Trust Him, Even In The Storm - Sermon for the Fifth Sunday After Pentecost (June 23, 2024)

Scripture Readings: Job 38:1–11 | Psalm 107:1–3, 23–32 | 2 Corinthians 6:1–13 | Mark 4:35–41

“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.” (Mark 4:39).
 
Many years ago, when I was a teenager back in the neighbourhood of Thunder Bay, I had the blessing of spending time in the summers at my Grandparent’s cabin on Hick’s Lake. It wasn’t a huge lake. A strong swimmer could cross it width-wise if they wanted to. But it was just about perfect for learning to swim, to fish, and to canoe.   
 
And I can recall one fateful day when my Dad, my cousin, and I decided to take the canoe down to the far end of the lake… which was a blast… until the storm clouds showed up. Suddenly, we were faced with some very strong headwinds… fighting whitecap waves, and pelting rain as we slowly made our way back to our cabin. At one point it seemed we were finally making progress, but then our canoe suddenly caught the wind the wrong way and we found ourselves clear across the lake again.
 
In that moment, I remember being frightened, and frustrated, and aching from having to paddle against these fierce forces of nature… and I really don’t know how we would have made it back without my Dad’s steady guidance and strong hands hard at work from the back of the canoe. It was certainly a humbling experience, and one with important lessons I hope that I’ll never forget.
 
And one of those lessons is that weather is a wonderful reminder of how much we really can’t control in life. There are many aspects of our day to day lives that we can seem to manage… or at least, we feel like we should be able to manage them. But weather is much bigger than us. It's beyond our capability to master. We can only do our best to observe it, to prepare for it, and respond to it.
 
And as we are reminded all the time these days, there are some truly terrifying forces at work in the natural world: wildfires, floods, heatwaves, tornados, hurricanes… all of which can cause great destruction… and which can also serve to remind us of those other experiences in our lives that can also feel out of our control: like illnesses, and loss. And addictions… insecurity… poverty… injustices… and war. We know that people all over our world keep getting swept away by all these terrifying realities that we mere humans just can’t seem to master, as hard as we may try.
 
Our Scripture readings today do not hold out the promise of preventing us from facing these troubles and storms of life…  but they do direct us to the One who is not only with us in the midst of them, but who we can trust truly cares for us in our moments of fear and suffering… and the One who can overcome them… and help us to overcome them too.
 
Our first reading today is a passage from the final chapters of the book of Job, where we hear the Living God respond to Job’s complaint against God on account of his unjust sufferings. The book of Job as a whole is a profound exploration of so many questions that we still struggle with today… and we don’t really have time this morning to work through all of the wisdom it has in store for us. But in our passage today we get a good glimpse of God’s response to Job: a stark reminder that we humans simply can’t see the big picture… nor can we master the world with all its wonderous and dangerous capacities.
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But as frightening and frustrating as this can seem, this passage is good news for us, because at its heart, this is an invitation to trust the One who can! Yahweh alone is the One who wields power over all the forces of the earth. It is no struggle for him to master the winds and the waves that simply overwhelm us. And so in Job, we are invited to trust in the Living God even without knowing all the answers… without clinging onto the illusion of control… without even any explanations. It’s an invitation to trust God precisely when it’s hard, and to find Him trustworthy.
 
And in our reading today from the Gospel of Mark, we see Jesus displaying God’s own power in silencing the storm, to the amazement and fear of His disciples. I mean, its one thing to see your Rabbi as a great teacher, and a miracle worker. It’s another thing entirely to witness Him silence a storm with just a word. “Who then is this,” they said to themselves, “that even the wind and the sea obey him?” Far from just being a great man, Jesus was able to do things that the Living God alone can do.
 
But Jesus does something else in this story that is of great importance for you and I today aside from revealing a glimpse of His power and glory as the Son of God: He rests in the boat in the midst of the storm… completely entrusting His fate, despite the dangers all around Him, into the hands of His Father in Heaven.
 
And this is the call to action of this story: not only to stand in awe of and worship Christ Jesus for His great power over the forces of nature… but also to trust in the Living God… in our loving Father, when we are in the midst of our storms… in whatever forms these storms may take.
 
Notice that, just like with Job, the disciples had done nothing at all to deserve the dangerous situation they found themselves in. It’s not like the storm was the result of their poor planning, or as a punishment for their mistakes. Actually, St. Mark tells us that it was Jesus Himself who leads His followers into this situation where they are in danger.
 
