, were small Jewish communities – communities of fisherfolk and farmers, carpenters and artisans.  Jewish communities shaped and inspired by Jewish stories and Jewish practice.  

But when Jesus says – “Let’s go across” – he’s directing his little group of disciples to leave those familiar Jewish villages and cross over to the eastern shores of the same lake.  On those eastern shores, they would find a more complicated mix – Gentile communities, built up around Roman garrisons, Roman outposts, where Roman armies settled to keep the Roman peace and enforce Roman rule in an occupied land.  

Do you see what he’s doing?  Jesus is inviting his friends to build a beloved community in which animosity is met with equanimity, in which bigotry is defeated by love and compassion, in which difference is celebrated and cherished like a feast.  Jesus is insisting that their circle’s going to include all of God’s children; not just some, but all; not just the well-healed, but the broken; not just the in-crowd, but the whole crowd.  But to build that community, to create that church, to be that gospel people – they’re going to have to leave the familiar behind, for a while, and go across to the other side.  And actually, if you read the whole story, you see them going back and forth a whole bunch.  Back and forth.  Back and forth.

So it just may be that the great windstorm they meet out there – on the lake – is a kind of metaphor for the resistance peoples of faith have always faced – when they get serious about diversity, when they set their hearts on justice and inclusion, when they truly and bravely and collaboratively integrate new languages and voices, new dreams and prayers, new visions and hopes into the body of Christ.  Resistance.  Discomfort.  Anxiety.  Confusion.  Out on the waves.  Crossing to the other side.    

It’s timeless, right?  If we’re following Jesus’ lead, if we’re building beloved community, if we’re joyfully and deliberately welcoming new friends and integrating new voices into our Christian choir – we should probably expect some gusts out there, some stormy weather, some thunder and lightning.  And not just out there either, but in our own hearts and spirits, as we wrestle with change and the doubts that keep us up at night.  

3.  

Right here in Durham, in this same congregation, we’ve struggled, faithfully, to open all the doors and all the blessings of faith to our queer friends and neighbors.  And that movement has changed the church.  There’ve been gusts of wind along the way, some stormy weather, but you’ve made hope possible.  An Open and Affirming Church!  And now you’re working hard, collaboratively and bravely, to open all the doors and all the blessings of faith to vulnerable immigrants and refugees.  And that movement too is changing the church.  Occasionally there’s some blowback.  Occasionally ICE shows up to scare us some.  But we’re making hope possible – not just for Ernie, but for Afghan families on the Seacaost and for so many others – and (by God’s grace) despair’s a little less convincing in the process.  Back and forth.  Back and forth.

And even today, this fall, we’re trying some things – doing some new things on Sunday morning – to make connections with seekers who need us, with neighbors who long for a home here.  And this kind of experimentation can feel disruptive, can seem odd and unsettling to us.  But we’re doing it all anyway – with loving, visionary lay leadership – and I’d like to think we’re making hope possible for some new friends, and despair a little less convincing.  We’ll be a little clumsy along the way.  And we’ll have to negotiate some of our differences.  But we’re taking the trip.  We’re going across to the other side.  And lives are being touched.  And, my, my, my, that’s a good thing indeed.

So here’s the thing.  And we all know this.  This is not an easy ride.  Discipleship.  Christianity.  Faith.  It’s not a sweet summer sail: warm winds and pleasant breezes all the way.  But it’s good.  Hope is a gift from God – but it’s got to be loved and cherished, it’s got to be nurtured and tended, it’s got to be shared in relationships that persevere and risk new possibilities and patterns.  Hope’s not a commodity; it’s a project.  Sunday after Sunday.  Back and forth.

You see, you can be a faithful soul.  You can have a lively, dynamic faith.  You can invite Jesus into the very depths of your heart – or God or Sophia or your higher power.  Any of that.  All of it.  You can love God like that and believe like that – and still be afraid, and still be overwhelmed, and still be unsure of where you’re going and how you’ll get there.  Faith and fear.  Faith and fear.  Sometimes, most of the time, they dance together in our human hearts.  And boats.  And churches.  

So out there, in that particular boat – in the stillness and peace Jesus’s given them, he asks his friends, he asks us: “Why are you still afraid?”  Because he knows that we are.  Even after the winds have ceased.  Even after the seas have calmed.  Our faithful hearts are always vulnerable to the world’s pain.  Our loving spirits are shaken by insecurity within us and despair around us, on so many fronts, in so many places.  Have you seen what’s happening, the storms, the floods, the humanitarian crisis in Pakistan this week?  Are you feeling the housing crisis closer to home, the cruelty of an economy that idolizes profit and shatters lives?  Have you awakened, bolt upright, in the middle of the night – with your own very personal, very real doubts, your own very potent anxieties?

4.

Friends, Mark’s gospel is relentlessly honest about the anxieties clinging to those disciples, tangling their best intentions, requiring Jesus’ mercy and love and grace at every turn.  And this little story today is just the beginning.  Faith isn’t an accomplishment, an advanced degree; it’s a journey of the human heart, and it’s a journey of our human hearts together.  

And I’d like you to entertain a vision with me this morning.  That in our little boat, there’s a Way-maker, there’s a Trail-blazer, there’s a Friend.  And he’s eager to travel with us.  And he’s passionate about our purpose.  And he knows that the storms frighten us.  And he knows that despair overwhelms us.  And he’s committed to showing us the way across, and he's committed to loving us across, and he’s committed to building this wildly diverse, rainbow community of siblings, sisters and brothers.  What kind of God is going to work with us, and stir within us, and pull us together to “make hope possible”?  Maybe this one.

Now I know – for some of us – the whole Jesus thing comes with some baggage and some very legitimate skepticism.  But the story says that Jesus is a catalyst of compassion.  Child of God.  The story says that Jesus is a friend of the wind and rain.  Child of God.  The story says that Jesus is the companion of all would bring blessing and kindness and justice to the world.  There’s a Way-Maker among us, a Trail-Blazer, our spirit’s friend: God in Jesus, alert and awake, who promises you and me holy presence, and amazing grace, and all the love we’ll ever need to cross the stormy sea.  This one and the next one and the next.  

Watch for Jesus.  Count on him.  He’ll shake you up from time to time.  But there’s only love in his heart.

Thanks be to God.

Amen and Ashe.