Almost everyone has a storm story to tell. I have one. It was the summer of 1986. Gas was 82 cents a gallon. Randy Travis had just released his first country album, Storms of Life. The Celtics had just won the NBA title. I was 8 years old. My aunt Bonnie had planned a day of fun with her favorite nephew. We packed up a McDonald’s happy meal. I was busy collecting all five of the Muppet baby action figures; a happy meal for a happy day. We drove to the State Park where we rented a metal paddleboat and headed “to the other side” of the lake.
Not even with the biggest binoculars on the bluest day could I have seen it coming. Right in the middle of our happy-go-lucky day appeared a violent summer thunderstorm. Clouds gathered. We paddled as fast as we could to race the storm back to the dock. But we lost. And I figured our metal paddleboat was a bull’s-eye for the lightning rods that were sure to zap us.
The rains came, the thunder roared and I blamed my aunt Bonnie for all of it, “Why did you drag me out here?! Are you trying to get us killed?”
While I was busy screaming at my aunt Bonnie I stopped paddling the boat. She looked me in the eyes and said, “If you are not going to help me paddle this boat, then shut up and start praying!” “Oh, dear heavenly Father,” I began. So she paddled and I prayed our way through the storm.
I threw quite a red-headed temper tantrum that day. Here was someone who I loved deeply and who had done nothing but love me back and I accused her of being careless; reckless; negligent.
I’ve been thinking about my story this week, and I’ve found some sympathy for those scared disciples on the open sea. This was not their maiden voyage by any stretch. After all some of these guys had been professional fishermen. They had seen these storms before. But who’s not going to be scared when hurricane-force winds are tearing the sails; water is filling the boat and the only one who could do anything about it is snoring in the stern?
Jesus and company had been doing ministry all day. Remember Jesus had been telling stories about sowers and seeds and lamps and lamp stands; doing his "theology for dummies" routine. It was getting late and I imagine their patience was running thin. The disciples threw quite a temper tantrum, too. No doubt anxieties and adrenaline were running high. They did what most anybody would do at a time like this: they panicked. And like St. Paul who airs out some of his own storm stories in II Corinthians, they endured a sleepless night, too. The text says, When evening had come, they crossed over to the other side.
But they were trapped in a storm cell. And there they were. Windblown and waterlogged and sleep deprived; a storm that kept them up…at night.
Have you had any sleepless nights lately? Too much coffee? A Texas thunderstorm maybe? Or wondering how you might pay down your debts or figure out how to give more to the church? Crying babies can keep us up nights. All kinds of things keep us up nights leaving us wondering if Jesus has gone to sleep on us. So you get up, go to the kitchen and turn on the lights and coffee and channel surf through infomercials and Cosby re-runs.
Because we know all too well that riding in the eye of a hurricane is more than just a boat ride on a stormy day. For some of us storm stories don’t have anything to do with the weather; Doppler radars and 7 day forecasts may tell us to bring an umbrella, evacuate a city or take cover, but they aren’t much help when the test results come back positive or our relationship is on the rocks or when the storms we feel are inside of us rather than around us. To say Jesus calmed this storm on the Sea of Galilee doesn’t give us much comfort until we come to know that Jesus has the power to calm the storms of our lives.
Because when evening comes, we don’t want to be alone. When evening comes, it’s harder to cook dinner for only one. When evening comes, it’s hard to go to sleep when your spouse is out of town. Nights can be lonely. My friend Andy wrote a song one time about a couple having relationship problems. The wife couldn’t sleep at night. She felt the pain of distance even though her husband lay in the bed beside her. The lyrics are full of longing: Wake up and tell me you love me. Wake up and hold me close. You seem to be sleeping whenever I need you most. Wake up and say that you need me. Tell me I’m worth your time. I don’t want to be alone again tonight.[1]
Dark nights of the soul come in many shades of gray. And sometimes it’s more than just sleepless nights. Some of you know what it’s really like to want to sleep through the day in your ocean of sheets and pillows. It’s almost impossible for you to imagine light when you just feel like you’re in a gray fog all the time. It’s a kind of spiritual hurricane of the mind and soul. It’s a kind of chaos we try to control like disciples in a sinking boat.
