"Peace, Be Still" June 24, 2012

PEACE, BE STILL. This is the Day the Lord has made, This is the Day of Salvation. This is Graduation Sunday. I remember our family's Graduation Sundays, not only for hearing the name of your child for their accomplishments and scholastic prizes, but with all the family from out of town, with a schedule that literally we had to go from a Graduation Breakfast to Worship, to a Graduation Brunch at Krebs, to Commencement, to the Parties. I recall the worry, about how we would ever afford University, we had only a decade before finished our school loans. What would happen to our children, would they graduate college, would they find employment, would they find satisfaction and friends, would their lives have meaning. The anxiety was not that we were not proud, not they would not graduate, but that something would be missed, something forgotten, it is the anxiety of waking in the middle of the night when you cannot recall if you put paprika on the Deviled Eggs, or put the Potato Salad back in the Refrigerator. Churches are known for making bloopers. There is a Broadway Play about The Church Basement Ladies... there are always Newsletter and Bulletin problems of syntax, like: “Next week we will be using the Baptismal font at the Altar and the one at the Narthex, infants may be Baptized at both ends.” One of the current favorites come from a Church sign which reads: “Don't let Worry Kill you, allow the Church!” Worry, Anxiety Fear are faith killers. Worry, Shame, Fear cause our minds to shut down and our worst nature to take over. Anxiety transforms us, from the persons we want to be, into people we do not know or recognize. I made a mistake a few weeks ago. Preaching on the Gospel of Mark, we named the power of Shame, as Jesus' own family question if he has a demon. The mistake was in naming Shame and anxiety, and due to time and length not naming the reality of Evil. Anxiety, Worry, Fear are Evil, they blind us to the truth, and distort reality, so we become a house divided against ourselves. The story of David and Goliath has become so popularized over time, as to become a cultural icon about the Underdog versus the Giant. But the faith story is about so much more. We hear and we imagine the Philistine has as weapons Shield, Sword & Spear, the Shepherd boy has a slingshot and stones. Goliath the Giant stands 6 cubits, that is over 9'6” tall, weighing over 300 pounds, his armor alone weighs 125 lbs of bronze. More agile, fighting differently, the little boy David like Jack and the Beanstalk: kills the giant. Because of anxiety and fear, the child David is changed into a warrior. Not with the armor and weapons that King Saul shares, but the things which actually make for killing another: hate, fear, desire to dominate and control. We have witnessed censored video of Al Quaida beheading their enemies. In the French Revolution, the Guillotine was a favorite method of demonstrating that those who were powerful, those who as Aristocracy saw themselves as more than common humanity, could have their brains separated from their bodies. As one blood-thirsty warrior had pledged to another, after the slingshot David decapitated Goliath. Throughout the Renaissance, the image of the little half-naked boy David holding the severed head of Goliath was a romanticized image of true power and strength in a next generation. But setting aside the fear and anxiety of Goliath's taunts and intimidation, the Champion of Israel entered this battle not with Shield or Spear, but with faith in the Name of the Lord God. The problem is that our cultural icon, is of Davy and the Slingshot, the five smooth stones, and the severed head as the Philistine army runs away; rather than lifting up that where the hearts of King Saul and his army had melted, the champion of Israel was armed with faith, so it did not matter how tall he was, or how strong, he could not lose. My fear as a preacher, is how often because of fear, because of anxiety, we become warriors, combatants, rather than considering if we are fighting for the Lord, for righteousness or only self-righteousness as every side loses its head. Due to the longest war in American history; due to our feelings of helplessness as the economy continues to hurl into the abyss and make only minor gains in part because of fears of Europe's economy and our oil dependency; due to worry about what fracking will due to our groundwater, we each, everyone of us believe we are the underdog, we and we alone are fighting for truth. As much as we struggle, as much as we work and try, the giants/everyone else, does not seem to understand what is on our minds. Our affection is that we are the Underdogs, singing “We are the Champions of the World,” and we never question if our fears and anxieties have made us Goliaths spouting threats. PEACE, BE STILL. After a long and emotional day of being with family and friends, of preaching and teaching, and healing,... along toward Sunset, at the end of the day, Jesus the Carpenter, the Rabbi, Messiah, puts himself into a boat, places himself into the hands of his disciples, the territory of professional sailors and fishermen, and his disciples set out to cross the Galilean Sea. As the exhausted Jesus sleeps the wind begins to lift and the sea begins to churn, like the primordial vision of chaos the water becomes a tumult. The Gospel harkens back to the Book of Jonah, as the Sailors do everything in their own power to control the situation, the Man of God is sound asleep, and the sailors and fishermen in each story wake him saying “Do you not care, that we are perishing!?” Different from Jonah, Jesus calms the troubled waters with a word. Then at the center of this pericope asks the question “Why are you afraid, have you no faith?”. Just as with the Church Bloopers, we need to be very careful about what is really being said. Often times, we confuse saying “There is nothing to be afraid of” with saying “Why are you afraid have you no faith?” In the middle of the night, when your three year old is screaming, and as parents we bust into the room, to take them up in our arms, and wipe their sweaty locks from their forehead, we vainly try to convince them, our children: “There is nothing to fear.” But there is. Maybe they heard Mom and Dad arguing. Maybe the child picked up on the unnatural silences of their father staring off in space in worry. Maybe the child is afraid of graduation, of leaving home, of college and the economy and war, of the unknown. Jesus' disciples as fishermen knew the dangers of being out on the sea at night. Peter and James and John, knew the power of that body of water that was beyond their professional ability to control. Jesus did not say to them, “You have nothing to fear,” but rather instead of letting your fears add to the chaos of the churning water, instead of allowing yourself to be dominated by fear: act in faith, faith in God, faith in one another, faith in the church. Ultimately, this morning, I find myself clinging desperately to several strands: Can we name our anxieties, why we are afraid and so own these by bring these into the light? We as the church took a solemn vow to encourage our leaders, to trust them to lead us in the way of Jesus Christ. And Paul's Letter to the Corinthians which we began with this day... From now on, we regard no one from a human point of view; though once we regarded Christ from a human point of view, we regard him thus no longer. If anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation; the old has passed away, behold the new has come! All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to God, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to God's self, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. So we are Ambassadors for Christ, God making God's appeal through us. We beseech you, on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake, God made him to be sin who knew no sin, that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Working together with Christ then, we entreat you not to accept the grace of God in vain. For Christ says, “At the acceptable time I have listened to you, and helped you on the day of salvation.” Behold, Now is the acceptable time. Behold, Now is the day of salvation! We put no obstacle in anyone's way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, tumults, labors, watching, hunger, by purity, knowledge, forbearance, kindness, the Holy 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 well known; as dying, and behold we live; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything. You are not restricted by us, but restricted only in your own affections.