Some people see things as logical contradictions when often it is a question of balance.  When my niece was three years old, her parents had to repeatedly tell her to let her food cool off before she tried to eat it, and so she looked at her Uncle Arthur like he was crazy when I told her to eat while her food was still good and hot.  The look on her face seemed to say, “This does not compute!”  Finally she replied, “My food will be better if it cools off just a little bit.”

In Galatians 5, Paul presents us with an apparent contradiction.  In verse 2 he admonishes us, “Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ,” and then 3 verses later he says “Each one should carry his own load.”  Well, Paul, make up your mind!  How can we carry each other’s burdens if we each carry our own load by ourselves?   A mature mind can begin to understand that both are true and that life is best when we learn to balance things like work and play, laughter and seriousness, time alone and time with others.  Even in taking care of each other, we are to do so in ways that encourages each of us to be independent and self-sufficient.

In the Gospel narrative, there are two similar stories about Jesus on the lake with His Disciples.  But Jesus does not react consistently!  The two stories have two different outcomes.  In the first one we encounter, Jesus falls asleep in the boat and has to be awakened in order to deal with very frightened Disciples who are about to die in a storm.  On that occasion, Jesus speaks to the storm, commanding the wind to stop blowing and the rain to stop falling.  The Disciples are left in wonder and amazement: “Who is this person that even nature obeys Him?”

The second story on the lake has the same format in both the synoptic tradition and in John’s Gospel.  First, there was a fantastic picnic on the hillside where a huge multitude was fed by Jesus using five loaves of bread and two fish.  Then the Disciples departed on a boat without Jesus.  After rowing out several miles, the Disciples encountered a very strong wind and choppy seas.  This time, Jesus, who was still on the shore alone, noticed that His friends were in trouble and went to be with them in the storm.  He just walked out on the water to join His friends.  At first, they didn’t recognize Jesus and thought they were seeing a ghost.  Funny thing about ghosts:  we say we don’t believe in them, but then they scare the fool out of us sometimes!  But this time, Jesus doesn’t calm the wind and the sea; instead, He calms the Disciples.  “It is just me,” He tells them, adding, “Don’t be afraid.”  Matthew is the only writer to add a postscript to the story, about Peter challenging Jesus: “If that is really you out there, Jesus, command me to come out to you on the water.”  Jesus so orders Peter, and Peter steps out of the boat and actually walks over to Jesus.  But somewhere along the way, Peter focused his attention on the wind and the waves and began to sink.  Crying out to Jesus to save him from drowning, Peter is lifted up by the strong arm of Jesus, and together they walk back over to the boat.  In this story, Jesus spoke to His Disciples and stilled their fears, but He did nothing to still the storm.

Together these two tales of the sea give us a balanced picture of what we can expect in our life of Christian discipleship.  In both of these stories, one or more of the writers tells us that the Disciples were following Jesus’ orders when they attempted to cross the sea, and yet both times they ran into trouble.  Our usual reaction when we run into a problem is to think that we must have stepped outside of God’s will, and for certain we do that often enough.  But sometimes when we are following God’s commands, we will find ourselves in over our heads in troubles.  Storms of life are sometimes indications that we are right where God wants us to be.  In the longer version of our baptism and confirmation ritual, we remind people that following Jesus means that we are deciding to turn away from the spiritual forces of wickedness and to reject the evil powers of this world.  It shouldn’t be too surprising to us that when we decide to go Jesus’ way, those evil spiritual forces will work more ferociously against us!  Those forces tried and eventually succeeded in killing Jesus, but thanks be unto God, God used that to give Jesus victory over death!  Those evil forces waged war on the Disciples, too.  It is good to remember that trouble might not mean that you are out of God’s will.  It just might mean that you are right on target!

Storms of life are going to come to us at other times, too.  Sometimes a storm is just the normal part of human life.  Stuff  happens!  Sometimes there is no rhyme or reason for the storm.  It just comes our way.  Whether it is just a normal part of life or the result of going in God’s direction, the two storm stories assure us that we can expect one of two responses from God: He will either calm the storm or else He will calm His child.

