There was a warm-hearted, but over-anxious secretary whose boss died suddenly one day, leaving on his desk a number of letters that he had been preparing to sign and send out. The helpful secretary put the boss’s rubber stamp signature on them, and then, after a moment’s thought, added the following postscript to each letter: “Since writing the above letter, I have died.”

A funeral happened to be passing by as an armored truck from a bank pulled up to an intersection. Since he couldn’t get through the procession, the driver joined it. An onlooker, impressed by the spectacle of the funeral cortege, remarked to a friend: “What do you know? You can take it with you.”

I’m going to be morbid for a few minutes, and I mean that literally. The word morbid comes from the Latin word mors, which means death. I’m going to talk about death. Do you ever think about death? I suspect that most of us who are middle-aged or older think about death fairly regularly, not dwelling on it, mind you, but having it come to mind. And I imagine that even younger people from time to time think about it. Michael Jackson’s and Farrah Fawcett’s untimely deaths just a couple of days ago certainly brought all of us face to face with our own mortality.

We surely do a lot to stave it off. We try to have healthy lifestyles, take vitamins, get our physicals, take medications to keep our blood pressures from being too high or too low, to keep our cholesterol down, and so on. Why do we do these things if not to keep away from death’s door for as long as possible? These are all good things. God gave us life. He intends for us to enjoy our lives, to live them to the fullest, to love life.

But death is something that will happen to each of us. We know that and we think about it. I am reminded of an anthem that may be said at the service of burial: “In the midst of life we are in death; of whom may we seek for succor, but of thee, O Lord, who for our sins art justly displeased?”

Here death is linked with sin, which should remind us of the third chapter of Genesis, where we are told that death entered the world through the sin of Adam and Eve. But does that refer to a spiritual death, because their relationship with God was severed and they could no longer walk with him in the garden, or to physical death?

Our life of faith is very much related to death, for it begins with death—death to self. When we are baptized, we are baptized into death and raised to new life in Christ. The whole point is that this is the most significant death we can experience and when physical death does come it will be a transition into the nearer presence of God. Of course, the life of faith is one of learning what it means to die to self that the risen Christ may live in us. What does it mean to die to self with respect to my spouse, my employees, my boss, my friends? Would that argument I had with my wife gone any differently if I had remembered to die to self? Would I spend my money and my time differently if I really had a lifestyle of dying to self?

H. King Oehmig tells the story of a twelve-year-old girl by the name of Hope Stout who, in 2003, “was fighting bone cancer (osteosarcoma). Officials from the Make-a-Wish Foundation came to ask her, amid family, flowers, and cards, to make a last wish to take her mind off her terminal illness. Would she perhaps like to attend a teen fashion show? Have lunch with a movie idol? Visit a resort?

“She asked, ‘How many children are waiting for wishes to be granted?’ On learning that the agency was aware of 155 in her part of North Carolina, she declared, ‘Then my wish is to raise money to grant all of their wishes.’

“Hope herself never made it to the extravaganza that was organized to raise the money, because she died a few days beforehand. But in an interview taped before her death, she explained, ‘I just saw that God had given me a whole lot, and I had already been to Disneyworld and stuff. But I figured a lot of other kids hadn’t.’”

Hope Stout, at an early age, had learned something of what it means to die to self, even as she was anticipating her physical death. Perhaps the very immanence of her own death made her more open than most of us to thinking about those things in this life that have eternal significance. If I had been in Hope’s position I’m fairly sure I wouldn’t have been so selfless. In fact, I most likely would have asked to go up on the space shuttle!

The raising of Jairus’s daughter, another twelve-year-old girl that we heard about in today’s Gospel, led me to reflect on life and death, on the two kinds of life and death, spiritual and physical, and on their relationship to faith and salvation. It may be a stretch, but I believe Mark intended for his readers to contemplate these things when he recounted this story of the raising of Jairus’s daughter.

So let me ask you another question. What is the mission of the Church? Would you agree that the mission of the Church is the salvation of souls? Our catechism puts it differently: “The mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.” In other words, our mission is reconciliation, the reconciliation between God and his people, and among his people. That reconciliation is salvation, the saving of souls.

What does this have to do with life and death? “In the midst of life we are in death,” for without being reconciled with God we are spiritually dead, and that spiritual death causes us to be isolated not only from God, but also from one another. The Church, that is, you and I, is called to be a sign to the world of this salvation, this new life in our Lord Jesus Christ. We have died in our baptism. We are a resurrected people living in a community of resurrected people, the Church. We are called to live out this reality in community.

And so we gather, week after week, on the day of resurrection, the Lord’s Day, to remind ourselves of our calling, to hear scripture, to pray for one another, to confess the ways we have failed to live into our calling, to be renewed through the Body and Blood of our risen Lord, and to support and encourage one another in our calling. It’s a high calling, brothers and sisters in Christ, but it is the path to life, everlasting life.

