Today's Verses: Proverbs 4:7-8 (NIV)

7 Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom.

Though it cost all you have, a get understanding.

8 Esteem her, and she will exalt you;

embrace her, and she will honor you.

a Or Whatever else you get

In this section, the father is passing on sound teaching to his children the sound advice that his father passed on to him.

Today's Comments: Learning wisdom and understanding is an important part of our education. Each of us has teachers and mentors who have brought us up to the point where we are in both our secular and religious knowledge. The disciples had their teacher, Jesus, and we have our mentors and scripture to help us obtain an understanding of God.

Today's lessons at church were about teaching and gaining that knowledge and understanding that we need in our lives. In particular, they were centered around Mark, Chapter 4, where the disciples and their master were in a boat during a great storm. The readings were:

Job 38:1-11;16-18;
Psalm 107:1-3; 23-32;
2 Corinthians 5:14-21;
Mark 4:35-41

The sermon that is preached at the 8 AM service follows. I made some minor changes at the suggestion of Fr. David, my pastor, for the 10 AM service. Send me an email (steve.sterry@gmail.com), and I will email you a copy.

What stands out most when I read the Gospel for today is that out of fear, Jesus’ disciples, all of a sudden, find themselves in extreme danger. Instead of waking Jesus and trusting him with their fears of losing their lives in the storm, they emotionally act out of fear and ignorance by chastising their master for ignoring their needs: "Teacher,” they exclaim, “don't you care if we drown?".

This is their reaction to their troubles of the moment. Isn’t this sometimes the same reaction that you and I have to our problems? “Why, God, is this happening to me?” We cry out. “I am caught up in this storm and you ignore me.”

The disciples have not yet realized that their master is the Messiah, the one about who the Old Testament prophets speak and write. And, at this moment, unknown to the disciples, those prophesies are being fulfilled in front of their very eyes. Up to this point, Jesus has been their teacher. But now, the disciples’ view of Him is about to be elevated; and this is just one of many steps that these men will take in their journey along the way to learning and recognizing who this teacher, Jesus, really is.

So, are we much different from those disciples? God is taking us on a journey; and along the way, we learn more about Him and ourselves as we mature in our relationship with Him. Instead of being in the boat with Jesus, we are at Blessed Sacrament learning about God through the Word which he has revealed to us in the Gospel and in scripture. And, yet, in our own immaturity, we are still too often concerned about our own worldly trials and tribulations, failing to remember that we can ask Jesus for help, and not realizing that sometimes, only He has the power to quiet the waves and still the winds in our lives. “Quiet! Be still,” He says, and like the winds and the waves surrounding that boat, so long ago, He will bring calm to our lives, but only if we ask.

And like the reply to the disciples, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?” We also are admonished for our failure to keep faith in him. As Jesus reminds His disciples, the Gospel also reminds us that this same Jesus, who the wind and waves obey, is the one who gives meaning to our being, purpose to our living, and salvation to our souls.

In the Old Testament lesson for today, like the disciples, Job is reminded of the great Power of God. And like Job, we cannot be expected to comprehend why God does things the way that He does. Job can only kneel before His Creator in awe and admiration and pray that his losses are restored and that his relationship with God is healed. And we, as the psalm tells us, can cry out to the Lord in our trouble, and He will hear us and shelter us from the storms of our distress. We are able to ask for God’s guidance and help, because, as the Epistle tells us, God has reconciled His creation to Himself through Jesus Christ, despite our sinful nature, and despite the selfishness that causes us to blame God or others for our own problems.

It is plain to me that God does not want us to drown. I think that Jesus was teaching the disciples a valuable lesson, when they found Him asleep at the tiller. I believe that he used their reactions, which were out of fear, to remind them that all they needed to do was to call upon Him in their adversity, and He would hear them. And this storm was just the beginning. If we follow the chronology of the Gospels, this was early on in Jesus’ ministry, the twelve were newly appointed as disciples, and this was just one of many lessons in their training. If they were going to go out to teach and preach the Word in the world, they had to understand who this Jesus really was and the trials and tribulations that they would have to face. For most of them, it would not be until after the Resurrection that they would truly realize who Jesus was. Now, they were being tested and built up so that they would eventually be able to partake in the greatest ministry of all time: one that would change the world forever.

