Sermon at St. Thomas

by Lynn E. Cunningham

Pentecost 8, Proper 12

2 Kings 2:1-5

Ephesians 4:1-16

Mark 6:45-52

1.         The lessons today offer words of comfort and consolation. Words of comfort are appropriate for a variety of struggles that folks are going through.

2.         All this week, I have been looking forward to this morning when all of us can take time from our everyday lives to come together here to worship. I have been wanting to invite you into the deep comfort of this worship time together.

3.         Sometimes taking time to stop in the midst of the ongoing rush of living opens the mind of a person up to the comfort that is already present in God. On Friday, I was reminded about the importance of just stopping and taking a break.

4.         Wednesday this past week, Dorothy and I drove up to Cody, where on Thursday she attended a meeting of the Wyoming Diocesan Wind and Wings committee. Thursday afternoon we drove up through the East Entrance into Yellowstone Park and stayed the night at the Lake Yellowstone Hotel. Then all day on Friday we drove around the whole Park. Driving in the morning was really fun, whizzing through the forests, whizzing along clear streams and rivers. We saw the herds of buffalo in the Lamar Valley. We stopped to dip in and see the sights, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, Mammoth Hot Springs.

5.         But we wanted to be back in Dubois by Friday evening, and so in the afternoon, we did not stop very often, but just kept driving and driving. We did stop in at Old Faithful just in time to see the geyser eruption. Neither of us like to drive for very long times so all morning we had been changing drivers pretty often to give each other a break. But somehow in the afternoon, we missed some of our planned stops to change drivers.

6.         You know how sometimes when you are on a long car trip, you get so much into the driving and the moving along in the car, that you forget to stop? You almost do not want to stop. You start to really want just to keep moving. The fascination of the passing scenery takes over, especially in a place like Yellowstone. The driver goes into a kind of a trance, and forgets to stop to rest or to change drivers. And then we started to get over-tired, because we had not taken enough breaks from the all driving.

7.         That trance-like behavior is not confined to driving. Many people when they get into a life crisis, tend to forget to stop, tend to forget to take a break, forget to change drivers, so to speak. Most people tend to forget to let God come into the situation when it is a real crisis. Many people tend to grip that wheel of the car of life, keep steering on ahead, and wear themselves down too much

8.         I am very grateful that everyone here today knew enough to stop, take a break, and come into this beautiful church and sit together for while. Sit together and let Christ seep into life more deeply.

9.         The need for comfort and succor comes to me from working both on a range of Dubois youth issues, and on a range of issues involving seniors.

10.       The youth ministry in the parish was launched back in June, when the vestry agreed to hire Jean Murphy as a part time consultant to help put together a youth program for the town of Dubois in general, St. Thomas in particular, as well as connections with youth programs down country. We are following the guidelines of the Wind and Wings program.

11.       Putting together a youth program is a daunting task, but everyone I have talked with believes it is absolutely necessary. For example, two weeks ago the Dubois Frontier reported that 15 local youths, plus someone from down country, were arrested for being in possession. It does not say what they were in possession of, but presumably alcohol and/or controlled substances. A good youth program can help avoid arrests like this in the future.

12.       At the same time, you and I know just as many stories about Dubois young people who are doing great things with their lives, more than just staying out of trouble. Being a young person is never an easy process. So many confusing things to learn. So many pressures. So many hormones. So many temptations. And not much in the way of personal experiences and background to drawn on when the young person is trying to sort their lives out. Young people often are asking, what are my gifts? What are my weakness? What can I make of my life? A youth program can help answer these questions.

13.       At the same time, I am teaching a class on preparing for the end of life. This is a class for all ages, but usually folks start thinking about these issues later in life, much later in life. Of course, being a senior citizen is not any more of a picnic than being a young person was, either.

14.       While people living in these two stages of life have very different kinds of crises to deal with, both share the question of what to do when facing what seem to be intractable problems. How can I really build a satisfying life in the midst of all that confronts me?

15.       It really struck me a few days ago how these two stages of life, and indeed all stages of life, have seemingly intractable challenges and so they all share the problem of trying to figure out how to come to grips with these challenges and move through them to build a satisfying life.

16.       An intractable challenge, by the way, is like when you go to jump your horse over the irrigation ditch, and then just as the horse launches herself off the ground, you feel the saddle cinch coming undone underneath you. When you are up there about six feet off the ground, you realize that you and the horse are not going to land in perfect harmony. Instead you are facing an intractable problem.

            a.         Things like this have been known to happen on bicycles too, I understand.

