He Calms Life's Storms

Zephyr United Methodist Church

Early First United Methodist Church

June 25, 2006

Rev. Eddie Smart

Mark 4:35-41 (NRSV)

On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, "Let us go across to the other side." ³⁶And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. ³⁷A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. ³⁸But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" ³⁹He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, "Peace! Be still!" Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. ⁴⁰He said to them, "Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?" ⁴¹And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, "Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?"

This week the youth of the Smithville UMC have been the guests of the Early church as they worked all week at the Aldersgate Enrichment Center. Lynn, who came to serve as their cook, would give them little reminders each day of God’s grace each day. One gift was an index card with a few puzzle pieces pasted on it. There were the words, “Give God the pieces of your life, and God will give you peace.” Isn’t that what Mark is telling us in this Bible passage?

One United Methodist Church has shaped its ministry using three questions posed by its pastor. The first question is "Why do people need Christ?" The second--"Why do people need the church?"

It was late in the day. Everyone was at the party. There was swimming, ice cream, soft drinks, and just "hanging out." The sights and sounds of fun were all around us. But there sat Jill. She looked sad, maybe even sick. I asked her if she was feeling o.k.

She said, "My head hurts. I have a headache."

We began to talk and it wasn't long until I encountered the bitterest, angriest teen I have ever known. She was not only mad at her parents who told her directly and indirectly that she was not wanted, she was mad at everyone. For her the world was full of people out to hurt one another. She lived in a home visited by drugs and abuse. While Jill loved one guardian, the other was a drunk. She had given up on the world.

The only glimmer of hope was a church youth group. Meeting with those kids was the only bright spot in her life. This girl was in the midst of a terrible storm. Her boat was already being swamped. It would take Jesus to rebuke the wind and bring peace and calm into her life.

Jesus can do what none of us can do. He is the source of our hope, strength, comfort, and peace. Jesus can save us. We all need Jesus to save us. As Paul put it, "We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us."

The very minute that we point our finger at our spouse, our friend, or our enemy and say only Jesus can make a difference for them, we discover 3 fingers are pointing back at us. It all begins with us.

Adam was 15-years-old. He had never been a believer. Baptized a Roman Catholic, Adam had not attended Mass since he was six. In sixth grade, his parents divorced and Adam, who felt he had made attempts to reach out to God, decided God did not exist. Two years later, his mother had remarried, and Adam had begun dabbling in drugs.

It was his freshman year of high school when a friend was over at the house smoking marijuana with Adam. Then, the knock came. The man at the door was a neighbor who did not have any vocal chords and used a small machine, pressed up to his throat, in order to make the sounds of words. He had come to invite Adam to church.

When the man left, Adam and his friend laughed for a bit—joking about the visit from “Darth Vader”—but inside Adam had been reached. The man’s disability had made an impression on Adam and so did the fact that he had come to call on him. “He talked to me like I was someone,” he remembers.

Adam began to attend Faith Chapel Assembly of God with his neighbor. A “thank you for attending, come again” letter from Sunday school encouraged him to make a return visit. Adam had found a church home. Realizing he didn’t know a single Bible story, he picked up a Thompson Chain Reference Bible and started with Genesis 1:1. After nearly three months of reading through the Scriptures—Leviticus and all—he began to think, “maybe there is a God.”

Everything changed one night when the words in the book of Luke “jumped off the pages and into my life” and he had prayed to become one of God’s own. Up until then, he had been attending church on Sunday — playing football, doing academics, and partying the rest of the time. But then he began to seek “to live for Christ” alone.

It is in the church and the scriptures introduced by the church that Adam found the saving grace of Jesus Christ. It is in the church that we are told the stories of Jesus calming the sea, healing the sick, and giving himself for us. It is the church that can offer ministries like Glen Lake Camp, the Wesleyan home in Georgetown, the Aldersgate Enrichment Center in Brownwood and the Methodist Children's home in Waco. It is through the church that lives are touched by God’s grace. Jill...it was a church van that picked her up on the last day of church camp.

James W. Moore begins one of his books with the story of a 26 year old widow, the mother of 3 pre-school children. She had come to Dr. Moore for counsel. Her vibrant, strong, active, young husband who had been so full of life was now dead. The tractor he was driving touched a power line and in a heart beat he was gone. Never to kiss his wife good-bye. Never to see his children grow up. His children never again to hear his soothing and reassuring voice.

You have experienced the storms of life. For some of you those storms have been as tragic as this young mother's story, for some two and three times over. The source--death, illness, disease, natural disaster, war, an accident, finances, abuse, violence, crime, bad choices, and on and on.

So what do we do? The young mother in this story turned to the church. "I don't know how I'm going to make it without him," she said to James Moore. "But I know one thing: I have a choice to make! I can get bitter or I can get better. And I have come to the church because I want to get better!" She saw in the church the source of her hope. That power to calm the storm is in the church of Jesus Christ.

The Adam whose story I shared earlier--he went on to Oral Roberts University and Perkins School of Theology at SMU. He was ordained as a United Methodist pastor. In 1990 Adam asked permission to begin a new church in a suburb of Kansas City--in a very poor area. He began that church in a funeral home of all places. They still call it to this day the Church of the Resurrection. They now have over 12,000 members, three-fourths of whom claim they were non-religious and nominally religious people before becoming deeply committed Christians.

It is Rev. Adam Hamilton who poses those questions: "Why do people need Christ?" "Why do people need the church?" In one way the answer to those two questions is the same. We can’t do it on our own. We need Christ and we need Christ’s people.

His third question is, "Why do people need this church?" Adam and the Church of the Resurrection congregation answer that question with their statement of purpose. They say, "Our purpose is to build a Christian community where non-religious and nominally religious people are becoming deeply committed Christians."

What is our answer to that third question? "Why do people need THIS church?"