Why Are You Afraid?

Sermon for Sunday, June 20, 2021
Job 38:1-11; Mark 4:35-41

This may be a little heavy for Father’s Day morning, but I want to ask you:  What’s your greatest fear?  Now, there are the phobia-type fears that many of us have – fears of snakes, or heights, or enclosed places, or airline travel, that kind of thing.  There are also the fears that fill a given chapter of our lives – fears related to health problems, employment challenges, eroding relationships, financial security.  Those are all real, serious fears, things that keep us up at night.  But how about going even deeper than that?  What’s the fear that underlies the others?  Maybe this is an occupational hazard, but I think our greatest fear is about whether God is really there – the fear that maybe, at the end of the day and at the end of our lives, maybe we’re ultimately alone.

At least for me, the few memories I have of being truly afraid are about being alone.  The most vivid example came when I was about 6.  My parents, my sisters, and I went to California to visit my grandparents, as we did nearly every summer.  But this time, we kids hit the jackpot: We got to go to Disneyland. At that age, I couldn’t imagine anything more perfect than getting to spend a day at Disneyland – it was heaven on earth. 

We had a great time riding rides and eating bad food, but finally the time came to leave.  We took a streetcar back toward the entrance.  I was exhausted and not paying as close attention as I should have; and when we got off the streetcar, my family turned left and I turned right.  That’s all it took.  I was lost in Disneyland. 

            Now, this was before cell phones or child-location devices, so my parents had been careful to make a plan with us: If anyone got lost, we would meet at Cinderella’s castle. It was the one landmark you could see from anywhere in the park.  So, I dutifully went to Cinderella’s castle; and I waited, sitting on a bench, crying.  As I sat there, someone came up to me, an Asian man, older and with kind eyes.  He began speaking to me, I’m sure trying to find out what was wrong.  Unfortunately, he didn’t speak English, and I didn’t speak whatever he was speaking.  But he stayed there, standing nearby.  I don’t know how much time passed – probably only a few minutes, but it seemed like an hour.  Finally, my father and mother came into sight, walking fast, with my sisters trailing behind. 

Of course, I hadn’t really been at risk.  The good people at Disneyland would not have locked up the park that night leaving a 6-year-old boy crying outside Cinderella’s castle, never to see his family again.  But in the moment, that was precisely my fear, and it felt real.  It’s one thing to choose your meeting place at Disneyland – to understand, intellectually, there’s a chance you might find yourself lost and alone.  It’s something else entirely to feel that you truly are.

I think that’s where the disciples find themselves in today’s Gospel reading – lost and alone.  Mark’s Gospel doesn’t give us much detail, and the narrator doesn’t illuminate Jesus’ state of mind.  All we know is that, after spending the day teaching what the reign and rule of God is like, in one parable after another, Jesus gets in a boat on the Sea of Galilee to sail with the disciples to the villages on the other side.  As they make their way, a storm rises and starts to swamp the boat.  The storm must have been truly awful if it was enough to make professional fishermen fear for their lives.  But Jesus is asleep, napping after a long day; and they wake him up, crying out, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” (4:38).  What are you doing, Lord?  Get up; we’re afraid!

I think some of our most truly frightening times are when God seems to sleep.  I remember feeling that way as my father was dying.  The doctors had discovered advanced cancer, and it was time to start hospice care.  I felt good about that, knowing from working with many of you just how healing a hospice experience can be.  Or, not, as it turns out.  It all depends on the people involved.  We ended up with the antithesis of who you’d want as a hospice care coordinator, a woman who spent her time with us warning about everything that could possibly go wrong in the experience.  One of my sisters started calling her “Ms. Hair on Fire.”  But eventually, we got my father settled, and the waiting began. 

I waited through the first night, sleeping a little and staring at the TV.  I know this process can take a while, but it’s different when it’s your parent lying there.  That night led into the next day, with family members coming and going throughout it.  Then the day gave way to night.  Everyone else left, and the waiting began again.  