17.       So, while you are stopped here in the church to rest and recoup from the intractable problems facing you, turn with me to these scripture passages to see how they might provide some comforting words of guidance.

18.       In the gospel passage, Jesus comes upon the disciples out in a boat in the lake. The disciples are “straining at the oars against an adverse wind.”

            a.         And that, notice, is a good picture of an intractable problem, “straining at the oars against an adverse wind.”

            b.         The disciples are at sea. Their boat is small and probably overloaded since there are several of them. They are not clear where they are headed. They are still puzzled about what happened when Jesus fed the five thousand in the story we heard last week. Where is he taking them? they are wondering. Have you ever found yourself wondering, where is Jesus taking me in the midst of this storm?

            c.         Jesus does not answer their questions by telling them the destination of their trip. Instead, he comes to them unexpectedly, walking on the water, and simply says, “Take heart. It is I. Do not be afraid.”

            d.         And in this version of the story, He does not help them row. He does not calm the storm. He does not ask Peter to get out of the boat! He just says, “do not be afraid!”

19.       Over and over again, the God that we meet in the Bible, the God we worship, comes to meet his children in the storm, and says simply, I am with you. Do not be afraid.

20.       Our getting through intractable problems surely includes stopping to remind our selves, Jesus is with me. He tells me I need not be afraid.

21.       Paul provides another tack for moving through intractable problems. He tells the reader with great passion how each one of us is part of the body of Christ. The passage today is about Christians growing up in every way into Christ, based on the differing gifts that each person is given by Christ. We are not all just like as if we were just copies of each other, as if we were all teenage always trying to fit in to the latest fashions. Every person has different gifts and talents, different strengths and weaknesses. Just as the different parts of the human body, as he says elsewhere, go together to make the body work, every person has things very important to contribute to making the body of Christ whole and fulfilled.

22.       The passage is often read to express the need for unity in the church, because of the famous phrase, “there is one Lord, on faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all”. The passage is usually read as stressing the importance of the church having one unified doctrine and theology. And this is a fair reading of the passage.

23.       But the passage has another reasonable interpretation, as well. Namely, concerning the stages of growth in the life of Christ that every Christian goes through as his or her life moves along, based on what her gifts and talents, strengths and weaknesses are. I read the passage to mean that through every stage of a person’s life, there always is a unifying theme of God’s presence, but that presence is drawing the person on towards real maturity in Christ. Paul is reminding the reader that it is all too easy to fall into viewing the current trials and tribulations of life as being all there is to life. Yet, in fact, the current trials are seen by Paul as building the person up in the knowledge of Christ, into the fullness of Christ, into the fullness of participation with other human beings in the fullness of our shared humanity.

24.       In other words, the comforting words in this passage come from knowing both that there is one sure beacon of hope, Christ, present to us at every turn of the road, and that we are all part of one another in Christ.

25.       The Exodus story retold in the Psalm 114 is really another kind of expression of what Paul is saying. The Exodus story is about the liberation of a whole people, the people of Israel, out of a life of slavery, and into a promised land. Just as the people of Israel were led along a spiritual journey from slavery into freedom, so each Christian, and the whole body of Christ is led along such a journey. Knowing that there is a destination at the end of the journey through intractable problems and crises provides for me comfort and hope.

26.       The story of Elijah passing on the mantle of prophecy to Elisha in Second Kings does not appear at first to offer much in the way of comfort. You and I do not think much about prophets and prophecies in our everyday lives. But this story tells of the succession in leadership in a community, the passing of the mantle of leadership and wisdom from one generation to the next. In this story, the mantle is passed successfully from the elder to the younger, the knowledge of the power of God in the life of the people is preserved for the next generation. Is not St. Thomas faced with a similar challenge today, of how to find a way to pass on the mantle of leadership from the elders, the seniors, to the younger ones such that the power of these stories of God’s saving grace will never be lost, from generation to generation?

            a.         Lord Jehovah, be with us today as we work at this task!

27.       Thank you for stopping into the church today. I pray that these comforting words will settle in your hearts today, and remain with you as you go out again:

            a.         Paul saying, “By speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ...”

            b.         The ancient story from 2d Kings, when the sons of the prophets are able to proclaim that “the spirit of Elijah at last rests upon his successor Elisha.”

            c.         Jesus saying in the midst of the storm, “Take heart; it is I; Do not be afraid.”

28.       In Jesus’ Name. Amen.