Jesus said to them, "Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?" And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, "Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?"  Mark 4:40-41

In December when I returned from sabbatical one of the things we all commented on was that in all of our planning and preparation for that four months, the one thing we never took into account was the weather; no one ever thought that extreme weather would be a feature of the sabbatical – but it was. And so you, the People of All Saints’, had to deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Irene with the flooding and loss of power and creeping mold.

Then in October the freak snowstorm came, with all the fallen trees and branches that caused loss of power yet again, and road closures, and debris, and damage to property; and we are still attending to a few of the details of the clean-up and repair those storms set in motion.

And then on Friday afternoon, just in case we were getting a little too comfortable, we had quite a violent thunderstorm, with a deluge of rain and powerful winds; I was surprised that we didn’t have any trees or large branches come down. As it turns out, I was here in church for a wedding rehearsal just as the storm hit: the power threatened and then went out briefly, parts of the parking lot became a lake, and the area of the roof where the air-conditioning unit comes in began to leak, as it does when we have a hard, wind-driven rain. And in one of those wonderful ironies, the Gospel passage the bride and groom had chosen for their wedding was Jesus’ parable about the man who built his house on the rock, which was able to withstand rain and winds and storm!

So, we know a lot about storms, and what they can do, and they damage they can cause, and the power that they have. And we come to this morning’s Gospel with all of that knowledge and experience and feeling; we can understand the disciples’ fear when the sudden storm comes up and they are in a small fishing boat out on the Sea of Galilee.

The Sea of Galilee (which is really a large, inland, fresh-water lake) is relatively shallow, and so when a sudden storm comes up, even today, the waves get out-of-control pretty quickly. Jesus and the disciples were in the boat because Jesus had been teaching at the lakeside; and the crowd had grown so large that he had gotten into a boat anchored close to shore so that he could be heard better. Jesus had been teaching them in parables about the Kingdom of God, about what the world and human life are like when God is in charge. After the end of that teaching session, Jesus decided that they should sail across the lake, to an area that was mixed – both Jews and Gentiles – where they encountered a man who the Gospel of Mark describes as being possessed by a demon; however you understand that, they were heading into wild territory. So clearly, this whole stretch of the story reflects turmoil and upset, as Jesus has been announcing God’s Kingdom; the sudden storm on the lake only serves to highlight and underscore the point.

So what was the disciples’ reaction to the storm? They were frightened – the waves came slapping up over the gunwales of the boat, and it was taking on water, and it seemed that the boat might actually sink; no wonder they were afraid!

And where was Jesus in all this?  He was asleep in the stern, no doubt worn out from teaching the crowds and needing some down time. But in their fear and panic, the disciples’ turned to accusation and recrimination: they woke him up and said to him, "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" Jesus rebukes the storm, tells it to be silent, be muzzled – and the storm obeys; then the disciples’ fear turns to awe: what in the world has just happened?  Who is this guy, really?

And yet Jesus chides the disciples: "Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?" Haven’t you been watching and listening to what I have been doing and saying since you’ve been with me?  What were we just talking about, back there on the shore? I don’t think Jesus was scolding the disciples for being afraid of the storm; the consequences could have been very serious; it was sensible for them to be afraid of extreme weather.

We all know that – how many stories do we know about people who have gone to the beach to watch a hurricane come in, only to become injured, or lose their car to the water, or even lodes their life, because they did not have a healthy fear and respect for the potential power of a hurricane? No, I think it was sensible for the disciples to be concerned about the storm; but their fear became faith-less when they forgot to trust Jesus, when everything that they had been seeing and hearing in his presence went right out of their heads; it was then that their fear and lack of trust turned to acrimony and accusation: Don’t you care about us?! They needed Jesus to show them, once again, that they power of God is greater than anything they would ever meet in life.

And what about us?  Do we trust God when we become afraid?  There are many things in our lives that are reasonable to be fearful about on some level: the safety of people we love; our health; our ability to pay our bills and meet our financial and personal obligations in this painfully slow economy; the security of the world around us as we hear news from so many places about instability and unrest, and we know that an eruption of violence in one part of the world or the country can have an overflow or a ripple effect towards us. There is often good reason for concern due to all of these things, and more.

