I’ve struggled with this passage all week. Most often I do not understand God and this is one of those times. At face value this passage seems to be saying that God will calm the storm in our lives. An easy connection to make- Jesus calms a physical storm to Jesus calms the metaphorical storms that are our lives. But to be honest that statement is just plainly not true. I have storms in my life that Jesus has done nothing about. Nada. We are living in a storm of violence all around us wondering the same thing as the disciples- Do you not care that we are perishing? It’s terrifying, at least for me to say out loud that it doesn’t feel like God is doing God’s job but I feel comfortable saying this because I’m more and more convinced that Jesus didn’t come to calm the storms in our lives. The job of God is not to calm the storm. In fact, I think it’s the job of the people. Jesus came to ride out the storm with us. In this story He does calm the storm but he also waited until everyone was thoroughly freaking out anticipating their imminent death. Why not just calm the storm from the very beginning and skip over the part where everyone’s anxiety is skyrocketing? I don’t think it’s because he doesn’t care – It could come across that way because well Jesus was sleeping while all this was happening. But I think it’s to show that Jesus will be with you in the darkest of times, when we feel most alone and are most afraid. Jesus wants to help us learn how to live this life well which includes our fears, anxieties, troubles and suffering. The disciples accused Jesus of not caring, “ Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” The thing is though that Jesus is literally in the boat with them. If they die, so will he. Jesus cares so much that he chooses to be with us in our suffering. The disciples are so skeptical though that that thought doesn’t even cross their minds, they get defensive and their only thought is the accusation that he didn’t even care at all. The disciples even though they are Jesus closest companions cannot seem to grasp an accurate understanding of who He is.
Many people talk about going through different stages of faith throughout their lifetime in which we have different understandings of what we think God is like, what we believe to be true about the world. Some of us stay in one stage our entire lives while others journey through many stages. I think if we are serious about our faith the best question we can ask is What kind of God is this? For me, I have gone through the Jesus as super hero stage- the God who always comes to the rescue. I have gone through the everything happens for a reason stage- in which God causes bad things to happen for our own good. I have gone through the Bible is only for the oppressed stage- in which God has no time for those who can help themselves. At this point in my life I have come to the conclusion that the God of Jesus Christ is the kind of God that chooses the act of being with people over everything else. This is going to be a hard pill for many people to swallow and for many people this view of God may never be enough. This isn’t a God who is going to make everything better. It’s not a God who is going to stop bad things from happening. This God’s main priority is not making sure everyone’s life is devoid of suffering. This God values hardship, suffering, depending on others and vulnerability. Let me be clear though- life with suffering I don’t believe is the way God intended it to be and yet that is the world we live in.
To be honest, at first this was kind of a disappointment. I want to worship the God that’s going to make everything better. I want the God who if I pray just right will one day very soon make my life like all those Instagram photos of my friends – you know the ones- who are virtually living a much better life than you. I swear some of my friends are on vacation more than they are at work. I want the God that is going to stop bad things from happening if I just do the right things. At least in that scenario I have control over my happiness to some extent. The thing is though- I don’t think that God exists. I think we want that so much we have created this God in our minds- but this is not the God of Jesus Christ. However, now after much work of reconstructing what I thought I knew of Jesus and God, I am not as disappointed as much as I am intrigued at who I believe this God actually is. A God who delights in each one of us and shows us this not by making sure we never hurt but by choosing to be with us in the hurting. I’m curious about this God- This God who seems to know more about what it means to be human than us humans do. We often picture God as like I said before the superhero- that stops the bad guy and values greatness and strength and power above all else. But this God is a God who knowing us- knows we really just need to know we are not alone. We are a part of something much bigger than ourselves. It’s a God who knows that really all we need is love and spent His life showing us how to love others- because that will be our saving grace. The commentary I read makes the claim that human relationships die when we sense that others do not care about us. The same is true of our relationship with God. I would bet that one of the biggest reasons we doubt the existence of God or have trouble getting behind Christianity is because we have a hard time believing that God actually cares about us. It’s going to be really hard to have a relationship with God if we don’t believe He cares about us.
I’m going to read something Richard Rohr wrote this week as some food for thought regarding the answer to “what kind of God is this”. I paraphrased it a little because Richard Rohr can be a little heady for a Sunday morning- it said, “The “cross,” rightly understood, always reveals various kinds of resurrection. It’s as if God were holding up the crucifixion as a lesson, saying: “I know this is what you’re experiencing. Don’t run from it. Learn from it, as I did. Hang there for a while, as I did. It will be your teacher. Rather than losing life, you will be gaining a larger life. It is the way through.”
An example he gave was of a brave woman during world war 2, rather than going into hiding, Etty Hillesum spent her last weeks of freedom supporting people who were facing deportation to Auschwitz. In her diaries she wrote. I am not afraid to look suffering straight in the eyes. And at the end of each day, there was always the feeling: I love people so much. Never any bitterness about what was done to them, but always love for those who knew how to bear so much although nothing had prepared them for such burdens. We can manage these days and also all that really matters: if we safeguard that little piece of God, in ourselves. And perhaps in others as well. Alas, there doesn’t seem to be much God can do about our circumstances, about our lives. Neither do I hold God responsible. God cannot help us, but we must help God and defend God’s dwelling place inside us to the last. Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it toward others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will also be in our troubled world. Little did I know on Monday when I read this how fitting these words would be for us today.
