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| Candlelight vigil to mourn massacre at Tree of Life Synagogue. |
"Courage for Troubling Times"
Mark 4:35-41
During the dark days of World War II, the World
Council of Churches adopted a symbol which had been important to the early
church during times of danger, hardship, and persecution: the church is depicted as a storm-tossed
boat, with a cross for a mast.
Over the centuries, the ship has
been a prominent symbol for the church in Christian art and architecture. This part of the church building is called
the “nave,” which is the Latin name for “ship.”
If you look up, you can see how the designers of this building evoked
the symbolism.
When the early Christians tried to
describe what it was like to be a Christian and to be a member of the church,
they said it was like being on a ship with Christ in a storm. The story we just heard from Mark's gospel
seemed descriptive of the early church’s experience.
In the Gospel lesson, we find the
disciples on a journey. The journey is
not one of their own choosing, but one they've been commanded to take.
It must have been a long day. Jesus had been teaching beside the sea. There had been a huge crowd gathered on the
shore, while he sat in the boat and spoke in parables about the Reign of God.
When evening came, Jesus said to the
disciples, "Let us go across to the other side of the sea." So, leaving the crowd behind, they set off
across the sea.
The time I sailed across the Sea of
Galilee, it was on a beautiful, calm, sunny day. It was smooth sailing. But Peter and the other fishermen among
Jesus' inner circle of disciples knew from experience the danger of sudden storms
on the Sea of Galilee. As the wind and
the waves fill the boat with water, the disciples are filled with fear. They're sinking, and they’re afraid they
might drown!
In terror, they turn to Jesus, who
is calmly asleep in the stern of the boat.
The disciples woke Jesus with words we may use to address God when
things get scary: "Don't you care?"
Mark tells us that Jesus had been sleeping
through the storm. In the Hebrew
Scriptures, the ability to sleep peacefully is a sign of perfect trust in God's
providential care. So, when Jesus was
sleeping through the storm it didn't mean that he didn't care about his
disciples. It showed that he had perfect
trust in God to keep them all safe.
Jesus woke up and rebuked the wind,
and said to the sea, "Peace! Be
still!"
The words Jesus addressed to the
wind and the waves are exactly the same words he used in the exorcism of the
demon-possessed man in the first chapter of Mark. It's a forceful rebuke, as he commands the
forces of the storm, saying, "Be
still. Be calm!"
And the wind ceased-- just like that. There was a dead calm.
Then Jesus said to them, "Why
are you afraid? Have you still no faith?"
When you read through a gospel from
beginning to end, you get a much better feel for what the evangelist means when
he uses particular words and symbols that you miss if you read little parts of
the gospel in isolation. For Mark, faith
isn't about holding correct, orthodox beliefs or living an upstanding moral life. Faith is trust. Fearfulness is the lack of faith.
Mark tells us that disciples are
sometimes called to do things that are risky or scary to us-- things that require that we trust in the
power of God to sustain us, in spite of our fears.
Mark wrote his gospel in a time of
great persecution, under the emperor Nero.
Peter and Paul had in all likelihood been put to death by that time. The young church was in danger of being wiped
out. So, Mark included stories in his
gospel that would encourage the people in the church.
We might like to think that if we
follow Jesus, he'll keep us out of the storm.
But, as disciples of Jesus Christ, we're not promised a safe,
successful, long, or trouble-free life. He
never promised it would be easy.
I'm convinced that the storms and the struggles of
life-- both on a personal level and as a
church-- are part of how Christ teaches us to trust in God's love and power to
save us. If we're going to travel
with Jesus, we have to weather some storms.
The good news is that-- when we begin to trust in God's love and
saving power, we can overcome some of our fears. We can begin to have faith we can weather the
storms of life-- because Christ is with
us.
We live in a tumultuous time—a time
of great change and polarization and anxiety— in the world and in the church. But
it isn’t the first time.
Today is Reformation Sunday, which
is a good time to celebrate our history and be inspired by our ancestors in the
faith.
The outspoken Scottish reformer John
Knox felt compelled to leave the British Isles after the Roman Catholic Mary
Tudor rose to the English throne in 1553. Eventually he joined a fellowship of religious
refugees from across Europe who had thronged to Geneva, Switzerland.