It was Andy Watson who got me thinking along these lines last year when he sang a song by Scott Krippayne during our contemporary worship service.  The song writer was obviously reflecting on the two storm stories in the Gospel when he wrote:

Sometimes He calms the storm

With a whispered peace be still.

He can settle any sea

But it doesn’t mean He will.

Sometimes He holds us close

And lets the wind and waves go wild.

Sometimes He calms the storm

And other times He calms His child.

When storms come our way, Jesus will either say, “Storm, be still” or else He will say, “My child, be at peace.  I am here with you.”

I have experienced both of these actions of God during my lifetime and particularly in my work.  In one of my first appointments, there was this war going on within the church, involving good people on both sides.  You could tell who was on which side when you saw where folks sat on Sunday mornings.  One faction sat on the left side while the other faction sat on the right side.  We could be deciding on something as tame as how we would observe Mother’s Day, and the church would be divided right down the middle.  The previous pastor was aligned with one of the sides in the conflict, and my superintendent told me not to do that!  He advised me to stand in the middle and speak to the storm, “Be still!”  I did what he said, and in time Jesus stilled that storm.  I let them continue fighting among themselves, and then I would put band-aids on their wounds.  As time passed, the scars began to heal.  I was back down there for homecoming several years ago, and I couldn’t believe who was sitting by who and who was hugging who!  Jesus stilled that storm!

There was another storm at another church that was at least in part of my creation.  I was young and enthusiastic, and I had some big dreams for that church.  I launched out in the deep and made some plans and then found myself in the boat by myself during the storm!  I had been there for only three months, but I thought I’d be packing to move that next June!  I called my district superintendent to bring him up to date on what was happening, and he spoke to my heart on behalf of our Lord.  He advised me to go off by myself and win the war going on inside of me before I started waging the war that was raging all around me.  It was as if Jesus had spoken to me saying, “Peace!  Be not afraid.  I am here with you.”  I followed my superintendent’s good advice, and in my time alone, several good things happened on my “insides.”  First, I began to see things through the eyes of my opponents.  I didn’t agree with them, but I could understand how my plans would make them wonder where I wanted to lead the church.  Secondly, I began to see how many people were on my side, excited about what I had proposed to do, and I saw how they were going to my opponents to assure them that Jesus was with us in this storm.  As I continued winning the war that was going on within me, I never really had to fight the war that was going on around me in the church.  Jesus remained at our side during the storm.  I not only survived that rough sea but I enjoyed a number of happy and successful years of ministry there, in spire of the fact that the underlying issues never went away.  When the Bishop surprised us all by moving me with very little warning, one of those members who had been so upset with me during those first months asked me, “How can you leave us now?”  Sometimes Jesus calms the storm; sometimes He calms His child.

Those are two stories from my life, and I am sure you have similar stories from your life.  Some of you have had times when you faced a sickness and you prayed, and Jesus came and calmed the storm by removing the illness from you.  Others of you have faced times of sickness or other situations that are normal parts of our human existence, and Jesus came to you in the midst of the storm and said, “I will be with you as you endure this storm.”  The storm didn’t go away, but the presence of Jesus made the storm survivable.  You can be sure always that when troubles come our way, Jesus will come to us to calm the storm or else to calm His child.

Sometimes He calms the storm

With a whispered peace be still.

He can settle any sea

But it doesn’t mean He will.

Sometimes He holds us close

And lets the wind and waves go wild.

Sometimes He calms the storm

And other times He calms His child.

Amen.

Arthur H. Holt

“Wherever [Jesus] went, village or town or country crossroads, they brought their sick to the marketplace and begged him to let them touch the edge of his coat‑‑that’s all. And whoever touched him became well” (Mark 6:56 The Message).  If there is anything that keeps me keeping on in ministry, through times of difficulty and even defeat, is a deep down believe that there is something very unique about Jesus.  Wherever He went, and wherever He goes today, people are touched by Him and they get well in body and soul.