Depression is an illness we might call a storm; a storm we work so hard to fight until finally we have to give up and go wake up Jesus.
Depression can rock your boat and wreck your nerves; but we try to keep it together, don’t we? We try to manage it: so we eat more or drink more or sleep more. And you go through the motions and it’s like nobody’s looking; not even God. Some of you may suffer silently. You struggle to keep it together on those days you feel like you’ve slowly floated far out to sea; the wind is whipping your boat and the oars are about to snap.
The opening verse of the Bible reads, Now the earth was a formless void, there was darkness over the deep and God's spirit hovered over the water. This verse describes a present state of affairs, not only a past event of God at creation. And when we open up to God and others about our Mississippi river of anxieties and sins and worries, we begin to let the spirit of God hover over the chaos and darkness of our being.
We do not have to hide our inner chaos from God or from others we love and trust. We are often so trained that we think it wrong to really say what we feel, because we don’t want to be self-loathing. But to express our feelings and thoughts freely before God, just as Jesus was and just as we are, is to trust that God is big enough to take our tantrums.[2]
Tantrums tend to be over lesser matters, too; technical difficulties that get in the way of our happiness; car problems, a computer crash or lost luggage. Or maybe you’re coming back from youth choir tour in Chicago and the pilot comes on and announces, “We will be in a holding pattern for 45 minutes. But don’t worry, we have 90 minutes of fuel left.” You know. To quote Carl Rogers: It’s like being nibbled to death by ducks.
This year The Pew Research Center released a report about happiness. It’s called, “Are We Happy Yet?” Americans have always had a thing about happiness they say. The Declaration of Independence says as much: “life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Common sense tells us that individual happiness is heavily influenced by life events: Did I get the promotion? Did I have a fight with my girlfriend or spouse? But this report looked at happiness by demographic traits. Listen to some of these results.
Who knew? Make of it what you will. The thing about happiness though is that it tends to come and go with the wind. It depends much on circumstances and sets of preferences. And when my circumstances or preferences change, then my definition of happiness changes with it.
Jesus does not always make our circumstances easy. But there is a power with Jesus that helps us rest easy in the middle of it all. The miracle of it all is that Jesus was sleeping through the storm. He is a picture of peace. Jesus asleep on the feather pillow is not a case of negligence or uncaring. It is a case of someone who is serene; at peace inside his skin. That’s grace.
We can’t storm-proof our lives any more than we can control the path of a hurricane. But we can bank on some things God is always saying to you and me. One of them is the constant whisper, “Peace, be still.”
Into the nonsense and the chaos and the downpours of our lives, God still speaks, “Be courageous, let’s go on over to the other side. You don’t have to live afraid. Peace, be still.”
The power of God’s love is a power that opposes the forces of chaos that would drown out peace with fear.
In your world full of sleepless nights over things you cannot control, would you trust the One who puts a hand on your shoulder and asks you, “Why are you afraid?” It’s a voice that bids us to “go across to the other side.” And whether it’s the Sea of Galilee or Lake Ray Hubbard or a storm in your own life, the miracle happens to us when we come to know the kind of peace that kept Jesus sleeping through the storm.
Every once and so often when it’s least expected, we can feel a wave of peace wash over us. Sometimes it is a profound gratitude that we can’t find words to explain. It can surprise you suddenly while you are driving in your car. It can happen while you listen to fellow Wilshirites tell their stories on Wednesdays in Fellowship Hall. It can happen through the phrase of a prayer or through the sound that flows from these voices and falls onto the congregation like a fresh spring rain.
And you can see it from a poet’s point of view.
On a day when the wind is perfect,
The sail just needs to open
and the world is full of beauty.
Today is such a day.
There's a breeze that can enter your soul.
This love that I know plays the drum
Arms move around me.
Who can contain their self before this beauty?
On a day when the wind is perfect,
The sail just needs to open and the love begins.
Today is such a day.
Today is such a day.[4]
Amen.
Lyrics by Andy Gullahorn from the album “Old Hat.”
under the chosen Sunday to hear audio of sermon (mp3 format) (beginning March 11, 2007).
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