When you come up to this Altar to receive Christ, think about what you’re doing. Don’t think about who you’re passing on your way up to the Altar, or the fact that the mass is almost over, or what you’re going to be doing later on. Think about renewing your covenant with God and the fact that you are about to receive him anew into your life. Be thankful that God has brought you out of error into truth, out of sin into righteousness, out of death into life. While we do think about death, we no longer should see it from a morbid perspective, for we are people of the resurrection.

Have you ever been in a violent storm at sea? When I was in high school, a friend of mine had a small sail boat that we took out on Lake Erie one fine day. He was the boater; I was a novice. We got into the middle of the lake, and what began as a fine day began to look threatening, so we started to make our way back, but we didn’t make it back before it started to rain.

At that time in my life I knew that my plans included seminary down the road. My friend calmly suggested that if I had an appropriate prayer, now might be the time to say it. That’s when I started to be concerned about our situation!

Anyone who knows Lake Erie knows that it’s a shallow lake, and that even minor storms cause fairly large waves very quickly, which is not unlike the Sea of Galilee, which is also a shallow lake. In only a matter of minutes we were in a life-threatening situation. The boat was being tossed to and fro, and with every wave it seemed like the boat could capsize. It was also nearly impossible to know where the shore was. At least, I couldn’t see it. I prayed a lot during that time. My friend was an experienced boater, though, and eventually we made it to shore, thanking God that we were all right.

When I took a group to the Holy Land several years ago, we saw a 2000 year old boat that had been found in 1986 along the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee. Carbon-14 testing confirmed that it had been constructed and used between 100 B.C. and 70 A.D. It was 26 feet long and 7 feet wide and could carry 15 people. It is probably just this kind of boat that Jesus and his disciples were in as they were crossing the Sea of Galilee.

Jesus had spent a full day teaching and preaching. He was worn out. He needed rest. So he told the disciples that it was time to get away, and the only way to do that was to go to the other side of the lake, where there weren’t crowds of people. When he got in the boat he went to sleep, and he was so tired that the storm didn’t wake him. But the disciples were terrified, fearing for their lives. Keep in mind that several of these disciples were experienced fishermen, and should have known when there was a real threat.

We know how the story ends. The disciples wakened Jesus. He calmed the storm and then chastised them for their lack of faith. Surely they should have known that he would not let them perish. After all, he had told them that he wanted to go to the other side.

This story of the calming of the storm has two levels of meaning for us today. The first is the obvious. Jesus could not only teach and preach powerfully, not only could heal people and even raise the dead, but also he had power over the forces of nature. Even wind and seas obeyed him.

Now I know that there are some skeptics in the congregation who believe this is just another pious tale for gullible people. In fact, there may be some mothers and sons and daughters here today who are only here because their husbands or fathers asked it of them as a favor for Fathers’ Day. They may not “buy” this religious stuff at all.

There are others who can accept the spiritual teaching of Jesus, but find it difficult, even superstitious, to believe that Jesus did anything that a truly charismatic person of any age couldn’t do. That attitude is nothing new, of course. Thomas Jefferson concocted a “gospel” in which he took out of the four gospels all things supernatural—no water turned to wine, no walking on water, no sight to the blind, no raising of the dead, and certainly no calming of the sea. There are even Christian biblical scholars today, who are teaching our future clergy, that begin their scholarship with the presupposition that anything supernatural in the gospels must be explained metaphorically. In other words, it must be explained away.

I have no illusions that this sermon will change the course of that kind of thinking! But for those who hold those beliefs, and they are beliefs, no more provable than what they negate, I say, to borrow a phrase from (I believe) John A. T. Robinson, “Your God is too small.”

While our faith in Jesus does not rest on any of the things I have mentioned, our faith does rest on the greatest supernatural event of all—the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. I would suggest to you that the God who was able to accomplish that, would be able, in Jesus, to do everything else attributed to him. I also must say that a faith in Jesus that will not allow for his complete uniqueness, including that which is supernatural, is a convenient faith that allows one to revise the foundations of the faith to suit one’s own sensibilities, rather than to submit oneself to that which has been revealed—and that is a very slippery slope indeed. And yet, that is where much theological thinking is today in our seminaries, where the object is to re-image Christ. As someone once said, “In the beginning God created man and woman in his image, and ever since we have been attempting to return the compliment.”

But there is another level to the story of the calming of the sea, and that level is—are you ready for this?—metaphorical. The same Jesus who has power over the forces of nature is able to calm the storms in our lives. You may have lost your job, you or a family member may be ill, your marriage may be in a rough spot, your child may be having trouble with drugs, you may have just broken up with your boyfriend. You fill in the blank. Many, if not all, of us have a storm going, of some sort, most all of the time.

Whatever the problem, there is nothing that can happen to you or me that will defeat us if we put our faith in Christ. Here is where the metaphor ends. That doesn’t mean that when you have faith whatever storm you’re experiencing will cease. You may not get the job you wanted, or be cured; your marriage may still be rocky, and your child may still be addicted to drugs, although faith in Christ can also calm these storms. What you will be able to do, no matter what the outcome, is withstand anything that life brings with that supernatural peace that passes understanding. I can’t prove it, but I believe it.