In Mark 6 there are several episodes where Jesus tried unsuccessfully to get away from crowds so that He and His Disciples could get some rest.  They had been so busy that they didn’t even have time to eat!  But each time the crowds found out where Jesus was going and followed Him there, and Jesus’ deep love and compassion caused Him to forsake His own needs in order to minister to the needs of others.  Jesus is such a powerful personality that it was comforting just to be near Him.  It was enough for sick folks simply to touch the hem of His garments.  His teachings brought direction and healing to some; His loving nature brought healing to others.  The forgiveness He offered in God’s name gave people hope; His power over death assured people of eternal life.

You and I have known a few people who were such trouble that wherever they went, they left a path of destruction in their wake.  Like the aftermath of a tornado, lives are forever changed for the worse after these people pass though others’ lives.  Just the opposite was true and is true with Jesus.  He leaves a path of healing wherever He goes, wherever we, the Body of Christ, take Him in our lives of discipleship.  Wherever the Christian faith has gone, hospitals have been built, schools have been erected, and churches are organized for the healing, teaching, and preaching ministry of the church.  Methodism grew in the 1800′s because circuit-riding preachers went with the pioneers as our country spread westward, and the church’s influence helped civilize the West.  All who touch Him are healed.

I am absolutely convinced that there is hope to be found in Jesus for whatever we face in life.  We are never alone, even after our closest kin die or our closest friends desert us.  Every bad habit can be overcome through His power.  Every sin can be forgiven.  Grief can be healed, and emotional scars can become strengths through the work of Christ in our lives.  It is still true today: All who touch Him are healed.

There are many ways to touch Jesus today.  He is as near as a prayer and powerfully present in worship and fellowship.  We can touch Him today through Holy Communion whereby we are placed in contact with Him through faith and remembrance, remembering that this is His body broken for us and His blood shed for us.  I pray that today when you receive the bread and wine of communion you will feel the touch of Christ upon your life, because all who touch Him are healed. Amen.

Arthur H. Holt

“No amount of advance planning can beat dumb luck!”  That is one of my favorite sayings, and it seems to be true for me anyway.  In fact, I depend upon dumb luck – too much, at times.  It just isn’t my nature to plan ahead, and so I have had to force the discipline of planning on myself.  Penny, on the other hand, is a natural-born planner.  Studying her options, making lists, and deciding on a course of action comes natural to her.  I was the kind of student who waited until the last minute to start and finish term papers and science projects, and I didn’t ever fool any of my teachers.  They would be surprised to learn that I now work ahead on my sermons, always finishing them by Thursday of each week, but I had to learn this habit.  In the early days of ministry, I was always up way past midnight on Saturday nights!

The writer of Ephesians, probably a close friend or student of Paul, tells us something about God’s nature and how carefully and delightfully God planned everything He was about to create – the universe, human beings, even the basis of His relationship with us – long before He said, “Let there be light.”  Being one who has to alter my plans very often, it is hard for me to imagine God as fixing His plans long before creation and sticking to those plans to this day, but that is what Ephesians tells us.  I went to college planning to be a math teacher, and instead I ended up as a pastor after I had tried my hand at youth work, insurance sales, and Rainbo Bread!  I made many changes in my plans.  But that is not true with God.  He made one plan and then He stuck to it.

I want you to really grasp what I just said, because that is what Ephesians teaches.  God  made one plan and then He stuck to it.  Most of us think that God is like us.  He must have to adjust His plans to fit new realities.  We think that He made some initial plans when He created the first man and woman but that those initial plans had to be scrapped after Adam and Eve disobeyed Him.  Things continued to get worse until God decided to wipe out all but one family, Noah’s, and start over.  That second plan didn’t work too well either because Noah’s family was as sinful as Adam’s!  So God came up with another plan.  He called together a nation and He gave Moses the Law, saying that if the people obeyed the Law, then they would be God’s people and God would be their God. But again, that plan didn’t work!  The people didn’t keep their end of the covenant, despite the preaching and warning of all the prophets.  So, we think that God must have gone back to the drawing board to come up with yet another plan.  He would send us His Son.  Maybe that would work!   Some of us go so far as to believe that prior to the first Christmas Jesus didn’t exist.  When all previous plans failed, God gave birth to a Son, and that was God’s final answer.  That makes a good story, and it fits in with our human experience, but Ephesians 1 says that something far different happened.  God has always had just one plan for our redemption.

