Hope in the Storm

Hope in the Storm

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas

June 24, 2012; Pentecost 4, Proper 7, Year B

Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Mark 4:35-41)  When evening had come, Jesus said to his disciples, "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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ome of you know Jonathan Chavez.  He sang with our choir for a brief time, and he was a voice student of parishioner Caroline Ford.  Our Dean of the U. of A. Honors College, Bob McMath knows Jonathan well because he’s been an outstanding student in that program.  Jonathan graduated Magna cum Laude last month and has a couple of graduate school offers from prestigious institutions.  But I want to talk about when Jonathan was in jail.

Jonathan’s one of those young adults you read about who was brought to this country as a child and turned eighteen before he could acquire legal residency.  He’s what some people uncharitably call an “illegal.”  Two Christmases ago Jonathan rode the bus to Florida to visit his mother.  (He can’t qualify for a driver’s license.)  When he got off the bus, an immigration agent asked him for his papers and took him to jail.  The likely scenario:  He would stay in detention for a few months until he was processed, then he would be sent to Peru and banned from re-entering the U.S. for three to ten years, if ever.  He would be separated from all of his teachers and friends and nearly all of his family.

Jonathan was in a pretty desperate situation.  A little like the boat in the windstorm that our gospel story talks about.  Threatening waves; big winds; small boat about to sink.

But Jesus was in the boat with Jonathan.  Jonathan says he had a wonderful time in jail.  And I believe him.  He got up every morning at 5 a.m. for a Bible study.  Actually he participated in five Bible studies each day.  On Sundays Jonathan translated sermons for the jail’s preachers, some from English to Spanish and others from Spanish to English.  He said that he was so happy to help people hear the word.  He tells how he got to meet people he never would have met any other way.  Quite a few of them were involved with drugs.  Some were drug dealers and drug runners.  He talked with them about Jesus and about living faithfully.  He’s sure several of them were changed and found hope through their conversations.  Even while he was in detention, he said he was having a great time.

Don’t get me wrong; Jonathan wanted out.  He wanted to get back to school.  He didn’t want to be deported.  But Jonathan also said, it was the best Christmas vacation ever.  He even said that while he was in detention.  Jonathan got to share his hope and faith with so many people who really needed hope and faith.  “God is so good,” Jonathan says.

From the beginning, the odds were low for Jonathan’s staying in this country.  I think I remember some lawyer saying a 1 in 10,000 chance.  But he wasn’t discouraged.  “If I have to go back to Peru,” he said, “Jesus will be with me.  I’ll be okay.  But I would miss my friends.  And I hoped to sing opera in this country.  But if I can’t sing in the U.S., I can sing in Peru, and elsewhere.”  Jonathan is simply confident and hopeful.  He will be okay because he trusts that Jesus will always be with him.  God will find him a way through his storms.

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ne of the privileges that we have as clergy is that we get to talk to people at some of the stormiest times in their lives.  I’m often moved and humbled by the struggles that some people live with.  Frequently I hear people with no power and little hope speak authentically of their sense of God’s divine presence with them.  They know, somehow, they will be okay, even if the worst happens, even when the worst is likely.  When I hear those humble expressions of faith, I believe them.  I do think that they will be well, regardless.

Other times I visit with people who are truly overwhelmed.  I know that people can break.  I hear people say, “I wish I had some sense of God’s presence, but I don’t.  I wish God would save me, but how?”  I hear in them the echo of the disciples’ words, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”

I don’t think we can manufacture a sense of God’s presence when we are afraid.  But we can remember when we’ve sensed the presence and remind ourselves of that possibility when the storms come.  One of the reasons it is so important to practice presence is so we can recall it and bring it to remembrance in the time of trial. 

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 number of years ago my friend Bob found himself in a community that was strongly influenced by the spirituality of St. Julian of Norwich.  Julian lived during a time of terrible political upheaval and insecurity and during the bubonic plague.  She was deeply in touch with the cross and begged to share Jesus’ suffering.  She knew darkness.  And yet, hers is a spirituality absolutely grounded in hope.  She is best known for her assertion that “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”  It’s not mere optimism.  It is the willingness to look dire circumstances in the face and yet declare hope. 

Something about that found resonance in Bob.  When he had a chance to start a small alternative worship service at a church in Trenton, New Jersey, he named the congregation after St. Julian.  They used some of her quotes as mottos and reminders.  That stuff grew in him.

A couple of years ago Bob was diagnosed with esophageal cancer.  The outlook was very grim.  He went through the terrible surgery and debilitating therapy.  There was one setback that put him close to death.  In the midst of it all, he wrote to some friends to say that he was okay.  After all of these years, he said, that “All shall be well” stuff was really deeply grounded in him.  When he needed it, it was there.

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ast week I wrote to a nun whom I had met way back when I was in seminary.  I heard she had left the order for an assisted living facility because she has a terminal illness.  Here is part of her reply. 

My situation is ideal.  I am getting all the medical attention and care that I need, and at the same time I am near enough to the convent to keep in regular contact.  For the time being I am still up and about, and on good days I enjoy nothing better than having lunch out with a friend!  I am not afraid of what lies ahead – in fact, I am rather looking forward to it.  I do believe in Jesus’ promises of a better life waiting for us with him, and I am content with that.  I’ve had a wonderful rich life, and I could not ask for more. 

Different people believe different things about God’s intervention, or lack thereof; about an afterlife, or lack thereof.  But cultivating a deep practice of orienting ourselves toward that which is greater than we – an openness to the mystery of life and love – creates in us an openness to something profound that can be the stillpoint in the center of the storm.  It creates in us an openness to that which is greater than our mere circumstances. 

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ach week we come to this place to be fed by that mystery, to renew our connection and trust in a deep hope that rises even in the face of death.  We practice the presence; we hope; we trust.  Even as we bring our prayers on behalf of a suffering and struggling world.

I’ve often quoted Robert Wicks phrase, “Have low expectations and high hopes.”  Have low expectations, especially of others, he says.  And maybe it makes sense to have low expectations of life, for life is difficult, and so much of it is so broken.  Low expectations.  But it is good to have high hopes as well.  Hope not for particular things, but a deep hope grounded in God.  A hope, as Wicks says, “that something good, something dear and beautiful will come of it if you are looking and listening with an open heart.  …When we are truly open, we will be surprised by something in the encounter.  And that surprise – that unique presence of God – can be called by another name:  holiness.” [i]

Have low expectations and high hopes.

“Jesus woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ‘Peace!  Be still.’”

Peace.  Be still.

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[i]  Robert J. Wicks, Living Smply in an Anxious World, Paulist, NY, 1988, p. 33

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