I just came back from attending my first General Assembly. It is sort of a cross between a political convention and a session of Congress. Commissioners are called together every year from all over the country to do the business of the church, and their decisions are expected to embody the collected wisdom and united voice of the whole Church. Their charge is not simply to reflect the will of the people, however, but as the Book of Order says, to seek earnestly together, with prayer and discernment, to find and represent the will of Christ.
So unexpected things can happen at a General Assembly. And every interest group imaginable comes to make sure its point of view is heard and to lobby for its position to prevail. The exhibit hall is enormous. There are booths advertising everything from the Presbyterian Publishing Co. to the Boy Scouts. You can buy Rain Forest Crunch (chocolate covered or plain) in the SRRV booth (they’re working for economic justice for indigenous peoples) and get a back rub in the Health and Wholeness group (they’re lobbying Congress for enhancements to health care legislation). I got a free coffee mug for filling out a survey at the PresbyNet booth (anyone wanna be on line with about a zillion other Presbyterians?).
And everybody has brochures. And position papers. And breakfasts and lunches and dinners. Different groups tend to congregate together, and support one another’s issues. The goddess worshipers (also known as the “Voices of Sophia”) hang around with the homosexual activists (there are several groups in that category) and the more conservative subgroups have banded together under the general label “Renewal Groups.” Up until a couple of years ago, however, when denominational approval of the ordination of active homosexuals began to look like a very real possibility, most of the Renewal Groups left the organization I was working for pretty much alone. You see, I went to General Assembly to represent a pariah group. I was with Presbyterians Pro-Life.
We weren’t asking for much. First, we wanted the denomination to say out loud and in public that partial-birth abortion (which I will not describe to you because there are children in the congregation) is morally wrong. Second, we wanted our governing bodies’ actions to reflect the denomination’s stated abortion policy - that is, to reflect moral reservations about abortion in our education materials and the other publications prepared and distributed by the PCUSA, and for the medical insurance program to stop funding those abortions which our policy already says are immoral (that is, for gender selection or fetal tissue transplants).
I testified in front of the Social Justice Committee in favor of declaring partial-birth abortion morally unacceptable, and remained throughout the rest of the hearings, and I was really shocked by the open hostility displayed by our opponents. It was so bad that the moderator had to rebuke them three times for making spiteful comments about Presbyterians Pro-Life. And mind you, this was even though he was on their side himself! It was very discouraging. But the final vote in the committee was even more disheartening. Not even the U.S. Congress can justify this appalling procedure; Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan - who is pretty pro-abortion generally - has said that it borders on infanticide. And our statement wouldn’t have any legal force; women would still be free to do anything their conscience permits! But the committee, all members in good standing of the church of Jesus Christ, who bought us out of bondage to sin with his blood, voted - 36 to 7 - against declaring partial birth abortion morally unacceptable.
There were about 30 of us on the team this year; I was one of half a dozen or so brand new members. Some of our members have been working against abortion for 20 years or more. And of us all, it was the newer folk who were the most disheartened by what had happened. This was nothing new to the others. Terry Schlossberg, our Executive Director, has tried for years to work with Presbyterian Women’s Ministries so that we could work together on things that all of us should be able to agree on, like adoption, or post-abortion counseling. But they haven’t even been willing to speak to her. We have also asked to be included in the network of ministries sponsored by the Presbyterian Health, Education and Welfare Assotiation. The amount of courage and perseverance it takes to keep showing up and speaking up, especially in the face of the intense personal opposition we experience, is really remarkable.
And yet we are not the most hated subgroup at General Assembly. That privilege has been transferred to a new group, called One By One, which began its ministry three years ago in Rochester, NY, offering counsel and healing to the sexually conflicted: victims of sexual abuse, prostitution, and rape; sexual addicts, and homosexuals who are unhappy with their life. These are the new pariahs. The hostility against them at the hearings was even worse than what PPL got. And yet, led by their own experience of God’s grace in their lives, these people were willing to put their own vulnerability on display, to have even their Christianity mocked and vilified, in order to offer hope and healing to the last group of outcasts in our society: those who know they are sinners.
