Sermon 4th Sunday after Pentecost, 2012

Sermon:

Text: Psalm 107, Mark 4:35-41

Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ whose steadfast love calms the storms of our lives.

            I’ve lived in the Midwest for pretty much my whole life, and so have not had all that much contact with the sea, and especially storms on the sea. The most direct contact I have with storms on seas is from the TV show, Deadliest Catch, which for the first few seasons I devoured every episode. There are times when the sea was calm in the show, and you would think, yeah, I could do that, can’t be that hard, work 3 months get a years wage, then they have the storm episodes, and there are 30-40 foot high waves, a foot of ice on everything, and you just go, nope. Nope, nope, nope, nope. Not going to happen.

Now, the sea of Galilee is not all that big, from the middle you can see the shore from every direction, it’s a large lake, but’s it’s big enough to knock a small boat around if it’s caught in the middle. The disciples are for the most part professional fisherman, they know their way around a boat, and especially this sea, it’s where they spend their lives, they probably know it better than anything else in existence, so this must be some storm. Probably not 30-40 foot waves, but when your boat is probably only a few feet high, they don’t need to be 40 feet high. So, we find a group of professional fishermen, stuck on a boat they know inside and out, on a sea they know every nook and cranny of, and they are still so afraid they don’t know what to do, and they turn to their teacher to seek comfort. And he’s sleeping in the back. And in their fear they cry out, TEACHER, Do you know care that we are perishing!

            Jesus’ response is interesting. He doesn’t have the natural reaction of first defending himself, he solves their problem. Then he asks them a question, a question I think we often take as critical. Why are you afraid, where’s your faith! You idiots!

I think we need to look at it as questions of comfort. Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith? Of course I care, I will always care.

This comforting message of steadfast love draws me to our psalm for today. In his actions Jesus is echoing the message of the psalm.

The full psalm has an intro, four sections with a two refrains each, and an epilogue. We read the intro, and the last of the 4 sections. The intro begins with God redeeming and gathering people from all corners of the earth, and then we hear from 4 such groups. The first is people who have found themselves wandering into desert wastes, no way to an inhabited town, they are hungry and thirsty. We then reach our first refrain, “Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, and God delivered them from their distress.” The second group find themselves sitting in darkness and gloom of their own creating, prisoners in misery and irons because they had rebelled against the words of God, and the refrain, “Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and God saved them from their distress.” The third group was sick through their sinful ways, because of their iniquities they endured affliction, and then “they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and God saved them from their distress.” Our fourth group we read of today, they find themselves upon a sea, the winds surrounding them, the waves crashing around, and “Then in their trouble they cried to the Lord, and God delivered them from their distress.”

God’s answer in each case is the same. God saves them. God shows no partiality to what caused their concern, their fear, when they cry to God, God responds. Each time, again and again, God responds, saves, and comforts. And to God’s response each time we find our second refrain. “Let them give thanks to you, LORD, for your steadfast love, and your wonderful works for all people.”

For your steadfast love. Steadfast love comes from the Hebrew word Hesed. If you take Steadfast-love, Mercy, Goodness, Loving-kindness, loyalty, all of which are used at various places to translate hesed, and smashed them all together you could get close to hesed’s meaning. Hesed is a Hebrew words that every Christian needs to know. It is one of the major messages of the Old Testament and the whole bible. Along with the four times we find it in the refrains of our psalm it also shows up twice more, and then 200 more times in the Old Testament. God’s mercy endures forever, that mercy is hesed. And it closes out our psalm, Let those who are wise give heed to these things, and consider the steadfast love of the Lord.

            When we look at our lessons for today we find groups of people all in fear and trembling because of the things that surround them, those of their own doing or those out of their control. We go about our daily lives, we find ourselves in situations of great stress, or grief, fear, despair, pain, uncertainty, confusion, hunger, thirst. We find ourselves in storms just as real as the disciples or those crab fishermen on the Bering Sea. And we cry out, and God calls and calms the waves. But, the next day, if not the next moment, we find ourselves back in that same storm, or we find ourselves in another. And again we cry out, and again God calms the storm. That’s steadfast love, that’s hesed. God answering our fearful calls time after time, despite our continued doubt, that’s hesed. Hesed means that God will always meet us in the hardest moments.

            My family held an estate auction for much of my Grandmother’s possessions on Monday night. My grandmother had moved into an assisted living facility last year to be closer to my grandfather in the nursing home, but upon the passing of my grandfather a few months ago decided that she wanted to stay in the nursing home. But, we had a house full of stuff still and with the house sold we needed to empty it, and now after dividing and taking what we wanted as a family we held an auction. Around the entire front and back yards, around the sides, on the driveway, on the patio, were boxes and boxes of stuff, furniture, beds, quilts, table clothes, my grandmothers doll collection, nearly every spot was full. And then in the structured chaos of an auction, the small storm of bidding people blew back and forth around the yard, yelling, waving, sweating, moving, taking. In the last few months, my grandmother has said goodbye to her husband, her house, and now many of her possessions. A rather chaotic time for her, and for us all. I drove back home on Tuesday afternoon thinking about this all, praying that my grandmother would be strong, able to weather this storm.

            When I got home, I opened the door from my garage and looked towards my front door. The first thing I saw was the Easter Lilies that I first saw popping out of the ground on Good Friday evening. They were blooming. In the midst of storms, in the midst of chaos, God calls to us. God will still our storms, quiet our waves, comfort our hearts, each and every moment. God is steadfast love. Because God is Hesed. God’s mercy endures forever, O give thanks to the Lord, for God is good, God’s steadfast love endures forever.

Amen.