Second Sunday before Lent, 24/02/19

St James the Great

Revelation 4, Luke 8:22-25 

The Gospel reading is about extreme weather. In this passage from Luke’s Gospel we are given a picture of the disciples in their boat on the Sea of Galilee. The boat is battered by the wind and the waves; in the midst of these alarming conditions they find themselves out of control and adrift on the lake.  Jesus’ disciples are in fear and turmoil as their boat is imperilled on the windswept lake, but they waken the sleeping Jesus and he calms the storm and brings them order and peace again.  In our own lives we so often long for order, calm and peace at difficult moments of our lives, or for quiet when the noise of the town and the people around us seems never to stop.  This reading says something to us about the peace which God can bring to the disorder of human living.

We are often delighted and shocked by the power of the sea.  Last September, at the end of our holiday on Orkney, the weather was beginning to be a little rougher, the winds much stronger.  Julia and I spent the last morning taking photos and making little films of the sea crashing against the cliffs and roaring onto the shore.  In the late afternoon we caught the ferry back to Thurso.  We had planned to have a meal on the ferry, but as we sailed out of Scapa Flow and into more open seas, the ship began to pitch and roll alarmingly.  We abandoned our plans for a meal, and settled for a cup of tea; it had to be carried for us, across the heaving deck to our seats.  And now, still in winter, the seas round Orkney are even more daunting, with waves recorded which are regularly fifteen feet high.  It is not hard to see how for people in Biblical times, the power of the wind and the waves was seen as a representation of the powers of evil and disorder let loose in our world.  

These stories of the power of God defeating or calming the storm are meant to show that God is greater and stronger than the power of evil and disorder and will banish them from our lives.  Jesus calming the storm on the lake would have served to remind the disciples of his power, but notice that he is with the disciples in the boat all the time.  That would have spoken to the early Christians when they reflected on the story: Christ is with us, hidden though he may be within us and around us.  It is true that Jesus seems quite sharp with the disciples when he says, ‘Where is your faith?’.  Yet the story would have held out reassurance to the first Christians who heard it, that in the midst of the storms of human living, Christ is present, with all his just and gentle power.  Christ stills the storms which rage in their hearts, and Christ overcomes the frightening forces which face them or surround them in their lives.

Think of those early Christians, the individuals and their Christian communities.  Here they were, people trying to make a living and live out their new faith in whatever home they had around the Mediterranean world, with its vast diversity of peoples, cultures and faiths.  Here they were, flung together in fragile communities of faith, not always in touch with other Christian communities, and sometimes shunned or persecuted by their neighbours or their communities because they belonged to this strange new faith of Christianity.  They tried to be faithful in a world that could seem very dangerous to them and their faith, just as the disciples found the lake so threatening on that stormy night.  

We could ask ourselves, what seas are we navigating today?  Of course, we cannot escape the world as it is today, with its conflicts and contradictions, the worry of climate change, and the dreadful inequality which no society in the world seems able to escape.  And when we turn to Christian faith and life in the modern world, there is this strange contradiction that faith and religion loom large in public and world affairs, and yet churches, certainly in the western world, struggle to add to their membership.  People are sometimes very resistant, angry even, when the Church becomes involved in public matters, yet people who seems to have nothing to do with the Church are also often sad about the decline of faith and Christian practice in our society, and long for its renewal.  

Here is a story which I read the other day which speaks volumes about this.  Rose Hudson-Wilkin is the Chaplain to the Speaker of the House of Commons.  She was speaking at a conference and she said:

Within the last two weeks a very tiny minority of MPs, encouraged by 

the National Secular Society, has called for the abolition of prayers in 

Parliament.  Two days ago, a member identified himself to me as an 

Atheist and said, “I love coming to prayers.  I find that moment of quiet 

very helpful as a time of reflection before I get stuck into the business 

of the day.”  

 Those words are so typical of how many people feel about the Church.  There is both a “yes” and a “no” here, people want something of what the Church offers yet, for all kinds of reasons, they seem to struggle with the whole business of belonging and belief.  One of our tasks is surely to help people bridge the gap between what they can see and appreciate about the life and practice of the Church and its members, and coming to see what makes us what we are and maybe becoming part of it themselves. That is part of why we are doing the things we have lately begun here, like Place of Welcome.  It is a matter of being good, ordinary, welcoming human beings and also gently showing what it is that motivates us towards loving God and loving our neighbours.  

A favourite prayer of mine asks God that we might be ready to respond to his searching for us and that we might be willing to look out for his presence in our lives.  It is such a simple thing: to trust that God is looking for us, waiting for us, and to open our hearts and minds to his presence in what is going on within us and around us in the world.  

We have some cards for you with this prayer and a picture.  The picture is from a fourteenth century painting on the walls of a chapel of the church of Santa Maria Novella in the Italian city of Florence; it shows the scene which our Gospel passage describes.  The prayer was written in the sixth century by Saint Benedict, the founder of the Western monastic tradition.  It is a prayer for the whole of life, for all the different situations in which we humans find ourselves, whether it is the disciples in the midst of the storm long ago, or any of us as we look for the reality of God’s love in our strange and confusing times and in the midst of life’s joys and struggles.  I will end by praying Saint Benedict’s prayer, which asks God for those qualities which will bring us closer to him as we journey through life.

O gracious and holy Father,

give us wisdom to perceive you,

diligence to seek you,

patience to wait for you,

eyes to behold you,

a heart to meditate upon you,

and a life to proclaim you,

through the power of the Spirit

of Jesus Christ our Lord.

© 2019 Geoff Babb