As I said, we are not much different from those disciples. We too have our doubts and fears. We too are faced with real problems in this world, including a current economic recession, the likes of which most of us have never seen in our lifetimes. We also watch our mother church drowning herself in a sea of apostasy, knowing and understanding that actions which we read about and understand in the Bible as attributable to our sinful nature are being touted by well-meaning bishops and priests as being excusable because of what they errantly insist are God given attributes. Isn’t it funny, but like the disciples in that boat, they too are, in effect, blaming God for their problems, as well, instead of accepting the fact that it is man’s sinful nature that is influencing them and has created this storm of apostasy which is breaking up the church.

But, should we believe that God is going to let them drown? I don’t think so, at least not yet. In His own time, God will teach them their lesson and will bring them to corrective action and repentance, just as he has done so many times in the past with both Jews and Gentiles. And so, we must put our trust in God that He will do just that.

I think, also, there is a personal lesson to be learned here at Blessed Sacrament from the readings, today. We are reminded of the lesson that Job learned. It is a lesson which tells us that God sets the standards, and we might not necessarily know why. It is a standard which says that we should love the Lord our God with all our heart, strength, mind, and soul and love our neighbor as ourselves. It is a standard which we cannot meet except by God given grace and the sacrifice that our Lord Jesus Christ made on the cross for the atonement of our sins.

A few of us at Blessed Sacrament, especially, seem to be feeling the storm inside our church right now. There is a lot of dialog going on about and between the three groups of Christians who are attending services here. I am reminded that, from a practical prospective, these groups have been attending and worshiping at services together for a long time before they became visibly defined by their theologies. At the same time, I am also reminded about the divisions in the Church at Corinth, when I hear concerns from and about members of these three Christians groups. In his first epistle to the Corinthians, Chapter 1, verse 10, Paul writes:

¹⁰I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought. ¹¹My brothers, some from Chloe's household have informed me that there are quarrels among you. ¹²What I mean is this: One of you says, "I follow Paul"; another, "I follow Apollos"; another, "I follow Cephas[a]"; still another, "I follow Christ."

After reminding the church that Jesus, who died on the Cross, is the one about who they preach, Paul tries to resolve the problem by reminding them, beginning at Verse 26:

²⁶Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. ²⁷But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. ²⁸He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, ²⁹so that no one may boast before him. ³⁰It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. ³¹Therefore, as it is written: "Let him who boasts boast in the Lord."[d]

Here at Blessed Sacrament, some of us are Episcopalian, some of us are, or soon will be, Anglican, and some of us are or will be Roman Catholic. But, the reality is that we still all follow the same Christ. We are no different than those on the boat that night in the midst of that great storm. We are no different than Job, who recognized that it is God who does things for His own purposes and thereby teaches us what it means to be righteous on His terms. Our epistle for today does not tell us that we are Christ’s Ambassadors as Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, or Anglicans. It tells us that we are members of the Christian community at Blessed Sacrament who are Ambassadors to Placentia, to Orange County, and to the world. We are implored to be reconciled to God. And if we are reconciled to God, we must also be reconciled to each other.

So, rather than be dependent upon ourselves and reacting on our own to the storm which surrounds us, let us together recognize that we are Christians, first, who need to put aside our own fears and trust that the Lord is leading us in the right direction, and so that, in Christ, the storms of our lives may be calmed and we might be reconciled to God and become, as the epistle states, the righteousness of God.

Let us now pray together Prayer #14 on Page 818 of the Book of Common Prayer and in our hearts ask for the strengthening and unity of our own community of worshiping Christians, as well as for healing in the Christian Church at large.

O God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, our only Savior, the Prince of Peace: Give us grace seriously to lay to heart the great dangers we are in by our unhappy divisions; take away all hatred and prejudice, and whatever else may hinder us from godly union and concord; that, as there is but one Body and one Spirit, one hope of our calling, one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of us all, so we may be all of one heart and of one soul, united in one holy bond of truth and peace, of faith and charity, and may with one mind and one mouth glorify thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.