Geneva’s most famous resident, the
French lawyer and humanist John Calvin, was himself a Geneva immigrant. Calvin helped create an atmosphere in Geneva
that was welcoming to outsiders. They established a hospital for refugees, as
well as an academy for their education. Knox ministered to a congregation of
English-speaking refugees.
John Knox marveled at his time in
Geneva, calling it ‘the most perfect school of Christ that ever was in the
earth since the days of the apostles.’”[1]
Calvin’s emphasis on placing full
trust in God, as opposed to any earthly ruler, aimed to infuse life in the city
with gratitude and faith. He hoped that
the doctrine of salvation through election would ease the anxieties of a people
living in an age of plague, war, and dislocation. For Calvin and for Knox, growing in trust of God and love for God
enlarged a community’s ability to respond to God’s call to love and service-- no matter where its residents came from.[2]
Writing in the Baptist News, Alan Bean tells about a time a woman in his
congregation called him in tears, insisting that he visit her without delay.
When he got there, she told him how, in the middle of the night, a repressed
memory from her childhood had worked its way to the surface of consciousness.
She had remembered the boxcars crammed with desperate people passing through
her German community and the hollow-eyed horror etched onto the faces.
“Maybe I was too young to
understand,” she told him, “but my parents and grandparents had to have known.
Those people were Jews headed for the camps, weren’t they? Who else could they
have been? And we said nothing. We did nothing.”[3]
Bean writes that the Holocaust, or Shoah, has always haunted him. “If I thought Nazi-era Germany was an aberration,
I could probably move on,” he writes.
But in view of what is happening in our nation and the world today, who can think
that? Bean declares that “the Church of Jesus Christ is confronted by
an anti-Gospel once again. And once again we either celebrate effusively or
lapse into pitiful silence.”
In 1933, on the 500th
anniversary of Martin Luther’s birth, 20,000 German Christians flocked to a
rally in which tenets of German Christianity were celebrated. Many German Christians happily proclaimed
their support for Hitler and what he stood for.
Even some of those involved in the Confessing
Church movement initially welcomed the rise of Hitler’s National Socialists.
But they came to understand they were obligated to challenge state-sponsored evil,
to minister to the oppressed (regardless of race or religion), and that they might
even be required to sacrifice themselves.
In 1934, the Theological Declaration
of Barmen was adopted by Christians in Nazi Germany who opposed the heresies of
the German Christian movement.
I believe God continues over time to
work in people of faith, and is working to do a
new thing in our time. I believe that this is a time of new reformation-- re-formation,
and that God is working to create a new church, in and through us. I believe that God wants to use us as
instruments of justice and reconciliation in the world.
Luther’s reformation came out of a righteous anger against
injustices and corruption. I think many of us
are struggling with a kind of righteous anger about things we see
happening in our world.
Yesterday, on the Jewish Sabbath, a shooter walked into
the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. He killed eleven people and wounded others,
including four police officers. His
social media accounts included repeated attacks on Jews, references to white
supremacist and neo-Nazi symbols, and attacks on the Hebrew Immigrant Aid
Society, known as HIAS, which works with the federal government to resettle
refugees in American communities.
The people at Tree of Life synagogue were carrying out the
demands scripture placed on their consciences,
scriptures that command Jews and
Christians to care for the “stranger” or “alien,” and to love the stranger and
remember that we were once strangers in the land of Egypt. (Deuteronomy
10:19) The killer who decided that they should die for
their support for immigrants was carrying out a mission based on fear and hatred.
The synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh is yet another
example of the fury and bigotry on the fringes of our society. It reminds us of
other active shooter incidents--some
of them in houses of worship--that have horrified many of us in recent
years. It challenges us to consider the
troubling frequency of mass shooting events in our nation in comparison to
almost every other nation in the world.
The Pittsburgh massacre came days after the arrest of a
Florida man, who allegedly sent more than a dozen pipe bombs to two former
presidents, a former Secretary of State, and prominent Democratic elected
officials and leaders, as well as a wealthy Jewish philanthropist-- all of whom
have been singled out and named as evil and enemies, as well as CNN. These pipe bombs put at risk the intended
recipients, postal employees, and everyone who came near the packages.
