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Rev. Tom Lenhart
Sermon
June 25, 2006
“Let Us Go
Forth”
Mark 4:35-41
Let us pray.
More 2500 years ago the
Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, famously said, “no one ever steps twice into
the same river.” He had concluded that all existence was change. Permanence
was an illusion. More recently particle physics has confirmed that at least
on the subatomic level all is motion. But intuitively, indeed empirically,
we all know that tomorrow is a new day and our world and we will be a little
bit different then.
When I went back to school
in 2002 I was reminded of the reality of change. I had thought that my
biggest challenge -- besides not have a secretary and associates to do my
work -- would be to learn new subjects, theology and bible among others
(and, indeed that was a major challenge); but even more I was confronted
with a new approach to thinking, so-called “post modernism.” Fundamental to
this approach was the view that truth and reality are contextual and
relative. They are, therefore, less permanent and certain than I had come to
believe as a modernist and a product of the enlightenment. While I have not
fully embraced post modernism, I nonetheless had my thinking about ultimate
truth fundamentally challenged, tested and modified for the better. Examples
of change are literally everywhere in this age, especially in the areas of
science, technology and medicine. Yes, even in the area of literature change
is explicit. Take a look at a list of the great books read today in those
introductory college courses. Some you will recognize and many you may not;
the canon of literature has changed and rightly so -- to include non-Western
literature and books written in the last decades, many by women and
minorities.
And yet we also know that
not everything changes. While the water in the Hudson River constantly
changes as Heraclitus suggested, the Hudson River as we know it will be
there tomorrow. So in fact we are faced with things that change and things
that don’t. The famous prayer of Reinhold Niebuhr familiar to many
recognizes this point
God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I can not change, the courage to change the things
which should be changed, and the wisdom to know the difference.
As this prayer highlights, the challenge is in knowing
the difference between what we can change and what we can not or should not
change. I would add it is also in knowing when we need help to change
something. Too often we desire to make a change but try to achieve it
without help – human or divine.
Often in today’s world we
talk of established churches. Such churches are housed in glorious buildings
on local squares, greens or hilltops. And they are described as being
served by settled pastors (some of whom I confess are less settled than
others). These words of description – “established” and “settled” -- convey
solidness and an element of permanence. Indeed, Churches, such as this
one, develop and thrive through embrace of traditions that connect them in
unbroken line to those that have come before. Our liturgies are meaningful
and enrich us -- at least in part --because they are familiar and they have
stood the test of time. Who among us does not have a favorite hymn that
uplifts us now in the moment but also takes us back to a different time and
place? Yet change inevitably affects such churches too.
Today’ famous passage from
Mark in which Jesus calms the storm -- captured in a memorable painting by
Rembrandt (a reproduction of which I will bring to fellowship time) --
suggests that churches should not be too established nor ministers too
settled. “Let us go across to the other side,” Jesus says -- inviting the
disciples to go to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. He has just offered
a series of parables to a large crowd gathered on the shore and now he wants
to depart. But this is not so unusual. The whole story of Jesus’ life in
the Gospel of Mark is one of travel and movement – repeated voyages across
the Sea of Galilee and land journeys through out the surrounding
country-side. Indeed, his ministry concludes with a fateful journey – the
journey to Jerusalem and to the Cross. There is little established about
Jesus or in Jesus’ life. This is not a Messiah who stakes out a home base
expecting the people to come to him. No, Jesus proclaims a restless faith –
a faith of movement and of change. Jesus not only recognized the reality of
change and movement but he embraced it as the reality of the human
condition. Thus, to place one’s faith in Jesus is to be a little restless –
to be open to the new, the different and the other. We, as individuals, and
as a faith community are challenged to get into that boat with Jesus and to
go across to the other side – Jesus is saying to us, not simply to
the disciples, “let us go forth”.
“The God is still speaking”
initiative of our denomination captures this point. We are in Gracie Allen’s
now famous words “never to put a period where God has put a comma.” Yes, it
is OK to pause on our journey -- to catch our breath and, indeed, to enjoy
where we are but we can’t use a period. (There are in faith as in life no
full final stops.) God is still speaking, indeed, always speaking -- the
challenge is for us to be restless and alive enough to listen. And so we are
to go forth in faith; but to where and how are we to deal with the journey?
As Niebuhr’s prayer highlights the difficulty is in knowing what to change
and what not to change. Our text from Mark is helpful here for embedded in
this passage is guidance as we go forth across the Sea.
As we make this journey
with Jesus we are challenged to be open to the other. This voyage from one
side of the Sea of Galilee to the other reflects this. In Jesus’ time one
side of this inland Sea was populated predominately by Jews while the other
by gentiles. Thus, this voyage was much greater than simply a boat ride of a
few nautical miles. It was the move – the change -- from one culture to
another and even more from one religious tradition to very different ones.
It was for devout Jews a journey from the clean to the unclean. Jesus did
not stay solely with his fellow Jews on one side – the established, the
comfortable, and the familiar side -- but went back and forth from one side
to the other. The Son of God brought his message to all the people -- to the
despised, such as the tax collectors, to the untouchables, such as the
lepers and to the outcasts such as the harlots. It is a critical reminder as
we confront change that our faith is and has been from the beginning about
inclusion. As the writer of Ephesians reminds us Church is the household of
God and we are all members of that family (2: 19) and there are no strangers
or aliens in the Christ’s church ((2:19).