Why do they do it? Why do we do it? Why don’t we just go join a denomination that agrees with us on issues of sexuality and life, where we won’t be subject to personal attacks and ostracization?
And what has all this got to do with today’s text?
Let me take you back to Palestine, to the Sea of Galilee.
It is a freshwater lake 13.5 miles long, 7.5 miles wide, and 690 feet below sea level. Because it is surrounded by steep hills, the wind rushing down them creates sudden, violent storms. Peter, Andrew, James and John would have been very well acquainted with these storms, and had probably had any number of narrow escapes during their fishing careers.
How many of you have experience in small boats? They’re a whole lot different than ocean liners, aren’t they? You can ignore just about any kind of weather on an ocean liner unless you get seasick. And if you don’t get seasick, it can even be kind of fun, the way a blizzard can be fun - if you’re inside by the fire. But small boats are something else. My brother Jeremy was a fisherman in Alaska for over 20 years; he quit when he was about 40 because too many of his friends had gotten killed; seven of them went down with their boat in March of 95. Jeremy figured his time was running out. He’s still in boats - but he’s a mate on a big one instead of a hand on a small one. He can sleep at night.
I spent a fair amount of time on boats when I was young. I’ve crewed on a two-man sloop and rowed a dinghy up the harbor to visit a neighbor. I’ve even been caught out with small-craft warnings up and a broken rudder cable. But the scariest time of all was when I was 11, coming back from a picnic in Argentina. We lived on the banks of the River Parana, the longest river in Argentina. By the time it got to where we lived, also the widest. And we were in the habit of gathering up family and friends and food on Sunday afternoons and going out to an island in the middle of the river for picnics. We had a sort of long skinny open boat called a canoa, with an outboard motor, and it held about 8 people. Before we had finished our picnic an unexpected storm blew up. The island we were on was very flat and sandy; I think the reason we didn’t stay there until the storm was over was that when the river was high the islands were covered. At any rate we gathered up our things and got into the boat and started back.
I don’t remember being scared at the beginning. I was sort of a space cadet; you could always count on me not noticing what was going on because I was always thinking about something else. And we’d been on the river in the rain before. And my dad knew what he was doing. He grew up on Puget Sound, he was a Sea Scout, he had small boat handling papers, and besides, he was MY DAD. He knew what he was doing. So I was just fine, until I looked back during a lull in the baling (we were all baling) and he was white as a sheet and one of the other men had joined him to try to hold the tiller steady against the push of the water trying to force us downstream with the current. And then I got scared. It’s smart to be scared when your life is in danger. Let’s look at our Scripture passage again:
"...Jesus said to them, 'Let us go across to the other side.' And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him and said to him, 'Teacher, don’t you care if we are perishing?' He woke up and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, 'Peace! Be still!' Then the wind ceased and there was a dead calm. He said to them, 'Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?' They were terrified and asked each other, Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!'”
Peter and Andrew and James and John knew the power of the water. They had probably lost friends to Galilee’s storms. They were neither fools nor cowards. They had every reason to be afraid; the sea had killed and would undoubtedly kill again. Why shouldn’t they wake Jesus up?
This is a very famous passage.
The first point everyone makes is that even the wind and the waves obey Jesus. And this is an important point, one of the key signs of Jesus’ identity as the Messiah. Jesus is Lord over the created order, not just a traveling teacher and healer. And I have customarily heard this passage preached to assure his followers that He who calmed the wind and storm can also calm whatever in our life is frightening or disturbing us. And this is true. Make no doubt about that. Jesus can still calm the sea. But I don’t believe that the lesson we are to learn from this passage is that when storms come up we are to ask Jesus to make everything smooth for us. He can, of course, and He does so when it pleases him. But Jesus’ job is not to make things easy for us.
The points I want to make are quite different.
