Don't you care that we are perishing?

Job 38:1-11

Then Adonai replied to Job out of the tempest and said: “Who is this who darkens counsel, speaking without knowledge? Gird your loins like a man; I will ask and you will inform me. Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundations? Speak if you have understanding. Do you know who fixed its dimensions or who measured it with a line? Onto what were its bases sunk? Who set its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the divine beings shouted for joy? Who closed the sea behind doors when it gushed forth out of the womb, when I clothed it in clouds, swaddled it in dense clouds, when I made breakers my limit for it, and set up its bar and doors, and said, ‘You may come so far and no father; here your surging waves will stop’?

Psalm 107:1-3, 23-32

R: God reduced the storm to a whisper; the waves were stilled (Ps 107:29)

Give thanks to Adonai, because God is good,

for God’s steadfast love is forever.

Let the redeemed of Adonai proclaim, 

those redeemed from adversity,

whom God gathered in from the lands, 

from east and west, from the north and from the sea.

Others go down to the sea in ships,

ply their trade in the mighty waters; R

they have seen the works of Adonai,

and God’s wonders in the deep.

By God’s word God raised a storm wind 

that made the waves surge.

Mounting up to the heaven, plunging down to the depths,

disgorging in their misery,

they reeled and staggered like a drunkard,

all their skill to no avail.

In their adversity they cried to Adonai,

and God saved them from their troubles.

God reduced the storm to a whisper;

the waves were stilled. R

They rejoiced when all was quiet,

and God brought them to the port they desired.

Let them praise Adonai for steadfast love,

God’s wondrous deeds for all people.

Let them exalt God in the congregation of the people,

and acclaim God in the assembly of the elders. R

2 Corinthians 6:1-13

As we work together with him, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain. For he says, “At an acceptable time I have listened to you, and on a day of salvation I have helped you.”

See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation! 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, 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. We have spoken frankly to you Corinthians; our heart is wide open to you. There is no restriction in our affections, but only in yours. In return -- I speak as to children -- open wide your hearts also.

Mark 4:35-41

On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” 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. He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

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I have to let you know I’ve been somewhat distracted since Thursday morning, when I woke up refreshed after a full night’s sleep, ready for a lovely day off, and opened my email to the daily news from the BBC. I try for an outside news source just to keep my perspective a bit more open, and when I looked at the first news story posted to the BBC Thursday morning I was nauseous, I spent the day foggy and the time since has been a flurry of emotions as more news comes down the pike through various sources. 
Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, 45 years old, was a beloved track coach and a minister at the AME church. Clementa Pinckney, 41 years old, was the lead pastor at the AME church, a state senator, and a graduate of one of our ELCA seminaries. Cynthia Hurd, 54 years old, was a librarian, whose birthday would have been today (Sunday). Tywanza Sanders, 26 years old, was a recent graduate of Allen University’s Division of Business Administration, and he died trying to shield his 87-year-old aunt from the shooter. Myra Thompson, 59 years old, was reverend Anthony Thompson’s wife, Ethel Lee Lance, 70 years old, was the church sexton, Daniel L. Simmons, age 74, was a ministerial staff member, a father and a grandfather and a veteran of war. Depaynoe Middleton-Doctor, 49 years old, sang in the choir and preached at her church. Susie Jackon, 87 years old, sheltered young people who needed a place to live after her son moved away from home. 

I read these stories, and the story of hate which their killer was fed, and I hear the disciples’ ask Jesus in that storm on the sea: “Don’t you care that we are being destroyed?”

And, lest we still feel too detached from it all, the pastor who was leading that Bible study was a graduate of one of our eight ELCA seminaries. And if that doesn’t hit close enough to home, the shooter was a member of an ELCA parish. In other words, broadly speaking, a 21-year-old, white member of our church decided to kill black people out of a loud and proud self-professed hate for black people. A member of our dear beloved ELCA found a black church where he joined their Bible study for an hour, and then he shot and killed nine people in a house of prayer and worship.

It makes me so angry. It makes me so sad. It makes me despondent and hopeless and fearful and I feel so powerless that I want to go smash things. There is a storm in my heart, doubtful and confused and frighteningly overwhelming. Being white, I do have the privilege of deciding if I will let this act of domestic terrorism affect me, since it didn’t happen out of hate for white people and I’m therefore not in danger from it. But being Christian, I have the call and the command of Christ to take up my cross and follow Jesus through the pain and on out the other side. The call and command to enter with others into their pain. The call and command, also, to ‘be not afraid.’