The only interruptions through that night were the episodes when my father got restless and moved uncomfortably, followed by the nurse coming in to ease the pain.  That seemed to go on forever, though it was only several hours.  But I wondered, where is God in all this?  I found myself praying, “Come on, God.  Let’s get this done.  Do you not care that he seems so uncomfortable?  Do you not care that I’m definitely uncomfortable?  Where are you?” 

The long night dragged on, and finally, as the sun was rising, he died.  That storm was stilled, but I felt like I hadn’t faced the situation very faithfully.  I’d had no deep experience of the presence of God through that night.  Instead, I’d had a little spiritual temper tantrum, and I felt bad for doubting whether God had been with me.  Well, the nurse came in to deal with the body, and I stepped into the hall.  When she came out, she asked how I was doing; I said I was fine, though clearly I wasn’t.  And she said something to the effect of, “It’s OK.  And it’s going to be OK.  You were just where you needed to be,” she said, “doing just what you needed to do.  Your father would be grateful and proud; and before long, you’ll be together again.”

I think I was in good company in wondering where God had been.  In the Old Testament reading today, Job has been suffering dreadfully, and he demands answers from the God he’s served faithfully all his life.  In the reading from Mark, as the disciples fear for their lives, they demand to know why Jesus is napping while water fills the boat.  Now, in both these stories, God does indeed show up, making a dramatic entrance to affirm not just God’s power but God’s investment in the lives of these seemingly insignificant humans.  But it’s important to note that God’s dramatic arrival on the scene happens not as a problem-solving strategy but as a teaching moment.  At the end of Job’s story, God grants Job a great reversal of fortune – but not before upbraiding him, in today’s reading, for daring to question God’s fairness.  And in the Gospel reading, Jesus does still the storm and save the disciples’ lives – but then he upbraids them for their failure to trust. 

Despite occasional dramatic moments of divine intervention, I think God works differently most of the time.  You know this: Through our lives, hard stuff happens; and the truth is, God typically doesn’t prevent it.  But God is there nonetheless, never absent from us, never leaving us alone, far more powerful than we’d imagine.  Ironically, our Lord and Savior shows up in the bit characters of our dramas.  Lost at Disneyland, I experienced the presence of a stranger, someone completely other, someone with whom I couldn’t even communicate; but he cared enough to check on me, and he didn’t walk away.  As my father lay dying, he and I were blessed with the presence of Love to ease his journey – the nurse who tended to his pain and who blessed me at the end for having hung in there with him. 

Acting through bit characters like these, God brings us through the hard stuff.  And if we look for it, God blesses us with the eyes to see the truth that, even in the times of our deepest fears, we’ve never been alone.  That’s pretty wonderful, really – pretty empowering.  And – it’s just the start, setting the stage for act 2 of eternal life, when God moves out of these earthly bit-character roles to begin a cosmic one-person show.  The disciples got a glimpse of it out there, on the water, as their friend and teacher suddenly became the One whom “even the wind and the sea obey” (Mark 4:41).  They’re filled with great awe, witnessing the power of the creator of the universe.  And then, Jesus looks them in the eye – just as he looks us in the eye – and asks the teaching question: “Why are you afraid?  Have you still no faith?” (4:40).  You’ve never faced your fears alone, and you never will.

Just Getting Started

Sermon for June 13, 2021
Ezekiel 17:22-24; Mark 4:26-34

Almost nine years ago, we gathered for what we called a Celebration of Common Ministry.  I’d just become rector, and we were marking that moment with what traditionally would be an “installation” service, when a new rector receives gifts from the parish symbolizing his or her new authority.  That seemed like the wrong symbolism, given that we were launching a collaborative approach to being church together.  So, we called the service a Celebration of Common Ministry; and instead of you all just giving me tokens of my authority, we exchanged gifts.  For example, you presented a Bible for the lectern, and I presented you with a welcome bag and a yard sign as symbols of your call to take the Good News to others. 

