Why are you afraid?

In the Gospel reading this past Sunday Jesus asks his disciples a question. Two questions, actually.  “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” I don’t think that it was the case that Jesus didn’t know the answer. I believe he knows and I believe that he knows that we know the answer as well. His questions are not a test so much as they are an exhortation.

There were, there are, and there will be storms at sea, literally and figuratively. The sea is calm and then it is not. Sometimes the storms can be summer showers and sometimes they are catastrophic. We are for the most part powerless over this element of life.

In the Gospel passage Jesus calms the sea to save them but more than to save them, to show them that he can. The whole world is in his hands but he has chosen to live in it like they do. The point is not escaping from drowning at sea. We will die at sea, or on land, in boats or in bed. This life will end. The point is remembering whose boat we are in. The love of God is a greater boat, greater than death.

“Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” The disciples cried out. This month we have joined them in this cry. 9 people lay dead in church. 9 people are victims of hatred of the worst variety. “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” There is no good answer to this cry. God gave us this world. God gave us Jesus. God has given us the saints. God wants us to make the reign of God known to the whole world. God gave us the world and the tools to make it a paradise. We work. We pray. We love. It’s all we can do.

We have not failed. God’s hope for the world cannot be exterminated by a racist, evil, thug. Pray for him because our God is a God of mercy but our God is also a God of judgment. Pray for those who grieve. ^“But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.” (1 Thessalonians) No we grieve as those who live in God’s grace – we live in that grace during the storm and the sunshine. We live in that grace at the side of a mother giving birth. We live in that grace at the graveside.

I wish I had more. But I have no more than the Gospel. We preach Christ and Christ crucified. We preach Christ on the cross and  Christ out of the tomb. We weep and Christ weeps with us as he is in our hearts. He asks us, “Why are you afraid?” not to chastise us but to remind us that he is with us.

Rev. Fred Hayes 6/26/2015