2 Corinthians 6:1-13, Psalm 107: 1-3, 23-32,& Mark 4:35-41 on June 23rd

Below is transcript pulled from the video and formatted by artificial intelligence. There may be inconsistencies or errors.

Grace, mercy, and peace to you in the name of our Lord, our Savior, Jesus the Christ. Amen.

Like many of you, I look at Facebook often through the week, catch up with people that way, and memories pop up. A memory popped up this past week that said 11 years ago I was at a synod assembly. This would have been back in my days with the Metropolitan Washington DC Synod. I don't remember much about that assembly, but I do remember its special guest because that year the presiding bishop of the ELCA, who at the time was Mark Hanson, was our guest. I still don't remember a lot of what was addressed, but I do remember when Mark Hanson spoke to us and he told us a story.

When he grew up in his church, his pastor would say to him, "Mark, how is it with your soul?" Well, three weeks before the assembly, Bishop Hanson had been somewhere and he was getting ready to get on an elevator when that same pastor walked off the elevator and said to him, "Mark, how is it with your soul?"

Now you would think, well goodness, you know if I were the pastor I'd say, "Hey, I watched him grow up, taught him confirmation, saw him go off to college and seminary. The kid did well - he's the bishop of the whole Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Not bad, so it's got to be pretty good with his soul."

You and I have this sense where souls kind of are where we deposit our goodness. Souls are, after all, what go to heaven, right? So we say. Souls are where we deposit our goodness. But that's really not what that pastor was talking about. When you're asked, "How is it with your soul?", the question really is, how is it with your spirit today? How is it with your peace? How is it with your feeling whole and well?

The disciples in our gospel lesson are not feeling whole and well. It's a wonderful story. You know, for weeks we've been talking about Jesus's ministry in Galilee. You remember he got in trouble for breaking the Sabbath commandment and his mother and his brothers wanted to come and get him and take him home so he didn't get into any more trouble or ruin the reputations. He started teaching about the kingdom of God and saying the kingdom of God is, well, it's like a seed that grows when we have nothing to do with it. It still grows and invades.

And now Jesus is about to show by example, to model what all of that teaching means. The disciples don't know that when they go down to the sea and get into the boat. The Gospel writer Mark tells us that it is evening. Now, the way that Jews in biblical times and still today measure a day, they measure it from sunset to sunset, so evening really marks the start of a new day.

Jesus is going into the boat at the start of a new day with these disciples and they're going to go to the other side. Now you and I might think, okay, so they're leaving one place, they're going to go floating off, they're gonna get to Capernaum or someplace where Jesus is known and recognized and comfortable. No, the other side are the lands of the Gentiles. Those foreigners where Jews are taught to shake the dust off their feet lest they be contaminated by the disbelief. They're the other people, the kind we don't mix with, the ones below us, the ones we don't need and certainly don't want in our circles.

Jesus gets into a boat in the evening at the start of a new day to go with the disciples to the other side, and they must be in the boat going, now what? He has spoken and said, if you're going to follow me, you're going to have to take up a cross and follow. It's not an easy job, it's not just a title you put onto your name. It's a way of living. We are the people of the way of Jesus.

So what is the way of Jesus? He gets in the boat and immediately goes to the stern and does what? Sleeps. He takes a nap. Well, he's probably worn out, it's been a busy day. But he probably also has something to teach the disciples because as they start out, these disciples, many of whom were fishermen who had made their living on that sea, who knew how quickly the weather could change and storms could come up and swamp the boat, they were probably a whole lot more nervous than Jesus was when he lay in the stern.

And sure enough, it happened - one of those storms like Peter and James and John probably remember. Oh well, the last time we had a storm like that our friends and colleagues pushed off and they never returned. This is serious business, folks. There's reason when you're going from one place to another to have fear when threats come.

And as that boat begins to rock and as the disciples fear they are going to perish, they look towards the front, they see the sleeping Jesus and they cry out, "Lord, don't you care?" How many of us have prayed that prayer? "Lord, don't you care? I'm in a storm here. I'm afraid I'm going to be swamped. I don't know if I'm going to make it. Lord, where are you?"

And Jesus simply gets up and stills the storm and looks at the disciples with one question: "Do you still not believe? Do you still have no trust in my being with you, my love for you, my care for you, my desire to help you through all things?"

Friends, our life journeys will take us from one place to the other. We might be comfortable on this side. We have our routines, we have our beliefs. Don't mess me up with anything new. But Jesus is stretching us always, taking us new places, mixing us up with new people, having us welcome to our tables those that would be so easy to disregard, those even that we disagree with.

All of a sudden we become communities even as we become one community around his table this morning. Jesus is the one who's going to get in trouble because he's not just going to take God's rules and mandate everyone to follow them. He's going to remind us that God rules, not our understanding of God's rules, and we better be open to where the spirit is opening new days and new possibilities.

Jesus is going to be unwelcome, and there will be those who even conspire against him. And so if you're comfortable and there isn't anybody really challenging your faith, you might want to think about that. Are you really in the boat with Jesus?

But here's the good news: no matter what tries to swamp our boats - and let's face it, it could be a diagnosis, it could be a relationship that seems to be irreparable, it could be fear about the job market or what's happening to our money funds, it could be the world and all of the panicky situations that we're bombarded with - the good news is nothing escapes Jesus, his presence, his protection, his love.

So how is it with your soul? Are you feeling unsettled, anxious? Are you fearful? Are you resentful? Are you hurting, feeling abandoned, unloved?

We are going to sing a song during Holy Communion that was written over 100 years ago. It was written by a man from Chicago who in 1871, during one of those fires that ravaged the cities, lost a lot of his real estate holdings and his wealth. A year later, his four-year-old child, his only son, died. The year after that, he put his wife and his four daughters on a ship, bid them goodbye, told them he would be joining them later, and that ship was lost at sea. Only his wife survived out of their family.

Can you imagine the storm swamping his boat? And yet as he traveled across the ocean to join his wife, he penned the words, "It is well. It is well with my soul." Because my peace, my wholeness, my spirit is not defined by the storms, but by the one who is with me.

One last thing. Jesus is taking a nap. Anybody who has ever studied family systems knows the term "non-anxious presence." When in any community, whether that's your family, your Facebook group, or your church, or your school, or your workplace, any community where there is anxiety, a good leader is a non-anxious presence. Everybody else is excited, agitated. You can increase that, you can temper it down. Jesus is the non-anxious presence in the boat that day. Jesus is the NAP.

So I'm going to suggest to you as you reflect on this sermon, where can Christ's body, the church, be a non-anxious presence in all the communities where we serve and live? Where can we take all the anxieties around us and show the peace of God so that it can be a little more well for somebody else's soul? God bless you in that ministry. God knows the world needs it. Amen.