One of those gift exchanges came to mind when I saw the Gospel reading for today, Jesus’ parable of the mustard seed.  Parishioners gave me books of biblical interpretation and theology, tools for preaching and teaching.  And I gave them a planter with mustard growing in it, symbolizing the power of faith, even when it seems small, to help us reveal God’s reign and rule – and, thereby, change the world.

Now, there was a little backstory to this planter of mustard.  Mtr. Anne had gone out and bought seeds of mustard plants, and we thought we had plenty of time to put them in the planter and let them grow so the planter would look full and lush by the time the service rolled around.  Turns out, mustard takes longer to grow than we thought.  So, the symbolism took something of a hit because what we hoped would be a planter full of lush mustard ended up looking more like a Chia pet instead.  Best-laid plans….

Well, maybe the Chia-pet symbolism was better anyway.  After all, today’s parable tells us that the kingdom of God starts small among us, coming with low expectations.  From that tiny seed rises “the greatest of all shrubs” (Mark 4:32).  Of course, this is a different kind of mustard than the plants I was trying to grow for our service, a mustard “tree” rather than a flowering plant.  But it’s also kind of funny the way Jesus describes the kingdom – not like one of the towering cedars of Lebanon but as a great … shrub.  Of course, his point isn’t whether the mustard is impressive; the point is the good the shrub does.  The mustard shrub “puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade” (Mark 4:32).

If you’ve been here a little while, you may also remember that the mustard seed, and its resulting shrub, was the image we used in the Gather & Grow campaign, six years ago now.  It represented the vision for a new HJ’s Youth & Community Center, a place that would offer generous welcome for our neighbors, a life-giving place where people could gather, and connect, and see that “church” can be more than what they thought it could be.

Surprising blessings come from small seeds: That paradox seems to capture some of God’s best work.  And we’ll see another example of it tonight when we get together at HJ’s for our “Evening in the Caribbean” party, celebrating and supporting our more-than-30-year partnership with St. Augustin’s Episcopal Church and School in Maniche, Haiti.  This is a great mustard-seed story.  In 1988, St. Andrew’s was one of four Episcopal churches in the KC area that volunteered to help a Haitian priest who was assigned to serve four isolated congregations there.  What began with prayer, dialogue, and personal visits has grown into a partnership that educated 250 kids this year (the numbers are down considerably because of the pandemic) and provides a hot, nutritious lunch for the students, teachers, and staff five days a week.  In the past few years, new classroom and kitchen buildings have gone up at the school, and St. Augustin’s parish has grown enough to have its own priest, Pere Petit-Homme.  Thirty years ago, no one was banking on this kind of outcome from our partnership.  But I know for a fact that our people who give their hearts to Haiti could imagine such a thing, because I’ve watched them grow the kingdom of God there.

Through that partnership, we beat boundaries of our own experience and expectations.  St. Andrew’s people looked at a remote mountain village in Haiti and said, “Yes.  Our efforts may start small, but we can be part of God making a huge difference there.”  And with that, this mustard seed began growing into the great shrub it is today.

Earlier this year, on annual-meeting Sunday, I spoke to you about how we’d be beating our boundaries in several areas of parish life this year, despite the pandemic … or in some cases, because of the pandemic.  After spending a year or so locked up, or at least locked away from each other, beating our boundaries should be what we’re all about.

Think about what’s possible.  I mean, even during the pandemic, God has done amazing work with us in beating boundaries.  When in-person worship stopped, we had a head start on many congregations because we’d already planted a mustard seed:  We livestreamed worship on our website, using one camera offering one shot.  When worship went all-virtual, we wanted to livestream on Facebook, as well as the website.  So, we taped my phone to a music stand upside down, with a little microphone sticking out to pick up the sound.  What I didn’t realize was that the video image didn’t adjust to right itself, so we began that morning livestreaming upside down.  To fix it, we taped a half-empty Kleenex box to the music stand, and I set my phone over the opening at the top of the box, with a little remote mic sticking out the bottom and hanging down the side.  It wasn’t exactly a marvel of videography. 