First, Jesus was sound asleep. This is a small boat, folks. He was probably wet as well as tossed about. What does it say about him that he could sleep through all this?
Second, if Jesus woke up, what did the disciples expect him to do? He was a carpenter, not a sailor!
Third, they woke him with an accusation that he was sleeping on the job, not with a confession that they were scared to death and didn’t know what to do.
Fourth, Jesus said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”
What we see in this passage is that Jesus is gentle with those who are immature in their faith. But he calls his followers to grow beyond that point. His disciples knew enough to believe that he could do something to save them, why didn’t they take that a step further? It seems from Jesus’ response that he expected them to understand by this point that they could trust him. As the author of Hebrews tells us in chapter 5:
"In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food!....But solid food is for the mature.... Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity..." [Heb 5:12,13, 6:1]
Jesus’ job is not to make things easy for us. It is to call us to believe in him, and to follow, and to grow to be like him. And the way we grow beyond the level of immaturity displayed by Jesus’ followers in this passage is by persevering even when circumstances seem to be against us. He told his disciples, and us, that we will have troubles in this world. He told his disciples, and us, that since the world hated him, it would no doubt hate us as well. Peter reminded us that we have been called to suffering “because Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example, so that we should follow in his steps.” [1 Pet 2:21] Jesus’ brother James wrote the following to Christians who were experiencing persecution:
"Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything." [Jas 1:2-4]
Jesus’ job is not to make things easy for us. It is to save us from sin and death, not from suffering and life. Life includes suffering. We won’t grow at all if we base our lives on the premise that God sent his son to die for us so that we might be spared suffering. But even worse than not growing in faith and Christ-likeness is what seems to be happening in some places within the Presbyterian Church. Some of the theology I saw practiced and heard preached was a theology that rejects suffering altogether. And as far as I can tell it rejects suffering because those who preach it no longer seem to believe that God has the power to redeem our suffering, or that Jesus Christ is present with us in suffering.
It is sometimes very hard to remember, when the winds blow and the waves threaten to swamp our boat, that as long as Jesus is in the boat with us, we will not drown. It helps to have other people around to remind us, when our faith falters, when we forget - for a moment - that the battle is already won, that our lives are secure.
At General Assembly, it was our daily worship and our evening prayer time that made perseverance even more than possible. Our worship, Bible study and prayer reminded us why it is necessary.
The pastors on the team took turns leading morning worship; each of us was led by God to speak from texts that reminded us of the sovereignty of God, the reality of spiritual warfare, the certainty of the presence of Christ and his Spirit, and the completeness of the victory that is already ours in Christ. Two of us, in fact, preached on Ephesians 6, on “taking up the whole armor of God.” We encouraged each other whenever we met throughout the day and week, in halls and on elevators, reminding one another of those things we knew to be true.
And this year, God has given us two gifts. The first small sign of hope is that Presbyterian Women’s Ministries has indicated their willingness to begin cooperating on promoting adoption. And on Thursday evening, the plenary session (which is when all the commissioners vote on the issues) did not accept the committee’s recommendation that the Church continue to be silent about the horror of partial-birth abortion. They passed a resolution stating that the procedure “is of great moral concern which should only be considered when the physical life of the mother is in danger.” This was the first time in twenty-four years that Presbyterians Pro-Life have been able to prevail on this issue. And we are now the only mainline denomination in the country that has taken a stand. And we celebrated! We did wait until we got back to the hospitality suite before we indulged in any unseemly displays of emotion, but we rejoiced. We hugged one another and cried and prayed and sand, and then sent out for ice cream. And Terry reminded us that we also sent out for ice cream 9 years ago. It sure doesn’t take much to make us happy. We’re set now for the next nine years. Or even ten.
To be allowed to see the fruit of the work God calls us to do is a gift, not a guarantee. As that famous passage from Hebrews 11 says, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
It isn’t Jesus’ job to calm our storms, but to calm our hearts so that we can face the storms with confidence and courage.
