Christopher Thomas
Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B – 6/20/21
1 Samuel 17:57–18:5, 10-16
Psalm 133
2 Corinthians 6:1-13
Mark 4:35-41
It began an evening like, and yet strangely unlike, so many, many others. We were together, we fisher-folk, entrusted with a wayward, migrant teacher, a parable seed-sower, carting him hither and yon, one group to another. “We’re not farmers; we don’t understand. But we do. But we don’t.”
Let’s go here; let’s go there. Tell them this; tell them that. I’ll explain it all to you, later. It will make sense.
When does later come, really?
And so, that night, we set sail from what little we know out to the unknowns of our own marginality, people, and places, and things we can only begin to imagine.
We set out for those margins, the places we can only imagine, for an encounter with those who are not us, the Gentiles, in our navis, (that’s Latin for ship), our safe place. Finally, something we know how to do. For we are fisher-folk. If nothing else, we are at home on the sea, in our navis. Here we know what to do.
The itinerate teacher/preacher sleeps as we navigate the voyage across the known, into the depths of what we cannot see, when suddenly, apocalypse erupts. Earth, wind, water, fire. Elemental life bursts forth again in total chaos. What was once stilled, and ordered, and structured through breath, holy spiration, by God, rises up again, in frenetic, inharmonic, reckless abandon.
Our first response, for why wouldn’t it be, because we are human, after all, mortal creations formed of that very “ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” why wouldn’t our response be fear? Elements, the basic necessities of life, in riotous chaos equal fear.
“Peace! Be still!”
Winds cease, waters hesitate in the glow of reflective moon.
What just happened?
What just happened is worth reflection. Words of love. Love speaks love’s voice, in one of its many, multi-varied ways, and elemental ordered life restores.
Love.
This is the very same love that comes down at Christmas. The love borne forth from a lowly cow’s stall. The love proclaimed by shepherds and wise men and angels alike. The love that emerges from the very natal womb-waters of baptism. The love that we celebrate at Eucharistic tables week in and week out.
“This is my Son. In him I am well-pleased!”
Love!
For the apocalypse, the revelation that escapes just beyond explanation is, yet again, Love.
When God describes God’s self, the Great I AM, the descriptors so often revolve around love. God is love, showing up in a panoply of ways, so many and varied displays, the navis, the ship, that night being but one!
We knew, and yet, we didn’t. Love knew all along, exactly where love was headed. Love, past, present, and future always does. For this kind of love soars outside of the bounds and the boundaries of anything we can explain away. This kind of love surpasses the chains of worldly expectation. This kind of love surpasses all knowledgeable human understanding. This kind of love is peace. Be still.
(Be still and know that I am God, and you are not!)
Images of another son, another tableau, a father pleased, and then not so, with his progeny. For Jonathan knows that love spoken from beyond the boundaries of all knowingness, the love exceeding explanation.
I love you as I love my own soul!
I love you as I love my own life!
Peace. Be still.
For this lover of souls will surely need that peace, for all that that love will bring him, all of the joy, all of the pain, all of the suffering, and the eventual death. For going to the margins for God with David will cost, surely and swiftly cost Jonathan everything. That is what always happens when you join forces with love, when you listen to love, renouncing the ways of the world. It costs you everything! (That’s why those life-changing baptismal “love” questions get answered with ‘I will, with God’s help!’”)
The relationship of Jonathan and David titillates, exciting across time, ruminating imaginations, explanations of love expressed in ways heretofore taboo. Why taboo? Why in the world would the soul-love, the love stronger than death, of two people be construed, explained, defined, as taboo, when this very love of God rises up to and beyond the level of rational explanation and expectation?
For it is, after all, you must admit, rather queer that Jonathan would seed his royal birthright, his heritage to the throne, to this shepherd, David? Give up everything in the name of love?
My friends, this kind of love, the kind of love that sails out to the margins, and finds royalty in dung heaps, and makes kings and queens out of carpenters, and shepherds, and criminals, and prostitutes, the kind of love that places others over self, the kind of love that says that I love you more than I love me, that kind of love defies explanation. It makes no rational sense.
I have no idea whether Jonathan and David are ever consummated lovers, and I’m not sure it even really matters. I don’t need to see into their bedroom to know that they are lovers, that they know and see what self-sacrificial love is, the kind of love that says I will give up everything for you, and by doing so, I will gain everything, love. It is good, and worthy, and right to remember this Pride celebration month that this kind of self-sacrificing, peace-dealing love comes in every single flavor and stripe of the rainbow, whatever the dujour may be.
That is the kind of love that is on display, again, that night in the navis, the ship, in the “Peace. Be still!” “These are my beloveds. I love them more than I love myself. They are afraid. We are headed to the margins to take your love to others. Peace be with us!”
And we find ourselves, again, in this our own navis, this Nave, under the protective auspices of all those who have gone before, those who watch over us, who love us, who protect us, and who guide us, their stories woven so tightly together across time within and beyond our very own. We come together as we prepare to set sail yet again into uncharted waters toward the margins of God’s world, the very marginalities of our own souls, in our quest to find that very same thirst-quenching, life-giving, storm-calming, peace-dwelling love that Jesus himself embodies.
I promise you the world will present storms. If you thought COVID-19 was a storm, think racism, and white supremacy, and hunger, or poverty, or gun violence, or any of the other death-dealing structures the world has to offer us as we set out in our boat proclaiming love. It is scary and frightening to confront the world of selfishness. We are already beginning to bump up against that on our trip out to the margins.
But in many ways, we, St. Thomas the Apostle, the Doubters of Great faith, are people of the margins, Christ’s fisher-folk, seed-strowers and planters, and so, we already understand this.
Peace. Be still!
Amen.