But Jesus calls us to go beyond our fear and to hold onto trust – to trust that the goodness of God is greater than whatever the storms of life are sending our way. Jesus calls us to put aside the temptation or inclination to accusation and acrimony – so easy when we are fearful – to take a deep breath and trust that in the midst of chaos and confusion, and even pain, that God is with us – holding us, loving us, caring for us still. And as we remember that we can then offer that hope to others; we can be the ones to say: Fear not! Do not be afraid! Or at least we can refrain from lashing out in our own anxiety and fear.

There is a story I read recently about a systematic theologian who was asked to be a speaker at a conference about the future. Systematic theologians are the people who are supposed to know all about God and theology in a very complete and organized and logical way. This conference took place in the late 1970s when Alvin Toffler’s book “Future Shock” was all the rage; the symposium was intended to peer into the future from a multiplicity of perspectives and try to forecast what the future would be like, and what the role of the church would be in it. The speakers were sociologists, and culture critics and all manner of other prognosticators. The systematic theologian spoke last; he was supposed to be the clean-up batter. When he came to the podium what he said, in essence, was: I am a theologian.  I do not know what the future will hold.  I do know it will be held in the hands of God. Years later this man was going through some papers and found the material that had been published after that conference, and he read through them again, and he said, “You know, I was the only one who was right!”

That is true – the future, our future, is held in hands of God. Ultimately, that is all we can know, and that is enough, because if we are held in the hands of God, we will be well – maybe not in the way we would like or hope; it doesn’t mean there won’t be storms and pain and sadness and great difficulty. But fundamentally we will be alright, because we are held in the hands of God, sheltered in the shadow of his wings, citizens of God’s Kingdom. As Julian of Norwich, the 14th century English mystic said: All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.  Amen.

Victoria Geer McGrath
All Saints’ Church, Millington, NJ
Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
June 24, 2012

Jesus also said, "With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade. Mark 4:30-32

The Kingdom of God – we have just heard Jesus talking about it in today’s Gospel reading; he says the Kingdom of God is like someone scattering seed on the ground, or the Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed.

These are odd associations – seeds and kingdoms – but maybe for us the whole idea of a kingdom itself is a little odd, sort of quaintly old-fashioned, after all: didn’t we give up the idea of kingship in this country two-hundred-and-thirty-six years ago? For most of us, kings are people found in history books or fairy tales; they don’t have much to do with us.

And yet we hear Jesus speaking about the Kingdom of God – and we’ll hear more about it as time goes on: so many of the Gospel stories we get in this Season after Pentecost are stories of the Kingdom. In fact in Matthew, Mark and Luke combined, the Kingdom of God is mentioned forty-one different times; and in Matthew alone the Kingdom of Heaven is mentioned another thirty-one times. Don’t get confused; for Matthew the terms Kingdom of God and Kingdom of Heaven are interchangeable. Clearly, this idea was very important for Jesus if there are seventy-two different references to it in only three books!

So what is this Kingdom stuff all about?  What’s Jesus trying to get at? When Jesus preaches and teaches about the Kingdom of God/Heaven, he is trying to tell the disciples, the Pharisees, the general public and anyone who will listen to him (including us) what life in this world is like when God is in charge, when we move into that place where God’s dream and God’s vision for us and for this world start to become a reality, even though we will never see a complete fulfillment of it.

The most fundamental, the most basic prayer we pray is the one Jesus taught the disciples - we call it the Lord’s Prayer – and the version of it that we know best includes this petition: Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We always need to keep in mind that when Jesus taught us to pray this way, he wasn’t telling us to pray that God’s will would be done in our lives only, but in society as a whole, in the world at large – beginning with us who follow Jesus, and spreading out into our neighborhoods and communities. The Kingdom of God, as Jesus tells us, is about the flourishing and well-being of all people, of all that God has made.The God’s Kingdom is fundamental to Jesus’ teaching and to his understanding of his mission.

So – here is Jesus telling us that the Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. OK, you might think, I know all about that, checked that box: a mustard seed is really tiny and then is grows up to be a great big plant, and that’s what our faith is supposed to be like – it starts out very small and then, over time, it grows and becomes substantial. That’s all very true, but it’s also a little tame – because, in reality, the wild mustard plant that Jesus would have been familiar with was actually much more like an invasive weed that got into everything, including the carefully planted and cultivated crops if you weren’t watching.

So Jesus is saying that God’s Kingdom, God’s activity in and for the world is like an invasive plant; you didn’t plant it yourself, you don’t really know how it got there, it’s gotten right in the middle of everything, and now it’s taken over your garden! It’s like pachysandra where you don’t want it, or bittersweet, or even poison ivy. The Kingdom of God appears in human life and the world like this invasive wild mustard plant that takes over and changes everything, including attracting birds that you may not want among your crops or fruit or fields.