“And Leaving the crowd
behind, they took him with them in the boat …” As our passage makes clear
the trip also reflected Jesus moving from the crowds on one side to the
solitude of traveling with his disciples and mediating alone on the back of
the boat. Several weeks ago we celebrated Pentecost that time when the Holy
Spirit descended in Jerusalem on the community of faithful followers of
Jesus. That event reminds us of the importance in our faith lives of living
and being in community. The power of a community of faith as revealed at
Pentecost is more than the sum of the parts and it is why when some say I am
religious but I don’t need institutional religion, I believe they are
missing a critical aspect of faith. And yet on our faith journey there also
needs to be the recognition that there are times when we also must travel
alone -- away from the crowd -- and the church must find ways to facilitate
that. Halford Luccock, late professor of preaching at Yale Divinity School,
once wrote, "Without solitude there can be no fine singularity, only a
chaotic plurality." So as our individual and church lives change and evolve,
we need to be mindful to minister not simply to the crowd but to the
individual as well.
But this journey also
represented for Jesus a move away from the crowd in a different sense. As
individuals and again as the church we are at times required as a matter of
faith to turn from the crowd. There are times when we must move away from
the prevailing views and orthodoxies in order to get into that boat with
Jesus. PBS recently showed a portion of a documentary on the life of
Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It is a moving and poignant film and I recommend it.
Bonhoeffer as you probably know was a German pastor and theologian of
immense talent and even greater faith, who was killed by the Nazis days
before the end of the war. He was implicated in an assassination plot
against Hitler and was executed because he was one of a very few religious
figures to challenge the Nazi regime and the Holocaust. In this film there
is one especially chilling scene. It is a picture of one of the great
Lutheran churches in Berlin. In it we see a magnificent altar and Cross
under a high vaulted ceiling with the sun coming through a stain glass
window and then we see above the Cross a huge banner on which is the
swastika. What happened to the organized church in Germany is that it did
not get up and travel across the Sea from the crowd. Our world and times are
very different and our challenges thankfully little resemble those
confronted by the German church. But Jesus in our passage from Mark does
remind us that in deciding what to change and what not to we are to follow
him not the crowd.
There is a final lesson in
this scripture passage. Change –the restless that Jesus encourages – is
frightening at times. No matter what we do, how much we prepare the result
of change is not fully controllable or predictable. The distance across the
Sea of Galilee is not far and the trip is not long. It is safe to assume
that the boat Jesus and the disciple traveled in was seaworthy. Many of the
disciples were fisherman—experts at handling boats and highly familiar with
this particular body of water where they had fished for years. This was no
late night frolic but a prudent voyage. And yet they almost founder. They
were unexpectedly overtaken by a storm of such violence that these seasoned
sailors were afraid for their lives.
I am sure many of you have experienced storms,
hurricanes, even perhaps a tornado, and know that there are disasters for
which there is no complete preparation and from which there is no fail-safe
protection. What is our reaction to the sometimes-painful reality of lack
of control over change, it is fear – as the Pandora’s Box of our ultimate
lack of control -- of our mortality is often opened in such moments. Many
years ago when I was 8, my father bought his first small wooden boat for our
summer vacations on the Maine coast. He was a prudent man but also had a
highly developed sense of confidence. So it was that we set out on one of
our first boat trips. We headed for an island not far off the coast known
for having supplied provisions to the Plymouth colony during its first
winter. The day was beautiful and the water relatively calm. We had a chart
with us; my father studied the chart and decided we could enter the island’s
little harbor. The words “the motions” on the chart at corner of the harbor
entrance were apparently not seen or fully appreciated. Well, we approached
the harbor and before we knew it we were in a frenzy of water with waves
breaking over the hull into the boat. My sister and I were instructed to
lie flat on the bottom of the boat for fear of being tossed overboard. “The
motions” it turned out were an area of great turbulence cause by the unusual
rock formations below the surface.
Thus, I think I know how the disciple felt on that
stormy voyage. They were sacred to and of death as I had been. The
disciples’ reaction was utterly human. How did their fear manifest itself?
It lead them to confront Jesus and their faith in fear and anger. “Do you
not care that we are perishing?” During my clinical pastoral care training
on more than one occasion in the hospital, I listened to a patent having
received bad news say, “how can God let this happen?” Jesus answer to this
challenge is interesting, although not necessarily the one I suspect each of
would have preferred. It is not if you have faith there will be no storms;
no, it is a question, why are you afraid? Jesus reminds us that faith trusts
God to achieve God’s purpose through or despite storms and apparent
calamities.
There will be storms – some
calamitous -- but with faith we are assured that the outcome is in the hands
of a God, who loves us and who will never forsake us. What does this have to
with change -- with a restless faith? I believe it is that as we voyage in
faith across the sea of change –we will inevitably encounter storms. God
does not eliminate them all -- for change is not completely controllable.
Yet when we follow Jesus it can be wonderfully positive, for the outcome is
our ultimate salvation through God’s love.
There is a wonderful song,
You Are the New Day, sung by the King Singers, it goes like this;
I will love you
more than me
And more than
yesterday
If you can but
prove to me
You are the new
day
Send
the sun in time for dawn
Let the birds
all hail the morning
Love of life
will urge me say
You are the new
day
When I
lay me down at night
Knowing we must
pay
Thoughts occur
that this night might
Stay yesterday
Thoughts that
we as humans small
could
slow worlds and end it all
lie
around me where they fall
before
the new day
One
more day when time is running out
For
everyone
Like a
breath I knew would come I reach for
The
new day
Hope
is my philosophy
Just
needs days in which to be
Love
of life means hope for me
Borne
on a new day
You
are the day.
Ours is a restless faith and with and through Jesus we
shall go forth into a New Day. Amen |
