Outstretched Arms in the Storm

 6-20-21

Grace and peace to you from God creator and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ, by the power of the holy spirit. Amen.

I don’t normally do this, but I want you to take out your smart phone, right now… I want you to google “Jesus Calms the Storm painting, Daniel Bonnell.” (I would have purchased the digigal download of his work, but it was the only one that cost $200!) If you don’t have a smart phone at the ready, I’ll describe the painting and you can look it up later. In Bonnell’s stunning paining depicting today’s reading from Mark, the moon is shining, but it looks like it’s pulsating in an ominous red sky. The water is sweeping and black and churning and takes up about the entire the painting. It feels as though you’re looking UP at the moon from the bottom of a whirlpool or from across ridiculously high waves. 

When you do get a chance to look at this picture… try to find the boat. It’s surprisingly hard to find - it’s super tiny, in one corner of the picture, on the top of one of the steep waves, with Jesus and his out-stretched arms a challenge to make out against the red sky. 

I’ve never been on a boat during a storm, but this painting does remind me of how I felt as a kid sitting in the basement during tornado warnings, or when I lived in NJ on the eve of hurricane Irene and or Superstorm Sandy.

Storms in our lives take on endless forms – some physical like nor’easters and hurricanes. Other storms are invisible but deadly, like the pandemic. Some are societal or systemic, like poverty, or racism or sexism or queerphobia. Some are internal and individual. But in one aspect they are all alike: in our every storm, that little figure of Jesus in the boat does not seem to be doing us much good.

In fact, when the storm starts for the poor disciples in the boat trying to cross the lake, Jesus is curled up, snoring away! It seems understandable that the disciples are upset at Jesus. After all, it was all Jesus’ idea in the first place to take this trip across the lake, in the dark, after a LONG day, to a place THEY didn’t want to go - the OTHER side of the lake.

The other side of the lake is where THOSE people live - who look, cook, eat, act and dress differently. Why in the world would Jesus want to go over there? And why do WE have to go with him?

After all, we certainly have a hard enough time worrying about those in our lives we love and care about, and things happening in our immediate vicinity. Why should we concern ourselves with what’s happening on the other side of the lake, other side of the country, other side of the world, anyway?

In that storm painting I talked about earlier, you can’t see the other side of the lake. You can’t see these poor, frightened disciples.  In fact, you can barely see the boat. But what you can see, starkly against the freaky-red sky, are the tiny, but firmly outstretched arms of Jesus. 

In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus has one job to do: to usher in the Kingdom of God. Only that kingdom is not going to look like we expect. It will involve Jesus bringing together different kinds of people– People from both sides of the lake. People related, not by blood, but instead by doing God’s will. 

God’s kingdom just might have something to do with Jesus endlessly reaching out to people, to stretch his arms out to encompass and heal and teach and welcome any who come to him – even stretching so far and wide as the beams of a cross, stretching so wide as to even reach beyond death and the grave. All so that you, me, and the people across the lake… across the country… across the world, are all gathered into this beloved family.

And that makes the powers in this world that defy God shake in anger ...and terror. These powers, forces, institutional structures, and ways of sin that pull us away from God will do everything they can to throw obstacles in our way: send others to discourage us. They will make it easier to choose not to see to institutional racism and white privilege. They will paint certain people with broad strokes. Pummeling us with wind and rain and voices and waves to fight against. 

The closer we get to Jesus and the more we try to live as part of God’s Kingdom come near, the worse this storm may actually get. 

The winds and waves and rain and darkness seem stronger.  The winds of injustice and violence … the waves of fear and hate…..  the stinging, cold rain of apathy… All threatening to capsize us. Like in this painting, it seems like a distinct possibility that the storm just might win. 

The 6th anniversary and commemoration of the Emmanuel 9 was this past Thursday. June 17th 2015 in Charleston, South Carolina, Nine African American church members, including the pastor, were killed by a white gunman during a Bible study. That gunman grew up in an ELCA church. 

We as a denomination have begun the work of grappling with our history. We’re nowhere near done yet, but there are signs of hope. 

Juneteenth was on this past Saturday, where all of Vienna gathered as a community to begin the Liberty Amendments Celebration month. Community non-profits, organizations, schools, faith communities - including us at Emmanuel - remembered that formerly enslaved people in Texas were FINALLY given the news of their freedom… two and a half years after it had been put into effect by the Emancipation proclamation. 

One of the amendments we commemorate during the Liberty Amendments month is the 13th Amendment - the formal end chattel slavery…  though the legacy of slavery are still felt even now, and informal slavery still exists in the form of systemic racism and mass incarceration. 

We have a long way to go for real freedom. And we still have a lot of storms to navigate before then. 

But we’re not out there in the storm by ourselves. Jesus is in the boat with us. Jesus is the one calling us out into the lake, steering us in the right direction. Jesus is the one who has command over the wind and the waves. Jesus is navigating us, not us, making sure that we will get where we’re supposed to go. 

God is steering us toward a future of love and freedom and peace, where are of God’s beloved children are loved, where SOMEDAY we don’t have to remind ourselves that “black lives matter,” because we will treat ALL lives as if they mattered. We will no longer need a “Liberty Amendments Month,” because someday we will actually live out “liberty and justice for ALL.”

We’re not in this storm by ourselves, because there are other boats with us. We’re part of Jesus’ armada of peace, crossing the lake to the people on the other side, with wide open arms, just like Jesus. Thanks be to God. Amen.