I like to post writngs that speak to me directly

Homily: Third Sunday after Pentecost [June 21, 2009, Church of the
Holy Spirit, Lake Forest, IL] by Gary Hall

I.
In 1978, my wife Kathy and I got married and moved from Massachusetts
to Michigan. She is from Ohio and I am from California and we met, of
course, in Boston. We lived in Bloomfield Hills the first three years
of our married life, and the only thing I wasn’t prepared for there
was the tornado warning. In California they don’t have tornados, but
in Michigan they do—in fact, a big one had touched done major damage
in West Bloomfield right before we got there—and I wasn’t ready for
how frightened I would get when the sky would turn that weird color
and the sirens would go off and they would tell you to head for a
basement. Kathy, of course, looked at me in those panic moments as if
to say, “What’s your problem? These are tornado warnings. They happen
all the time. No big deal.”

The situation was reversed in 1981 when we moved to Los Angeles and, a
month or so after we got there, we had a fairly large earthquake. I
had grown up with earthquakes—in fact I’d slept through the big Sylmar
earthquake of 1971—and so when this one happened, I got up, looked to
see if there had been any damage, and went back to bed. When I got
there, I saw two enormous blue eyes looking at me. “What was that?”
Kathy asked. I replied. “It’s just an earthquake. No big deal. Go back
to bed.”

Even though today is Father’s Day, I don’t think my empathetic
response qualified me for “Husband of the Year.” But that’s the way it
is. You learn to live with what life gives you, I guess. Midwesterners
are blasé about tornadoes; Californians take earthquakes in their
stride. But, at some deep level, all of us know the massive extent of
destructive force that nature can exert in any geography.

In his great poem, “Tree at My Window,” Robert Frost talks about outer
and inner weather. Being human, we must make things more than they
are, and it has always been that way with storms. States of weather
have always been primary human metaphors for states of the soul. Just
think of all those song titles: “Stormy Weather,” “April Showers,”
“Good Day Sunshine.” Weather always means more to us than the roaring
of the sky or the shaking of the earth. It stands also for the state
of our souls. Or as Frost says as he looks out at and addresses a tree
being blown about in the heaves of a storm,

But tree, I have seen you taken and tossed,
And if you have seen me when I slept,
You have seen me when I was taken and swept
And all but lost. That day she put our heads together,
Fate had her imagination about her,
Your head so much concerned with outer,
Mine with inner, weather.

[Robert Frost, “Tree at My Window”]

When we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll all admit, if even only to
ourselves, that life can sometimes be an extended series of storms, a
mixed bag of earthquakes and tornadoes, floods, fires, and hurricanes.
Life comes at us and we find ourselves “taken and swept/And all but
lost” as Frost says. It isn’t always sunny weather.

Jesus knew that it isn’t always sunny weather. He knew that there were
disruptions that can overwhelm us. And that is why when, in today’s
Gospel, Jesus calms the storm, he comes toward us in love not just as
master of our outer weather. It’s good news that Jesus can calm a
raging outer storm. It’s even better news that he can calm the rages
of our inner weather.

II.

A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the
boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the
cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, "Teacher, do you not
care that we are perishing?" He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said
to the sea, "Peace! Be still!" Then the wind ceased, and there was a
dead calm. He said to them, "Why are you afraid? Have you still no
faith?" [Mark 4.37-40]

This is a familiar story, similar in many ways to the Gospel account
of Jesus walking across the water. In both stories, two things are
true. The first is that this is not just a symbolic story: Jesus
really does calm the storm. But it’s clear that he calms the storm out
of compassion for his friends who are beside themselves with fear.

Beyond that, two more things are going on. The storm outside is
raging. The storm inside is raging.

The storm outside is raging. Jesus lived and taught among people who
were out there in the storm. To be a Palestinian Jew in Jesus’s day
was to be a poor, hungry, person living in a country occupied by a
powerful foreign empire. Jesus’s compatriots were depressed and
anxious about life, and at least one central aspect of his teaching
and ministry was holding out the promise that you can live an abundant
life in the midst of real deprivation. When things get tough, we tend
to want to pull apart from each other and hunker down separately in
survival mode. But Jesus taught and lived a different truth: the way
through hard social times is to come together, to live generously and
compassionately with each other. When we do that, there is always, as
in the feeding of the 5,000, more than enough to go around.