We’ve heard very little about an apparently racially
motivated shooting near Louisville, Kentucky a few days ago. A white
supremacist tried unsuccessfully to enter a predominantly African-American
church before he entered a Kroger market nearby and killed Maurice Stallard,
who was there buying poster board for his 12-year-old grandson’s school
project-- shooting him in front of the grandson. Then he went out in the
parking lot and shot Vickie Lee Jones.
Friends, our thoughts and prayers are not enough.
So, on this Reformation Sunday, what do we hear the Spirit saying to us?
In
a blog entry a few years ago, Diana Butler Bass wrote of the Protestant
Reformation movement: “It strikes me as
interesting that those who followed the teaching of the new reform movement did
not come to be known as “Reformists.”
Rather, the moniker that stuck was “Protestant.” Luther and his associates were protesters rather
than reformers—they stood up against the religious conventions of the day,
arguing on behalf of those suffering under religious, social, and economic oppression.
These
religious protesters accused the church of their day of being too rich, too
political, in thrall to kings and princes, having sold its soul to the powerful.
The original Protestants preached, taught,
and argued for freedom—spiritual, economic, and political—and for God’s justice
to be embodied in the church and the world.”
The early Protestants believed that they were not only
creating a new church-- but that they
were creating a new world, one that
would resemble more fully God’s desire for humanity. They weren’t content
with the status quo. They felt a
deep discomfort within. They knew things were not right. And they
set out to change the world.”[4]
Long ago God spoke through the prophet Isaiah: “I am about to do a new thing. Now it springs forth. Don’t you perceive it?”[5]
I believe God is working to do a new thing in our
time. I believe that this is a time of
new reformation-- re-formation, and that God is working to create a new church, in and through us. I believe that God wants to use us as
instruments of justice and reconciliation in the world.
So—on this Reformation Sunday, as we look around at the world we
live in and see things that are not right, we can be glad that we are freed for
a great adventure of faith.”
For some of us, this might mean
writing letters to our elected officials, demanding they stop using divisive
language, and work for civility and unity. For some of us it might mean
contacting local synagogues to offer condolences and support. For some of us it
might mean committing to work with a local interfaith or anti-violence or
anti-racism group. For some of us it might mean organizing supper conversation
groups that bring people with diverse views together to bridge differences and
promote understanding. Some of you may
have other ideas.
There are ways to disrupt and
dismantle racism, anti-Semitism, white supremacy, patriarchy, homophobia,
Islamaphobia, ableism-- all the systems that divide us and distort our life in community and
as a society.
In the words of our Presbyterian “Brief
Statement of Faith:” “In a broken and fearful world, the Spirit
gives us courage to pray without ceasing, to witness among all peoples to
Christ as Lord and Savior, to unmask idolatries in Church and culture, to hear
the voices of peoples long silenced, and to work with others for justice,
freedom, and peace.”[6]
In this ship we call the Christian life,
we will go through some storms. But we
don't need to be afraid, because we know that Jesus is with us.
Thanks be to God!
Amen.
Rev. Fran Hayes, Pastor
Littlefield Presbyterian Church
Dearborn, Michigan
October 28, 2018
[1] https://www.history.pcusa.org/history-online/presbyterian-history/reformation-sunday/reformation-sunday-2018
[2] Ibid.
[3]
Alan Bean, “Silence in the face of evil: learning from an obscure schoolteacher
who urged Karl Barth and other theologians to stand in solidarity with the Jews
in Nazi Germany.” https://baptistnews.com/article/silence-in-the-face-of-evil-learning-from-an-obscure-schoolteacher-who-urged-karl-barth-and-other-theologians-to-stand-in-solidarity-with-the-jews-in-nazi-germany/#.W9SapidRf-Y
[4]
Diana Butler Bass, “Putting the Protest Back in Protestant” (October 28, 2011).
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/dianabutlerbass/2011/10/putting-the-protest-back-in-protestant/
[5] Isaiah
43:9
[6] “A Brief
Statement of Faith” of the Presbyterian Church (USA), 1990.