Our Duke Seminary student Russ McDonald said it so well on Trinity Sunday.  In the very beginning, before anything else was created, God existed as a Trinitarian God, Father, Son, and Spirit, existing in community.  This Godly community was entirely self-sufficient and completely fulfilled.  God didn’t need anything else in order to be complete.  God didn’t create the universe because of something lacking in His life.  But God is love, and love always creates!  All that was created, the stars above, heaven and angels, life of various kinds on this earth, all of it was the result of God’s love acting in the universe.  Nothing happened randomly; God took great pleasure in planning His creation. “He thought of everything, provided for everything we could possibly need,” the Message tells us. But before the first act of creation, God had already decided that when He created humans, we would be “the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love.” He would connect with us, relate to us, and save us by means of His work as Christ on earth.  Now, grasp that!  Before the Garden of Eden, before the disobedience of Adam and Eve, God had already decided that Jesus would come to earth to save us.  Jesus wasn’t God’s Plan B or C.  He was Plan A!

One of the big ideas we have debated through the centuries is predestination.  We Methodists come from the Armenian school of free-will and so we have had a lot of trouble with this doctrine.  Some groups in the Christian family have understood predestination to mean that every event that happens in our daily lives is choreographed by God, but doesn’t that make us mere puppets, absolving us from any personal responsibility?  Others have understood it to mean that God selects which human beings will be saved and which will be lost.  John Wesley absolutely decried this so-called “double-predestination,” saying that if it is true, then the elect would be saved without Christ’s sacrifice and the lost could not be saved even by Christ’s death on the cross.  Our understanding of predestination is that God predetermined His plan of salvation, not the individuals who would be saved.  God decided before anything was created that it would be through Jesus Christ that He would adopt us into His family.  Jesus and salvation through Him are what God predestined.  What was predestined was what Wesley called prevenient grace, which means grace that took the first step toward us before knew that we needed help: “Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, He had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living.”  What was predestined was that we would become whole and holy after we were immersed into His love.  I’m so glad that God is determined to make me whole and holy!  I’ve got so far to go, but I will be made whole one day and then I will be able to love as I have been loved – consistently and constantly.

Ephesians tells us that God foreordained Christ to be the way we are related to God and each other.  Jesus would be the way we come to understand just how wastefully lavish God is when it comes to loving us.  Jesus told a story once that we call “The Parable of the Prodigal Son,” the wasteful son.  But in that story, it was the father who was the wasteful one, extravagant with his love, and that is what Jesus really wanted us to understand from that story.  God decided before the foundation of the world that He would be gracious and extravagant toward us, the objects of His affection.

Ephesians also tells us that God has an overall purpose for His creation, a purpose that He is working out in everything and everyone.  That long-range plan is all about our living in community with each other, in harmony which resembles the harmonious relation between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  It is “a long‑range plan in which everything would be brought together and summed up in [Christ].”  So whenever you have an opportunity to work for peace in your community, to improve the living conditions of some of your neighbors, to go on mission trips – whatever you do to bring peace and harmony to others – you are participating in the long-range plans of God.  That makes what you do so very important!  You can be sure, regardless of the news you read or see on television, that God is at work each day, working out His overall purpose in everything and everyone.

Ephesians also tells us that it is in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for.  There are times when life seems so purposeless and we feel so lost.  But it is in our relationship with Christ that we learn our true identity, our self-worth, and it is where we find life’s purpose.

When we have decided on a major purchase, like a house or a car (or a wife!), we usually put some money on the line to show our commitment to that decision – a down payment or an engagement ring.  It is a guarantee of more to come – the full price of the house or car, the full commitment of marriage.  God gave us a down payment on all of His promises when He sent His Spirit to us to live in us and to empower our lives.  His Spirit is that signet, that down payment, that token that assures us that all that God has promised to us will be forthcoming – our being made whole, our eternal life in heaven, our participation in that great community of the saints forever.  The Spirit is the guarantee of God’s lavish love for us.  It is the assurance that before the beginning of all creation, God “had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ.”  That’s sounds like a plan!  Amen.

Arthur H. Holt