Well that’s a very different way of thinking of the Kingdom of God; it’s very dynamic and surprising and not easily controllable – a far cry from the old stereotype of God as an ancient being with a long white beard sitting on a throne in the clouds somewhere far removed from us. But that’s exactly Jesus’ point: the Kingdom of God happens where we live and work, among us and around us; it is vibrant and eager and full of surprises in all kinds of places we might not expect.

Many of you will remember that a number of years ago we had to close our parish nursery school. It was a good school, and it had served the children and families of our community well for fifty years, but times had changed, and the needs of families had changed, enrollment dwindled, and the vestry made the hard decision to close the school. We did not know where that decision would take us, we did not know fully what the financial impact would be. But we were pretty sure that God wanted us to do something different with that building, to use it in some way that would serve our community.

And over time, that is exactly what happened; we have been able to exercise a ministry of hospitality for many different groups and events for the wider community – some sponsored by us, like the Rummage Sale or the Fish and Chips or the Solar Screening; and some are events and programs by outside groups – Scouts, Moms Club, the recreation department, being a polling place for Long Hill Township – and especially Alcoholics Anonymous.

AA has been a presence here at All Saints’ for many years, meeting either in the Undercroft of the Church or the Lower Room of the Parish House, but in the years since the nursery school was closed three more meetings have been added – there are now seven every week, offering hope and strength and healing to people who suffer with the disease of addiction. Even more remarkably, when the lunchtime meetings were bursting at the seams in the Undercroft, we were able to move those meetings to the Parish Hall, where there was not only more space, but a lovely room, with more convenient facilities, and very few stairs to deal with.

When the lunch-time meetings moved across the street attendance at them grew even more, and reached more people; and we started the annual Gratitude Mass where AA members and their families could come and give thanks for the AA program and fellowship in an explicitly Christian setting. Yesterday’s Gratitude Mass was the fourth annual; when I mentioned to the assembled congregation that we pray for them on an on-going basis, there was an audible sigh of surprise and appreciation. After the service one man asked if we could increase the frequency of our prayers for AA – from every five or six weeks to every three weeks, because there are still so many out there suffering from alcoholism.

It was a great day, people were indeed full of gratitude, and what I was seeing and experiencing was the Kingdom of God in action, in flower. People’s lives are being saved: they have stopped drinking, they’ve recovered their health and sanity, marriages kept intact, families restored, jobs secured – the Kingdom of God, indeed!

But we didn’t know that was going to happen, back when we closed the school; we didn’t know how or why God’s Kingdom would show up and develop in us and through us and around us, but it did – not all at once, and not in any steady progression, and what has taken place so far is certainly not the fullest expression of the Kingdom, but it’s rolling out in the way the Holy Spirit is directing for the good of our neighbors and our community.

There are many other examples and stories of how the Kingdom of God is unfolding all around us that we could highlight, both here at All Saints and in the lives and experiences of the people around us.

I’m going to give you some homework. Set yourself a little challenge in the next week or two: see if you can notice and identify examples of Kingdom of God activity in your neighborhood, where you work, among people you know or groups you are aware of. Talk to people; be curious about what is important to them; listen with the ears of the Spirit.

Ask yourself what God might be up to for the good of the community, and the well-being of both individuals and groups of people; see if you can recognize that wild mustard plant of faith and action growing where you least expect it. And then ask God how you can cooperate and join in with what the Spirit is doing so that God’s mission and God’s plan can become an even truer reality in the here-and-now.

Let us pray:
Lord Jesus, you call us to be your disciples, always learning and growing in the ways of faith, and in the hope and joy of new life; open our eyes to see your hand at work in the world about us, gives us courage to step forward further into your Kingdom, and gives us hope that we will see glimpse of your glory on earth as it is in heaven.  Amen.

Victoria Geer McGrath
All Saints’ Church, Millington, NJ
Third Sunday after Pentecost
June 17, 2012

But someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith without works, and I by my works will show you my faith. For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead. James 2:26

It is wonderful to see you all here, to be gathered with you as you celebrate Founder’s Day, and sobriety and new life. It is a joy and an honor to share this day with you.

