OUR PEACE IN EVERY STORM
A Sermon for the Third Sunday after Pentecost (also Father’s Day)

Just in time for Father’s Day, there’s one more book written by a son about his father. This new book, however, seems quite different from others of its genre. Crazy for the Storm: A Memoir of Survival is described by the publisher this way: “Norman Ollestad was thrust into the world of surfing and competitive downhill skiing at a very young age by the father he idolized. Often paralyzed by fear, young Norman resented losing his childhood to his father’s reckless and demanding adventures, even as he began to reap the rewards of his training.

“Then, in February 1979, a chartered Cessna carrying 11-year-old Norman, his father, his father’s girlfriend and the pilot, crashed into Southern California’s San Gabriel Mountains. Norman’s father – a man who was both his coach and hero – was (killed)….Suspended at over 8,000 feet…engulfed in a blizzard, the grief-stricken boy descended the icy mountain alone. Putting his father’s passionate lessons to work, (young) Norman defied the elements and made it (home) alive – the sole survivor of the crash….” In a television interview after his ordeal, Norman said, “My dad taught me never to give up.”

Now in his early forties, the author reflects on his childhood experiences: “My father…planted…seeds in me...(which) prepared me for (that) day on the mountain….I don’t know if my father was right or wrong to raise me the way he did,” he admits. “But when I delve into those memories, extracting the details of…back-country skiing...steep, icy runs to make me a better ski racer;…taking me to hockey practice at 5 am every weekend; coercing me to face my fears out in the surf…it doesn’t feel reckless. It feels like life as I know it. My father conditioned me to feel comfortable in a storm. And that’s why I made it down the mountain alone, because of him, because of what (my father) taught me….” ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/mpd/permalink/m6GDHYDF5QLTI).

The disciples in today’s story are not comfortable at all. They respond with fear to that great storm arising. For them, just as it might be for anyone at sea, the storm becomes more than scary, it is downright traumatic. They want to get away from it, as fast as they can. Although it is also found in the gospel accounts of Matthew and Luke, Mark’s version of this story is different from theirs. The others have the disciples say, “We are perishing!” Mark adds an introductory clause with what seems like a touch of sarcastic anger, changing the statement into a question: “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” (4:38)

Unlike his disciples, Jesus did feel comfortable in a storm. Asleep on a cushion in the stern of the boat, Jesus is at peace. He doesn’t care about what’s happening with the weather. He won’t even begin to worry the way his disciples do. But he does care about them. Like Norman’s father cared about his son in his own, special way, Jesus offers unique care for his disciples. Mark tells us, at the beginning of the fourth chapter of his gospel, that, once “again, (Jesus) began to teach beside the sea” (4:1). Now, in today’s passage, Jesus cares for his friends by teaching them a great lesson: how to weather the fearful storms of life.

You and I are familiar with fear. We experience it in many shapes and sizes. For example, there is the fear of failure and the fear of success. The fear of rejection and the fear of commitment. The fear of isolation and the fear of intimacy. And there is the fear of dying and even the fear of living. Fear is sometimes used as an acronym: “False Evidence, Appearing Real.” Yet there are times when fear is about real evidence. There are some things that really should strike fear in our hearts. Some fears we must simply learn to face.

In his book The Courage to Teach, Parker Palmer reminds us that “Fear is so fundamental to the human condition that all the great spiritual traditions originate in an effort to overcome its effects on our lives. With different words, they all proclaim the same core message: ‘Be not afraid.’ Though the traditions vary widely in the ways they propose to take us beyond fear, all hold out the same hope: we can escape fear’s paralysis and enter a state of grace where encounters with otherness will not threaten us but will enrich our work and our lives. It is important to note with care,” urges Palmer, “what that core teaching does and does not say. ‘Be not afraid’ does not say that we should not have fears…Instead, it says that we do not have to beour fears…” (p. 58).

Jesus cares about us and about our fears. Jesus cares like a father or mother who seeks to calm the traumatized daughter or son, caught up in fear or anxiety, facing difficult choices. When I am afraid, children aged nine to ninety ask, should I get angry and fight, or shall I just disappear in flight? Are their other choices? Jesus cares about these fearful dilemmas of ours. When Jesus sees we’re afraid, he wants to give his friends just what fearful followers really need – some real peace. In today’s gospel account, Jesus breathes peace on troubled waters, creating calm after the storm. Then Jesus the Teacher seizes his teaching moment. He asks his disciples, “Why are you afraid?” Notice that he does not ask, “Why do you have fears?” Rather, Jesus asks his friends, “Why do you hold on so tightly to your fears, as if you possess them? How do your fears possess you? How have you become your fears?”

When we become our fears, we become someone else. Paralyzed. Panicked. Hysterical. We might rage out of control. “Fear-mongering” is the phrase used to describe behavior that often ends in domestic violence, terrorism or assassination. This week a reporter reminded us that “in 1993, four federal agents were killed and 16 others wounded during an attempt to serve a search warrant at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas…. (That) siege ended disastrously with a raging fire in which scores of people were killed. On the second anniversary of (that) fire…Timothy McVeigh blew up the... Federal Building in Oklahoma City” (Bob Herbert, The New York Times, June 20, 2009).

In addition to frightening events in Iran, we have heard these past few weeks of a local murder in our country’s Holocaust Memorial Museum, an assassination of an abortion doctor in Wichita and the slaying of three police officers in Pittsburgh. Hate-filled Web sites keep calling attention to the fact that we have a Black president, with a relative who is Muslim and a chief of staff who is Jewish. In the midst of all that fear-mongering, in the midst of all our fears, someone else wants to get our attention. Someone whose perfect love casts out all fear (I John 4:18). Jesus is speaking to us, using the same words he used with those first disciples, saying he is our peace in life’s fearful storms. The question is: Are we listening? If we are, do we believe Jesus truly offers us God’s peace?

I have no way of knowing, but…what if Norman Ollestad, now a father to an eight-year-old son, was thinking of Jesus when he wrote of his own father in describing a “sacred place unveiled to me, and now to my son, by the man with the sunshine in his eyes.” “There is more to life than just surviving it,” Ollestad says, speaking from a kind of inner wisdom that comes with experience. “Inside each turbulence there is a calm – a sliver of light buried in the darkness.”

My sisters and brothers, as Christians we claim Jesus is our light in the darkness. No matter how dark our fears become, Jesus is also our peace in every storm. “Jesus said to the (very) sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’ Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm” (Mark 4:39). The peace of Jesus is near us, waiting to envelop us, like a mother or a father wrapping their arms of love around a child, whispering words of peace.

No matter how comfortable you are in the storms of life, I want also to whisper to you some words of peace. They are some different words, words from the Navaho tradition, words that have become part of a contemporary Christian hymn.

Let us pray.

Peace before us, Peace behind us, Peace under our feet.

Peace within us, Peace over us, Let all around us be peace.

- David Haas, “Peace Before Us,” Hymn # 691, Wonder, Love & Praise

The Rev. Thomas A. Momberg
All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Frederick , MD
June 21, 2009