But now?  A few technological apostles, particularly Adam James, have spent a year improving the quality of your experience of worship at home.  Who’d have thought we’d do that as my phone sat on a Kleenex box taped to a music stand?  And yet, here we are – not just Adam now, but a team of Tech Guild members bringing you, and the world, worship from multiple angles, with the text of prayers on the screen and announcements about what God’s doing in the life of this place.  That’s a mustard seed that’s grown into quite a shrub of blessing.

So, what might be next?  Well, if we can bring worship to people at home, maybe we could bring sermon visuals and prayers and songs and announcements onto iPads here in the pew racks.  When I show pictures of a mustard tree or the school in Haiti to the folks worshiping at home, wouldn’t it be great if the folks in the pews could see them, too?

Here’s another example.  If we can bring our current worship to more people, we can also bring new worship to new people, people who might not be interested in a traditional service in a beautiful old stone building with stained-glass windows.  As much as I love it, this kind of liturgy is not everyone’s cup of tea.  So, in September, we’ll be launching Trailside, a more informal worship experience at HJ‘s, with music that’s more accessible to modern ears, and prayers and preaching that connect better with people taking a different path in their spiritual quest.

And here’s another possibility.  Our Outreach partnership in Haiti is a great example of a mature mustard shrub.  We have other strong Outreach partnerships too, like our growing relationship with Benjamin Banneker Elementary or the annual Free Store downtown.  In fact, if you glance at the bulletin board in the hall by the Jewell Room, you’ll see another dozen partnerships.  Well, about the same time as we brought out that Chia-pet mustard planter at our Celebration of Common Ministry, I also talked about wanting us to take Outreach ministry as seriously as Scripture does.  You’ve probably heard Jesus’s famous instruction in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 25, that when we feed the hungry, and clothe the naked, and welcome the stranger, and visit the imprisoned, we’re doing that work for Jesus himself (25:40).  We also know that Scripture asks us to show our deep gratitude for our blessings by giving to God 10 percent of what God first gives us.  So, several years ago, I said I would love to see our support of Outreach ministry grow to 10 percent of the amount of our pledges to the church.  In other words, just as God asks us, as individuals, to tithe from the gifts God gives us, so our church, the body of Christ in this place, should tithe to show our gratitude and to bless the world. 

There’s an idea being discussed among several St. Andrew’s commissions right now about a way to make that happen by adding a third source of ongoing support for Outreach ministries.  Currently, we fund Outreach in two ways.  First, we give a percentage of your pledged gifts to support the work of our Outreach partners.  Second, individuals give generously to specific ministries, as we’ll do at the Haiti fundraiser tonight.  So, the idea being discussed would be to create an Outreach Fund, not part of our endowment but working like an endowment.  The income from it would provide a third source of support for our work to serve Jesus’ brothers and sisters in need.  And what I’d love to see would be for that extra support to fund the work of a gifted individual to support our Outreach ministries at the staff level, helping committed leaders organize events and gathering more of us to be Jesus‘s hands and feet working in the world with our Outreach partners, offering our time and our talent with the same passion as we offer our treasure.  That’s a boundary for us to beat:  Wouldn’t it be amazing if volunteering with our Outreach partners just became part of what St. Andrew’s members do?

Here’s the thing:  When Jesus described the kingdom of God as being like a mustard seed, I don’t think he had a single seed in mind.  I think he envisioned a mustard grove – not just one shrub but a place where hundreds, even thousands of mustard shrubs provide welcome and shade and nurture and habitat for the birds of the air.  All people need God’s love, and all people can bear God’s love to others.  We differ according to our gifts, according to our needs, and according to our spiritual wiring.  But we’re all called to love.  Just as God loves all, and all means all, so God asks us all to love with all we’ve got – in time, and talent, and treasure, giving from every chamber of our hearts.  

If we beat our boundaries, just imagine how this mustard grove of St. Andrew’s could bless God’s world.  After all, we’re just getting started.  And we’ve got so many seeds to plant.