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There is a universal truth etched into the sticky eyelids of every adult who’s cared for a child: Parenting is exhausting.
Whether you parent full-time or work outside of the home as you take care of your little ones – and I’ve done both – the sheer magnitude of taking responsibility for another human being is only amplified by the thousands of small tasks that make up that responsibility. Raising a child isn’t just one big event. It’s hundreds of moments every day, hundreds of tiny gnat-like decisions swirling around your face, hundreds of opportunities to win parenting by engendering integrity and thoughtfulness in your prodigy; or by failing miserably, thus sending your child into a lifetime of therapy.
If there is one thing I learned more than any in the first six months of my son’s life, it’s that the most essential human need is sleep. Human beings can go without food for weeks, but take away sleep for a mere twenty-four hours and suddenly it makes complete sense to store your cat in the refrigerator, because Elmo told you to.
In our gospel story today, I believe Jesus had reached “Defcon One: Parental Exhaustion.” Everywhere he went, fans swamped him. Just a chapter before, crowds pressed into him so severely they nearly crush him. Yet he continued to teach, to heal, to cast out demons. He had to confront religious and political leaders getting up in his grill for healing the sick. It says in chapter three that there were so many people tagging after him he couldn’t even eat. Then his family shows up, and we all know how much energy that takes. By the time we get to our story, Jesus needs some time off. He steps onto a boat, away from all the crowds, and collapses onto a pillow at the rear, trusting his disciples – many of whom are seasoned fishermen – will get them all safely across the sea to the next stop on his Gospel tour.
You know that moment as a parent when you finally allow yourself the space and the time to rest, just for a bit, so you can paste together the frazzled neurons that no longer connect in your brain – and then someone knocks on the door to ask how many seconds to heat up leftovers in the microwave? This is that moment for Jesus.
He called these twelve. He gave them authority to preach and cast out demons. He led by example, teaching and healing the sick. He nurtured and fostered and brought them into his confidence. You’d think by this point that the disciples would have realized they had the power to deal with whatever came their way. Jesus gave them a new toolkit – a new way of seeing and interacting with the world.
But the storm comes and they go back to their old ways. They bail. It’s a bad storm, to be certain. Water pours in, they flounder, and the tempest threatens to take the ship down and everyone with it. But Jesus is so knackered that he stays asleep, even as the water sloshes over him. The disciples aren’t just anxious about the storm, they’re angry at Jesus.
“Don’t you care that we’re perishing?”
What parent hasn’t heard a version of that? “Don’t you care that all my friends are going?” “Don’t you care my social life is over?” “Don’t you care that everyone has a Play Station except me?”
Don’t. You. Care?
David cared. He heard Goliath mock the Israelites, challenging them to a one-on-one battle between two champions that would decide the fate of their nations. David – just a boy – becomes indignant at Goliath’s insults and accepts the challenge. Goliath laughs at him.
Malcolm Gladwell writes an amazing book I recommend to everyone called David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants. He examines the story of David and Goliath and compares it to stories from our own time and place. His premise is that Goliath verses David isn’t a battle between an invincible giant and an underdog who miraculously wins against all odds. Instead, Gladwell says, David always had the advantage because he knew the giant wasn’t what he seemed. David knew his own strengths and wasn’t afraid to change the rules to play to those strengths.
Goliath stood about six foot, nine inches tall – a big man in today’s world, but enormous David’s day. Goliath easily wore a hundred pounds of armor and wielded heavy bronze weapons capable of piercing shields and armor. In hand-to-hand combat, he would have easily dispatched any warrior Israel offered. But David wasn’t a warrior. David was a slinger – a highly-skilled slingshot expert.
Armies were composed of infantry, calvary, and slingers. Slingers had a clear advantage over infantrymen like Goliath. An adept slinger could kill or seriously injure a target up to two hundred yards away. Their accuracy was legendary, able to hit birds in mid-flight. An experienced slinger hurling a stone the size David had could hit an opponent’s head with a velocity of thirty-four meters per second— more than enough to penetrate his skull and either kill him or render him unconscious.
Everyone, including King Saul, assumed that whoever accepted the Philistine’s challenge must take on Goliath in single combat. No one even considered another option. No one was looking for a slinger. Only David saw Goliath’s weakness. Only David changed the rules and trusted the skills he developed protecting his sheep against bears and lions. Only David knew that five stones in his pouch was four too many.
By the time David walks into that valley to face Goliath, it’s too late for the giant. The battle is done. Goliath’s error in judgment, his failure to expect a new set of rules – a new set of tools at his enemy’s disposal, his arrogance in believing that size was all that matters, was his downfall. Historian Robert Dohrenwend writes, “Goliath had as much chance against David, as any Bronze Age warrior with a sword would have had against an [opponent] armed with a .45 automatic pistol.”