But not being afraid means not to be afraid to be honest about when I am afraid. We take so many precautions to avoid pain, especially in church. When we gather for worship it is a happy time, a joyful community, and if discomfort enters into the space we don’t know what to do with it. But our Scriptures are full of pain, just as they are full of joy and promise, so that we can live faithfully in the realities of suffering, and can hold one another when our own strength runs out. We have an entire book called ‘Lamentations,’ the Psalms are full of expressions of grief and anger, the prophets wail and weep, Jesus himself weeps, for crying out loud. And this morning’s first Testament reading comes from a book that tells a story so deeply known to us we refer to it in connection with people who struggle mightily: they must certainly have the ‘patience of Job.’ Right? I mean, who’s used that phrase before?

We have multitudes of examples of suffering in Scripture. The prophet Isaiah has an entire song we refer to as the ‘suffering servant,’ and often use to point to Jesus. We don’t like to think about it if we can help it, and the fact that we ever get the choice is, well, a symptom of our privilege. I call it a ‘symptom’ because it is not right to be so disconnected from the rest of humanity. But humanity struggles mightily every day, and to see those sad faces on the TV over and over can wear a person down... to see those sad faces in your living room, or in the mirror, on the other hand? I mean, if we, of all people, can’t keep it together, what is this world coming to? ...Isn’t that mixed up in all of this? The certainty that everyone else can have pain but we can’t? Everyone else can fall apart, but we have to hold it together? How else do we learn grace and forgiveness, though? How else can we experience that we are carried in this pain, and through this pain, if we spend so much of our energy avoiding it?

While the disciples’ little fishing boat is being swamped by the waves, the disciples ask Jesus, “Do you not care that we are perishing?” And as we are the Body of Christ, the church, I wonder how often we keep our heads under the covers, while multitudes cry around us “do you not care that we are perishing?” Are we asleep, Body of Christ? The most racially segregated time in America is right now, Sunday morning. Yet the Body of Christ exists in every shade of human skin. Have we gotten too comfortable with Christianity to live faithfully, too isolated to be affected by the suffering around and within ourselves?

Because suffering is complicated, pain comes from all corners, and when we shut down pain we shut down healing. We have gotten very good at shutting down when we get uncomfortable, very good at hiding. But hiding will not lead to healing. Hiding, in fact, is the opposite of healing. Hiding is what we did in the garden when God walked in the cool of the day and we ducked behind the bushes because we were naked and afraid. God does not call us into hiding, but out of it. Out of ourselves and into the great wide world where Leviathan has been made for sport, where God has set the bounds of the deeps and scattered the stars across the sky like so many handfuls of glitter. We live in a great big wide open world full of life and joy and death and terror, and all of that bundled up together is a mystery and a miracle into which God has come to live with us.

When Jesus and his disciples go across the water to the other side, even though they know where they are going there are still storms along the way. Any time there is change, be it change of circumstance or change of heart, it can bring up a storm of emotions and reactions and griefs. Jesus and the prophets show us a vision of God’s kingdom among us, where we are headed, but in the meantime there are a lot of storms to get through. We have a long way yet to go in our little boat, tossed by the storms inside and out. We have come far, and Jesus has come along with us the whole time. Not only that, but Jesus can handle our storms. When the disciples woke Jesus up in that storm, they probably wanted him to lend a hand with bailing out the water that was coming up over the sides of the boat, and what they got was so much more than they asked for, because it was Jesus there with them. When we ask Jesus for help in our storms, for a life preserver, a little strength for the journey, we get far more than we ask for, too. Body and blood in bread and wine, for instance. Because all of our powerlessness turned to rage, all of our displaced fear, all of our insecurities and uncertainties, got thrown up there on that cross with Christ the day we crucified him. The day we nailed him up there and hung him up for all to see, ‘strange fruit’ right there on that tree of the cross, his blood poured out for the world, given and shed freely for the freedom of all people, of every race and nation, color and creed. It is that Blood alone which is responsible for our unity, our only eternal deep and lasting freedom. That freedom is our courage to speak out on behalf of life in the midst of death.

People of God, we are in this storm-abused boat together, every last one of us, in here and out there. We have been loved, all of this war-weary world, more than any of us deserve. We have been given dignity and honor as creatures of God’s handiwork, interwoven with the rest of creation in all its beauty and majesty. We have believed the lies for too long, given in to the power of false accusations for too long, hidden our shame and our God-given differences too long. We are the Body of Christ! And this is not by our own choosing, our own power, our own goodness, but by the Grace of God who made us and claimed us, who gathers, feeds, and sends us. All of us. Here at Christ Our Emmanuel Lutheran Church, and in South Carolina at Mother Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. When we weep, we weep together. When we celebrate, we celebrate together. When we repent, we repent together. When we are forgiven, we are forged anew together. There is no ‘us and them’ in the kingdom of God. There is no shame, no hiding, no fear. Only peace. Love. Joy. Kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control, generosity, those gifts of the Spirit we have hung on banners around our sanctuary this Pentecost season. We have freely received these gifts from God. For we are the Body of Christ, fed by the Body of Christ, which is given in love for the sake of the world.