What do we do with that: she says, God cannot help us. That’s a bold claim to make and yet in saying this she isn’t saying she doesn’t believe in God. For her, despite the atrocities that she sees in front of her she doesn’t seem disappointed that God didn’t stop this from happening. Rather she says, we need to find God in ourselves- the part of us that wants to love others, the part of us that wants to bring peace. Showing this love and peace to one another is where we find God amidst tragedy. Finding that piece of God in yourself and sharing it is what will give us the hope and love we are looking for. Continuing to believe that God cares about us and that others care about us is what we need right now. I don’t have many words about the tragedy that happened yesterday and I do not quite understand God but I think a good starting place is combating this hate with love and care for one another. Etty is right- in times like this we need to cling tight to the piece of God that is in all of us and we need to be a light to all those around us.
When I think back on this passage- and I question why Jesus waited so long to still those people’s fears, I realize that maybe I am thinking about this all wrong. To start off with we should not take this story so literal to the point that we miss the message of this text. Maybe instead of thinking Jesus waited too long to help, the narrative is that even when things get so bad, and you feel so out of control and you are very scared- which we all are much of the time- to remember that Jesus is there too- there is no place too dark or deep or too far gone for Jesus to be with you. Maybe instead of us thinking this passage is saying that Jesus promises to calm the storm of our lives it means that Jesus being present is the promise.
What if what humans truly need is not for our lives to be easy but for connection, communion and love. Richard Rohr said regarding suffering that- Rather than losing life, you will be gaining a larger life. It is the way through.” Living life to the full is not life without struggle but life that brings beauty, hope and peace to those around you. For God, it seems that resurrection and redemption are the goals. How do we take what life has given us and make the best out of it? How do we find joy in a world with so much sadness? Like most of Jesus’ answers they are not what you think- the answer is selflessness. Being selfless like Etty Hillesum, you would think would take away from your life, like it would take away from you somehow but the miracle of humanity is that it actually brings us fulfillment. Doing things for others is what brings us joy and peace. An article in Time Magazine talked about how scientific research backs up the theory that doing things for others makes you happy. It is not how much you do for others though- it is that you do it out of love that triggers the part of your brain that gives you pleasure. I don’t find it a coincidence at all that God created human beings to be most happy when they are helping each other. Granted it might not always feel good or you might not always want to do it but it is in inner sense of contentment and joy that it brings to your life.
This passage helped me realize that I’m not interested in worshipping a make believe God for a make believe world in which if we pray hard enough or hope hard enough things will magically get better. That is not real life. Today we are very aware of that. I want to worship a real God for a real world. A world in which bad things happen- like the holocaust and natural disasters and addiction and mass shootings out of hate. I want a God who has a real answer because these are real problems.
I think the answer God is giving is how to live in this world as is, not how to hope for a world that doesn’t exist. If we are going to live in this world then we need to know we are not alone. We need to know that depending on others will be an essential aspect of living in this world. We need to know that suffering and even death are not the worst things. That being scared and confused and sad are normal and a part of this world. But most importantly we need to know that there is lots and lots of love here. All around us. It’s all over just waiting for us to cultivate it. In each other.
I think one of the benefits of God giving it to us straight that we do not live in a fairy-tail is that once we can begin to accept this then we can begin to stop being so disappointed and become aware of all the ways God is working. If we can learn to accept that life is full of all kinds of trials we will be able to see the beauty that comes from overcoming these trials, from seeing the small ways in which love is cultivated out of crises. I was in a wedding this past weekend of one of my oldest friends- we became friends in the third grade. A couple years ago her mom passed away. As her friend, I knew she was nervous for this wedding because her mom wouldn’t be here with her and she was scared it would end up being more a of a sad event than a happy one. On her wedding day though, it was beautiful to see her community rally around her to show her how far she has come, to help her celebrate this new beginning in her life and to remind her of how proud her mom would have been. The wedding was an hour away from our home town and her entire grief group showed up in a party limo I might add-, her mom’s closest friends broke it down with her on the dance floor, her dad gave a beautiful speech about what a blessing she has been to him since her mom passed away and her bridesmaids were with her every step of that day making sure she was present and able to experience all the love surrounding her that day. It’s hard to accept that things like death happen in this world, but if we do learn to accept it then we have the ability to move past it and bring about new life and new opportunities which is exactly what I saw last weekend. If we don’t accept it, we will live in disappointment, in hopelessness and constant frustration with this world. This is why I am grateful to serve a God who gives me real ways to live in this often too real world. This is a God I can trust and be assured that nothing is too big for God. This is a God who knows humanity intimately and understands us more than we understand ourselves.
So if we do serve a God that chooses being with us above all else and chooses to be with us in the boat- and if our job is to be in the boat with each other knowing that being with each other is one of our greatest needs- what does that look like? What does it look like to be God for one another in these times when we feel so far from God? What does it look like to show others that you care? To combat this hatred with love? I want to encourage us along with taking actions such as voting this week and fighting for gun safety laws because action is essential to also show love- more love than you think you have to give. Choose to be with people not just for them. If like me, you are not sure what action to take or what to say or make of yet another tragedy in a long line of tragedies that doesn’t seem to be ending, let this be one way to respond. Let us take God’s example of choosing to be with us and hope that those acts of love have the power to transform the world we live in.
Amen.
Floundering With A Purpose 