But of course the storm outside is raging in another sense. It’s a
real storm threatening to swamp a real boat. Jesus’s friends
experienced his calming of the storm as an expression of his divine
nature, his deep connectedness to God as the source of his being. In
its outward expression, then, the storm is both real weather and
challenging economic and social conditions. “Why are you afraid?”
Jesus asks.

Many of us in this church today confront the outer weather of this
moment in our economic and social lives. Whether it’s your job, your
investments, your work, each of us in some way confronts stresses and
challenges on behalf of ourselves and others. Life is hard right now,
and in the midst of a hard storm like this one, we can all lose heart
and wonder whether it’s worth going on. “Why are you afraid?” Jesus
asks The first truth we need to hear this morning is this: Jesus rises
among us, even now, to calm that storm which rages all around us. He
does that precisely by pointing to a way of living—in mutuality, in
generosity, in compassion—which is the real strategy for enduring
tough times. We will make it through all of this with Jesus and each
other as we do it together. That is the real Christian hope he offers
us to calm the raging outer storm.

III.
But there’s that inner weather, too. The storm inside is raging. Not
only do we suffer the blasts of outer events beyond our control. We
all of us suffer those inner blasts of anxiety, depression, fear,
loneliness, and loss. It’s part of the sick illusion of our culture
that you can always be on top of things outwardly and inwardly.
Sometimes the pain we feel for ourselves and on behalf of others is
just too much. We all have those nights (or weeks, or months, or
years) when, as Frost says, “I was taken and sweptAnd all but lost.”
Jesus’s companions thought they were going to go down with the boat.
There are times, for each of us, when we fear getting swamped by the
inner forces which can feel beyond our control.

It is to calm this inner storm that Jesus invites you in the Gospel
this morning. If Jesus had another central point in his ministry
beyond a call into compassionate living, it was a call into
self-acceptance. You may think that there are parts of you so dark and
secret that nobody could love them. You may think that there are
aspects of your being that are unlovable. You may think that there are
things you have done (or thought about doing) that are unforgivable.
It’s normal to think that way. All of us do it, and not just
occasionally.

Part of the ministry of hard times is that they carry with them what
Frederick Buechner calls a “fierce blessing.” These hard times shine a
bright light on our outer and our inner storms, and they often expose
to our notice those parts of our selves that we would rather not
acknowledge. And it is in bringing all those dark places to light that
Jesus also reaches out to us and calms our inner storm. You are made
in the image of God. In the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus,
God has taken on your life and experience. There is no part of you
that God does not know. There is no part of you that God does not
bless. There is nothing you have been or done that God does not accept
and forgive.

We suffer internally because we think that we and others cannot take
the truth about us. The fierce blessing of social and personal storms
is that they open us up to the truly important things in life. In the
love and companionship of your neighbors and family and friends, you
have been given the means to make it through the hardest of economic
and social stress. And in Jesus’s call for you to know and love and
accept all of yourself—even that part of you that seems unknowable,
unlovable, unacceptable—you have been given the way to live with peace
and joy and power even in the stormy times which can threaten to swamp
us all. When Jesus asks his terrified disciples, “Why are you afraid?”
what he is really saying is this: Have no fear. The outward things you
worry about have no real power over you. The inward secrets you seek
to hide are not as bad as you think they are.

And so Jesus stood in the boat, rebuked the storm, and calmed the
waves. Whether it’s tornadoes or earthquakes you fear, whether it’s
unemployment, shrunken resources, or the suffering of your friends and
neighbors that threatens to overwhelm you; whether it’s your own guilt
or sorrow or remorse which keeps you from the joyful acceptance of
God’s love for you: take heart. Even now, Jesus stands in the boat and
offers to calm the outer and inner storms which seem so powerful. He
calls you to step out of your alienation and into compassion with
every other human child of God, who feels just as you do. He calls you
to let go of your stern judgment of yourself and others and accept
God’s love and forgiveness.
We come now to his table, the place where we share this meal which
stands as a sign both of our connection to each other and of our
acceptance by Jesus and the One he calls his Father. Come forward, be
fed, and go forth on a calmer sea, ready to love and be loved by the
God who is always at work calming our outer and inner storms. Amen.