Mark 4. 35-41

“Do you care that we are being ruined?” I said, “Do you care that we are being ruined?” I say again, “Do you care that we are being ruined?” And getting up from being asleep, looking at the storm and looking at me, then looking back at the storm, which was all around us. Then looking back at me, the one who woke him up, he said,

“Peace, be still.”

“Hush, be silent.”

“Quiet, be not a word.”

And the sea was quiet.

Do I care that you are being ruined? You asked me if I cared that you were being ruined. Did you really wake me up to ask if I cared that you were being ruined? Am I not in the same boat as you? Would not your ruin mean ruin for me also? Who do you think I am? Why would you assume that I would allow you, allow us, to be ruined? If you think this storm was bad, hide and watch what comes next. It will take more than a simple tempest trick of weather control to get us through the next three years, and you think I would let you perish? What? I would lead you out of the bondage of Egypt only to die in a desert? What? I would ask you to come with me, leave all that you have behind, walk away from your families, only to be as some sort of cruel joke where I drown you in a stormy sea. You of little faith. Give me a break will you?

When I was first ordained I got into trouble with the Bishop, it happens. I didn’t do anything nefarious, nothing illegal, or immoral or insane, just kind-a dumb. But I was in trouble none-the-less. After three years for seminary, and a long discernment process, I thought here it is, the end before it began. I thought that this ordination thing was about to be over for me. The truth of the matter was that I should not be a priest. I should have not gone to seminary. I should have stayed in place and not risked. Besides, who am I anyway to be a priest? I do not fit that mold. My field work supervisor once said, “You know when people look at Sean, your co-worker here at the church, they see a priest.” And his silence to me was deafening and the implication dug deep into my soul. “Right, Sean is a priest, I am not.” And then the prophecy was coming true, I was in trouble with the Bishop, waiting for a month to meet with him. A long month of March 2001, at then end of that month the Bishop would say the words I knew I would hear, “Patrick you are not a priest. Thank you for your time.”

I still did my job. I was still a deacon. I did my work, but always with a kick in my gut. It is hard to admit when you are weak. Especially for me. And it is difficult to discern when to tell you all these stories about me and my family, but we are family now, and so this is your story too, a story of vulnerability and the grace of God.

When people have power over you and your life the vulnerability you feel is palpable. In that awful month of March 2001 I broke. The voices in my head were yelling at the top of their lungs. I am always amazed at my ability to self accuse, and self loath. I am better now, but then I was not. Worry, anxiety, newly married, car payments, rent, the future, my identity, who I was, all of this was in question. “Is he a priest or not?” “Will we ordain him or not?” And the pressure became too great. And in the shower one morning I fell to the floor and began to sob.
Naked and crying, crying in a way that you may or may not know. Crying for the last five years, fearing failure and feeling abandoned, crying in that way that we sometimes do because there are no words and we are overcome. I sat there in the running shower sobbing when the water was turned off and a hand lifted me up set me on the bed and covered my naked self with a towel and then said to me, “it was going to be ok.” Peace be still, hush be silent, quiet, not a word.

A life changing moment. My wife Allison found me and held me and told me it was going to be ok. Since then, in so many ways and moments, her actions to me have been my actions to others. It was not about the power over me, I was no longer frightened by it, my faith suddenly was uplifted by what mattered. In that moment I found God working through the life of one person to another. God found in the people ministering to people. Be they a friend or a wife or a clergy, ministry to each other in the darkest moments, in the middle of the storm, is reminder of what faith is to be about.

Eric Clapton sings:

Lately I've been running on faith/What else can a poor boy do? But my world will be right/When love comes over you. /Lately I've been talking in my sleep/I can't imagine what I'd have to say/Except my world will be right/When love comes back your way/I've always been/One to take each and every day/Seems like by now/I'd find a love who cares just for me/Then we'd go running on faith/All of our dreams would come true/And our world will be right/When love comes over me and you.


Someone asked me this week about my faith and where it comes from, and over time I have come to believe that I have faith in God, since God had faith in me first.

Trust is implied in faith. Trust in the other entity that he or she will come through on their end of the relationship. God trusted me first when I was given my life. It was as if God said, “here you go, here is a life, it is yours, let’s see what you do with it.” I believe that the initial trust was done by God to me. The question for me is would I then return the favor and trust God with that which is God’s own? For me, it is simple God trusted me first, therefore I trust God.

And I do. Time and time and time again, when I think the oil is running out, or that the situation has no solution, or that I am surely lost, and confusion and failure are immanent I remember that what Jesus reveals is that God is in the boat too. God is in the boat, in the storm, in the path of ruin with us, Emmanuel, God with us. And, as St. Paul said, if God is for us, who can be against us?

It is true, lately I have been running on faith, what else can a poor boy do. Because I know, I have seen it, felt it, lived it, naked and seemingly alone, you are lifted up and covered up by someone you love, and in their words of comfort you hear the voice of God.

It is important to realize that what we proclaim in this faith of ours is that Jesus is the Son of God. What is revealed in the person of Jesus is that God is more than a creator. God is an actor too. The story of the raging sea, the frightened disciples and the “not in a panic” actions of Jesus reveal that we are in the storm with God. We are tethered to God in our creation and when we realize this truth, we proclaim it in the way we live out our faith. There is no need to panic. If God trusts you with a life, why would God not be with you in that life? We are not alone, ever.
Ever, always, always there appears out of no where a sense of the divine, be it in the storms at sea or in the storms of living, we are found in our weakest moments yelling do you not care that we are perishing, that the priesthood you called me to is falling away, that the disease is killing me, that the life you gave me is in ruin? Do you not care, are you asleep, what are you doing? Peace, be still, God put his faith in you, now you are called to put your faith in God. Peace, hush, be quiet and know that God is good. Amen.