This serves as an important reminder for us to avoid the temptation to try to assign guilt when life’s storms descend, either on us, or on others. True, these challenging moments might be helpful to remind us of the fragility of life, and of the importance of living faithfully each day… but storms come upon the righteous just as much as they do upon the unrighteous.
 
Suffering itself is not a sign that God is out to get us, or is punishing us for wrongdoing. But it is always an invitation to trust in God’s character, in His compassion, and in His saving love… which is exactly what the disciples struggle to do in our passage.
 
The violent storm tempts them to question Jesus’ concern for them… God’s concern for them: “they woke him up and said to him, ‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?’” (Mark 4:38).
 
How many times have those same thoughts entered into our minds, if not our lips, when the waves and the winds rage around us? How many times have we asked God, “if you love us, why is this happening?”
 
In many ways, I can deeply sympathize, and identify with the disciples, and with this question… and maybe you can to.

But Jesus’ response invites us to consider some other important questions: Like what do we think would have happened if the disciples had simply let Jesus keep on sleeping? Would they really have perished, as they feared, if they had not awakened Him? Or did Christ really have good reasons to remain calm, trusting in His Father’s love?
 
And was it really because Jesus didn’t care about them that He could rest silent in the stern of the boat, instead of shielding them from having to experience the terrifying storm raging around them? Or was this a way to invite His disciples, including you and I today into a deeper faith?
 
When we encounter the silence of God in the midst of our storms, is it because God does not care about us? Is it because He is powerless to still the wind and the waves that we find ourselves in?
 
Or… is our Father calling us to trust Him? To place our faith in Him, and in our Saviour Jesus Christ, especially when it’s hard? To believe even when we struggle… and start to go under… and even if we should perish, to remain confident in His rescuing… and resurrecting love?

There is of course another moment in the Gospels when Jesus clearly displays this deep trust in His Father’s power and love… not when He was threatened by the wind and waves, but by the shadow and specter of the cross.
 
In Gethsemane, Jesus pleaded with His Father that if it was possible to take the cup of suffering from Him. But in the end, Jesus entrusted His life completely into the Father’ hands, allowing His life to be drowned by the consequences of our sins… suffering great pain and humiliation… abandoned by all, and crucified as a criminal.
 
Jesus trusted His Father even to the point of death… and the Good News is, He was not let down. God raised Jesus again from the dead, overcoming not simply the powers of the weather, but the strongest foes ever imagined: the powers of spiritual darkness, of sin, and of death itself.
 
And Jesus has been revealed as the victor, not by avoiding suffering, but by faithfully enduring the worst it could throw at Him, and by being raised again to God’s new life, no longer subject to these defeated foes.

And this is how Christ calls us to share in His victory… not through avoiding suffering ourselves, but through faithfully enduring it, trusting in the saving love of our Heavenly Father, and in Jesus Christ our Risen Saviour, and in the Holy Spirit of God still at work within us.
 
Our reading today from 2 Corinthians Chapter 6 calls us to consider St. Paul’s own experience as a faithful apostle of Jesus: weathering all sorts of storms… sometimes quite literally, being shipwrecked multiple times... and in the end, laying down his life as a witness to Jesus… trusting in the Risen Lord to share His own victory with him, and with all who place their trust in Him.
 
2 Corinthians 6:3-10, “We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left;  in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see—we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.”
 
Regardless of the turbulent circumstances that St. Paul found himself in, time and again, as He sought to serve the Risen Christ, he trusted in the saving love and the power of God to bring about God’s good will in the end… to bring to completion the New Creation begun that first Easter morning as Jesus Christ overcame the grave… the Good News that invites us all to believe in, and take part in sharing with our world.
 
Back in the boat, Jesus called out the disciple’s lack of faith… not in an abstract, academic sense… but in the life or death moments when the pressure’s on: “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” (Mark 4:40).
 
And maybe Christ Jesus is asking you and I this same question this morning in our own moments of doubt. A question of correction, yes, but not of condemnation.

Jesus knows why we are afraid. There are lots of things to be afraid of these days. But even so, He calls us all to trust Him when we find that we are afraid. To trust in His victory of new life over death… to trust in His great compassion and love, for us and for our broken world… to trust that, even if we do suffer and perish, we know that in Him there is the promise of God’s eternal life… and that no matter how terrible the storms we face may be, in Jesus the crucified and Risen Lord, God is with us and always will be. Amen.