Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany

admin | 29 January 2017

“Why are ye so fearful?”

“From lightning and tempest; from earthquake, fire and flood; from plaque, pestilence, and famine; from battle and murder, and from sudden death, Good Lord, deliver us.” Thus prays the ancient Litany in the Book of Common Prayer, the first part of the Latin liturgy translated by Cranmer into elegant English which would be one of the distinguishing features of the Book(s) of Common Prayer. It offers a wonderful and ordered way of praying all that belongs to prayer and to our creedal identity in Christ. Such petitions teach a doctrine that, I fear, we have forgotten.

In our technocratic exuberance, we presume to think that we can control the elements but are fearful about every rumour of a snowflake in the air. We forget that we are creatures but are fearful about the brute forces of nature to which we are subject too. We forget that nature does not simply exist for us, for our pleasure and interest. We forget that nature is affected by our disorder; in other words, we find ourselves in a world of earthquake, tempest and fire, a world of woes and suffering, a world where nature, if not always “red in tooth and claw”, can be pretty foreboding and pretty threatening; at the very least deserving of our respect.

We forget even more that nature is subject to a higher authority as are we, too, as Paul reminds us this morning. There is an order and a purpose to nature, as Aristotle puts it, “at least for the most part.” We forget about that phrase, “for the most part”. What that means in Christian terms is that nature, too, is implicated in the Fall of man, that nature is no paradise. There are, I’m afraid, always the blackflies and the black ice, the winds and the snow.

We forget these things and yet are fearful about them. It takes an epiphany to awaken us to the Lord God of all creation and, especially, the Lord God of the human heart.

The Litany makes a wonderful point in this petition. Not only are there natural catastrophes but there are the storms and tempests of human behaviour that wreak the havoc of destruction and death among us as well. Battle and murder are seen in the same light as destructive forces of nature, as storms arising from disorders within us and within the communities and states to which we belong. Those disorders within us complement the disorders without. They are often far more destructive and more fearful than the storms of nature as the litany of death from the 20^th century wars and regimes of totalitarianism and destruction must surely remind us.

St. Mark tells the story of a storm at sea where Jesus rebukes the wind and calms the sea and in so doing awakens our awe and wonder. “Who is this that even the wind and sea obey him?” The Gospel story makes an important point. God is not only above the storm; he also enters into the storm and proclaims peace and calm from within the chaos of the storm, from within the chaos of nature and, even more, from within the chaos of the human heart. We are more but not less than our natural selves.

Christ reveals himself as the Lord and master of the storm. From the midst of the tempest, Christ makes manifest “a sea-change into something rich and strange” for each of us. He demonstrates both the power of his divinity and the depth of his compassion for our humanity. In a way, the sea-change effected in the disciples and in us arises from the care of Christ for us made manifest while he is with us and with us in the storms of life. When we forget this, then we are most fearful.

Our identity in Christ defines us, individually and corporately. Without that we are at the mercy of the storms both literally and metaphorically, for the simple reason that we acquiesce in a cynical and despairing view of life, a view which is a kind of throw-back to the despairing wisdom of the ancients who had “lost the good of intellect” because they had “no hope for anything more”(Dante). That ancient view is “eat, drink and be merry”. It is a kind of hedonistic despair. Why? “for tomorrow you die.” Live for the moment, carpe diem, seize the day, there is nothing beyond the moment. Yolo – you only live once. But then, why bother even with the moment? The sensual pleasures of the moment themselves become unbearable if they cannot be understood.

Epiphany season teaches us that we are constituted for thought and that even the sensual cannot escape the intellectual. “Eternity has been put into our minds”, as the wise old philosopher-preacher Ecclesiastes puts it. Epiphany is especially the season of mystical theology. It teaches us over and over again that we participate in what we behold. What we behold is the mystery of God with us in Jesus Christ. Our forgetfulness of who we are in the sight of God is our fearfulness.

Here in this Gospel story, God is with us in the storm-tossed boat. And that makes all the difference. We are recalled to the authority of God who overrides the storms of nature and the tempests of the human heart. We are fearful when we think ourselves to be all alone and at the mercy of the things around us. Our greatest enemy is ourselves in the things which we do to deceive ourselves. We forget that all authority is of God, the God who cares for us in the midst of the storm. When we are forgetful, then we are fearful. Epiphany season awakens us to the mystery of God in our midst. The God who calms the sea-storms calms the storms of our fearful hearts. He is our peace. Even Christ’s question awakens us to who we are in his sight. It is, we may say, an epiphany of divine care, the only antidote to a heartless and fearful world.