So what chance did the disciples have against a storm?
They had Jesus. I don’t know why they woke him up, but whatever the reason I don’t think they were expecting Jesus to stop the storm. Maybe they were hoping he’d help them bail. Maybe they just wanted some acknowledgement of what was happening to them. Maybe they just wanted him to hold them. For whatever reason they woke him, they never considered that the Jesus who healed the sick would command the wind and the waves. This was something completely new. And the dead calm was a whole lot more frightening than the wind and waves ever were.
Then Jesus turns on them. Where is his patience – where’s his compassion? He acts like the exhausted parent who hoped her child would figure out how to do their school project without having to hold her hand through the entire process. It never occurs to the disciples that they could calm the storm themselves. They reach for Jesus – wake him from much-needed rest – and they don’t have a plan. Jesus is ticked.
Jesus stands, soaking wet, bed-head and all, then flips the switch and ends the storm. Then he turns to them with a look only a tired mother could give and asks, “Where is your faith?” And the disciples, still holding their useless buckets, don’t have an answer.
I feel like we’re living in a storm. The landscape of our country is rife with roiling seas of hatred and bitterness, lies and deceptions, bigotry and nationalism. It’s hard to know whom to even trust, let alone share your fears with. We cry, “Do you not care that we are perishing?” and our response is written on a jacket: “I really don’t care do u?”
Well, I do, actually. I care quite a bit. I care about families seeking refuge in our country because their own country cannot protect them and their children; I care about the lives of black men and women who are targeted by law enforcement because of the color of their skin; I care that escalating poverty means lack of access to health care, to education, to healthy food, and to affordable housing for millions more Americans each year. And I’m not alone.
Every day brings new waves of scandal and shameful actions. Every day leaders and pundits expel whirlwinds of hot air defending unjust policies and their own self-interests. We’re bailing fetid water as fast as we can, and where is God? Political and corporate giants threaten and bluster and tweet, and we’re at the tipping point. Doesn’t God care that we are perishing?
Maybe God is tired – tired of us, tired of our privilege, tired that his children allow their brothers and sisters to starve and die because we believe there is nothing to be gained by their life. Maybe God is tired of self-serving prayers, Facebook memes, and wringing hands in the face of gun violence in this country. Maybe God is so tired of our shortsightedness and arrogance that he’s letting us drown ourselves, inch by inch, storm by storm, until the ice caps melt and we are submerged in our own stupidity. Maybe it will be like the days of Noah, only we don’t get and ark because God didn’t do this to us – we did.
Now hear the good news: We have a pocketful of rocks. And on each rock is inscribed L-O-V-E. We have a toolkit and we can fix this, if we try. Love is our weapon and it’s as hard as nails. This is the love that Martin Luther King, Jr. took with him on the March to Birmingham. It’s the love that Emily Davison took with her to the racetrack as she fought for women’s rights to vote. It’s the love that Father Oscar Romero had for the poor and marginalized of El Salvador. It’s the love that brought Heather Heyer to Charlottesville to stand against white supremacy. This kind of love stands with the stranger; crosses boundaries and countries and cultures, heals the sick, feeds the hungry, frees the prisoner, and cares for the orphan. Because this love believes we are all worth the risk, all worth the price, and all worth the time.
There are giants out there, no lie, who are armed to the teeth with weapons to pierce your soul, who want nothing more than to redefine everything we are, and who have every advantage if we were to fight them on their own terms. But that’s where we win the battle – by using the tools we’ve been given and changing the rules of engagement. Real power isn’t in might and right and money and privilege. Love is the greatest, most dangerous power on this earth, and wielded with precision, it will fell the giant every time.
Six months from today is Christmas Eve, if you can believe it. At my church we will sing my very favorite hymn: “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.” It was written as a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow during the height of the American Civil War – a time when Americans weren’t just screaming at each other, but were actively killing each other over the morality and economy of owning another human being. The last two verses get me every time.
And in despair I bowed my head;
“There is no peace on earth,” I said;
“For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men.”
God isn’t asleep in our storm. But I think God is giving us that mom-look that says we know better. We have the tools, we have our baptism. We know what to do. Bailing out isn’t enough – and neither are our thoughts and prayers. We have to get to work. We must challenge the giant. We must rebuke the wind and quell the sea – and have faith that the love we wield will one day bring peace.
(Sermon preached on I Samuel 17 and Mark 4:35-41 at The Hermitage on June 24, 2018)
I thank you for your outstanding exposition of the Word, and for your homily of hope!
So glad that you post your sermons especially when I am not present to hear them. Excellent as always.
Fantastic Terry. I am so proud of you. But even more you have re=awakened in me the hope and closeness I feel only around my Creator these days. Thank you both. Amen