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Third Sunday After Pentecost St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Canton OH 1 Samuel 17:57 – 18:5, 10-16, Mark 4:35-41

June 21, 2009 The Rev. Barbara L Bond

Peace!  Be still! Today we have two stories of storms and steadiness, of crisis and quietness.  When storms rage around us, can we find some comfort in these stories from thousands of years ago? Young David had a complicated relationship with King Saul.  When today’s reading begins, David has just returned from killing Goliath, a fight that only he was willing to take on, trusting quietly in God to help him defeat the gigantic warrior.  He comes back to the king, and the king’s son Jonathan is in total awe of David.  At once the two young men bind themselves together as soul mates, making a covenant of deep and abiding friendship.  This connection will sustain David through the stormy relationship with King Saul.  Saul is afflicted by mental illness, and David has soothed his rages with music on the lyre.  But the next day that doesn’t work, and Saul lodges a spear at David.  In further stories, we hear how Jonathan protects and advises his friend David and helps him to escape the rages of his father.  Through the crises, David is sustained by the steady and quiet friendship of Jonathan. About a thousand years later, Jesus walked this earth with his disciples, who were also protective of him.  As the gospel reading opens, Jesus suggests they escape the crowds and go to the other side of the Sea of Galilee.  The disciples take him in the boat, “just as he was.”  I love that phrase – I wonder what it means:  “just as he was.”  How was he?  Tired?  Apparently, because he went to sleep in the back of the boat.  Meanwhile, a huge storm came up and the disciples were terrified.  They went to him, and he was asleep on a cushion.  What a scene -- the storm is raging, and Jesus is asleep on a cushion.  The disciples are not pleased.  They wake him up and cry out in anguish, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” I wonder where Jesus is on our boat.  When the storms of life rage around us, is that when we go looking for him?  Are we content to let Jesus sleep on a cushion, at the back of the boat, at the edge of our lives, until those storms come up?  And when they do, do we cry, “Hey!  God!  Don’t you care about me?”   Jesus said to the sea, “Peace!  Be still!”  And I think he was saying that to the disciples too – “Peace! Be still!”  In the midst of storms, finding peace and being still can be quite an undertaking.  But, like the steady support of a friend like Jonathan, Jesus’ steady presence can bring us the peace and quiet we need. Life brings us storms that we don’t expect, challenges we don’t plan, like disabled children and spouses, surprise disease processes, loss of employment, loss of retirement funds, accident, injury – all those things insurance salesmen warn about and are also helpless to prevent.  Things just happen – that’s the way life is.  Like the disciples, we get in a boat on a placid lake, and then everything changes. Because we are Christians, we know all this.  Jesus invites us to head into storms, and he is there with us.  And he doesn’t always make the storms stop. But if we listen, we can hear that voice within us saying, “Peace.  Be still.”  The quiet, dependable presence of God, the love and fellowship of our community, will help us ride out any storm.