And I’d like to ask you to think for a moment about how it is that you came to be sitting in that pew, here in All Saints’ Church today. You might answer that someone at a meeting invited you,

or strongly suggested it to you; or maybe someone handed you one of those cards with the picture of the church on it and all the particulars of the service and you thought it sounded interesting or curious – at least enough to check it out.

Or maybe you were here last year, and you found this service a good way to gather with others to give thanks to God for strength and sanity and healing - and just plain fun!

All of that may be true, but there’s another, deeper reason why you are here today - and that is because someone, somewhere along the way, reached out a helping hand to you in your path to recovery.

In fact, I hope that there have been a good number of people who have helped you - whether as a sponsor, or a friend, or someone who was willing to share their strength and story at a meeting; but when it comes right down to it, we all are here today because someone, at some point took the trouble to tell us the truth about ourselves, about human nature and about the reality of God in such a way that we could hear and absorb it.

We are all here today because someone acted in faith to offer us hope.

A few minutes ago we heard a reading from the Letter of James in the New Testament:

“Someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith without works, and I by my works will show you my faith. For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead”

I want to make sure we get the right picture here.

When James says “faith without works is dead” he’s not talking about trying to buy your way into heaven, or earning brownie points with God, or trying to be a really, really good person so that God will think well enough of you to overlook your faults.

God doesn’t work that way; God loves us just as we are, just the way we come. There is absolutely nothing we can do to make God love us anymore than he already does when we are at our very worst, nor love us any less than God does when we are at our best. God’s love and favor for us is a gift that we don’t earn or deserve – in the Church we call that “grace.” That’s what we have faith in, put our trust in, count on and give our hearts to: faith in God’s grace.

But when we put our faith in God, when we entrust God with our lives and draw close to him, we will naturally want to become more and more like him – not to try to be in charge of the universe, or be the Savior of the world – thank God there is a Savior, and that savior is not us!

So when we turn our lives over to our Higher Power and seek to live a spiritual path, then we are drawn to reflect the truth and goodness and self-giving love of God in our own lives.­­ If our faith is alive and active it will be reflected in our desire to reach out in compassion and love to others; that’s what James means when he says that faith without works is dead.

This is not always an easy position to come to. There are lots of people in every Church and every religious tradition who come to a service for their own private reasons, for their own connection to God, their own spirituality, and then go away again, never looking beyond their own concerns, never asking God how they might help or befriend ­another person, or relive their suffering or sorrow or loneliness.

Now, there are certainly days and seasons in life when all you can manage to do is to drag yourself to church, put your butt in the pew, listen to the words from the pulpit or altar or Scripture reading, and maybe say some prayers, and hope that God will sustain you for the next week or day or hour – and to try to add anyone else into that equation just seems way too much to handle.

And I can imagine that the same might be true for some of you with attendance at AA meetings; has anyone here ever had that experience?

Good – welcome to the human race!

And guess what? You walk in the door of a meeting or worship and God meets you there – actually, God walked in the door with you, and he welcomes you and loves you; no doubt about it.

But the catch is…you can’t stay in that place of having your prayer and your meditation and your life be only about you. Sooner or later, if you are to grow and deepen spiritually, if you are to maintain your health and sobriety and (using the church word) salvation, you have to move beyond yourself in a generous and self-giving way, to help others find the peace and hope and wholeness that you yourself have found.

Each person does this in their own way; there is no cookie-cutter approach to service and compassion; there is only a deep and attentive listening to another person and to the Spirit of God speaking in and through both of you.

If you listen thoughtfully and prayerfully, God will show you how you can be of service to the person in need. You won’t be the only one who will help them, you probably will not be the most important or most memorable one, but your service will be valuable – even on a small level – and it will form a link in a chain of hope and strength. And at the end of the day, you’ll find your own faith strengthened, as well – maybe not in ways that you expected or imagined – but you will be blessed if you serve with an open mind and a humble heart. That is what James means when he says “faith without works is dead.”

So we are here today because someone, somewhere, reached out to us in loving concern to offer us hope and strength and salvation – in the Kingdom of God, and in AA in particular - a reaching out that stretches back seventy-seven years to Bill W. and Dr. Bob.

And so let our hearts be filled with gratitude for that chain of compassionate action, and let us pray and listen and act so that we may take our place as the next links in the chain, for the good of others and for the salvation of the world.  Amen.

Victoria Geer McGrath
All Saints’ Church, Millington, NJ
AA Gratitude Mass
June 15, 2012