John Wesley, an Anglican priest in the 18th century, was crossing the Atlantic, headed for Georgia, when a violent storm arose. He feared for his life, along with almost everyone else on board. There was a group of Moravians, however, who were not fearful. They stayed together as a group during the storm, praying, reading scripture, and singing hymns. Wesley was deeply moved by their faith and witness, and wanted that kind of faith himself. Later on in his life, he experienced the presence of God in a new way and in which he felt that he had been granted that kind of faith—a complete trust in God’s providence.

I didn’t have that kind of faith when I went through that storm on Lake Erie, but I believe I do now, and I pray God will grant us all that faith that calms the storm.

When you’re dedicated and faithful enough, the seeds will always grow!

It just isn’t true, but, we wish it were so! Pastors & businessmen alike talk about some of the major myths of growth like: (a)If you are dedicated enough your church will al-ways grow and (b) all God ever expects is faithfulness. They speak about church growth conferences where dedicated pastors finish leaving feeling more guilty, frustrated, inade-quate than when they arrived. These men and women are faithful to God’s Word! They pray feverently! They are solid preachers! Sometimes their churches just refuse to grow. Why? Maybe it’s just a poor fit? Or, maybe the pastor is running out of gas? Perhaps the leaders have the will, but not the updated skills nor right tools? Maybe the timing is bad? Maybe the church just doesn’t pray hard enough or work hard enough? Let’s change the metaphor: If you’re dedicated and pray hard enough, your life and your job and your men-tal health will all always be fine! Tell that to the thousands who have now lost their jobs, to the man/woman who’s spouse just died, to a young child cancer patient, to a person drown-ing in the giant spiderweb of depression & inactivity! Where’s my growth? Where’s God?

What do today’s lessons really tell us? All of Mark chapter 4 is about sowing and producing: the parable of the sower, then today’s Gospel: the soil producing grain by itself and the Parable of the Mustard Seed. In the Old Testament, the prophet Ezekiel warns us to “be careful how we use our towering strength lest it be cast down according to its own wickedness.”

So what can we learn from these stories? (1) Good things can indeed begin in small sizes. In the Arab world today the phrase, “as small as a mustard seed” is still commonly used. Often the tiniest seed sprouts to gigantic heights of 14 feet or more. (2) Of course the disciples were discouraged! Their initial flurry of growth had given way to increased opposition, disappointments and then abandonment. That’s why it says in Mk. 4.33, “He spoke the words to them as best they were able to hear it.” So,Jesus told the disciples today’s parables to encourage them never to give up! We’re inspired not to get sucked into the contemporary demands of instant results, numbers, success. (3) You and I and the disciples are reminded that God’s growth takes time.His timetable will never be the same as ours. (4)As Biblical and contemporary writers remind us, God wants us to be faithful, warns us not to abuse our gifts and asks for our loyal trust and patience.

So,thinking about all of this and Redeemer what can we say? First, after 15 years, you know that Fr. Fred is only basically interested in your spiritual growth & personal well being. He doesn’t care about numerical growth nor regular church attendance! Am I not right?? Almost? Perhaps I should adjust a little and admit that he wouldn’t mind if we had both, spiritual and numerical growth. Of course, the two do go hand in hand! That’s why we have Redeemer’s Strategic Parish Plan -spiritual & numerical growth. Second, this all ap-plies to the parish as a whole, but perhaps most intentionally to: the Saturday night Con-
temporary Service, Sunday Hispanic Mass, Small Group Ministries development, greater overall parish mission and sharing opportunities. Redeemer continues to be very interested in all spiritual and numerical growth in the total parish, but perhaps now especially in each of these four above mentioned areas.

Finally, let me add an important aside. Obviously, one commonality in all of Redeemers areas of spiritual (and numerical) growth is the pow-erful presence & action of God’s Holy Spirit within & amongst us. Without His presence there is no growth. Clearly to me God’s Spirit is alive and well at 7: 30 and
9: 00 and 11: 00. But, how He expresses Himself in the Men’s Ministry Groups or the Saturday Night Contemporary or the Sunday Hispanic Masses continues to be both a challenge and an opportunity for Redeemer! Put another way,God’s One Spirit certain-ly fits all, but perhaps one size may not completely!

Now what can we say about ourselves and today’s Gospel and Ezekiel’s pro-phesies? Can we really believe that good things do often start in small packages? Can we faithfully handle the inevitable disappointments and frustrations of life plaguing us all? Canwe resist the temptations to always look for immediate rewards and growth? Are we patient with God and ourselves? Do we gratefully accept our God-given gifts, yet always careful not to abuse or overuse them? Do we believe, as the saying goes, that “ you only have one life to live ” or can you see it all more as a series of interconnected, but not predetermined new beginnings ,each filled with its own tasks & possibilities, joys & despairs, yet all designed to lead in the same direction-towards happiness & fulfillment? How do you see your life ?? How do you travel ?? It makes a difference!

The Collect for Today: [ Perhaps this is helpful!! ]

“Keep us, O Lord, your household the Church in your steadfast faith and love, that through
your Grace we may always proclaim your truth with boldness and justice and compassion.” Prop.6