Through stormy waters

 

I love the sea – in fact of all the beautiful places for me that I’ve ever been I think most would involve some water somewhere. I also enjoy going out on boats – of whatever size – the cross-channel ferry to the small speed boat – I should perhaps add that I’m not so keen on rowing boats to be honest, because they’re a bit too wobbly when you try to get in and a bit too much hard work when you eventually do. 

Going out to sea on a beautiful still day is a wonderful experience  - the peace I think surpasses anything we can find on dry land. Of course, there can also be the rather bad days where the water is not quite so calm. I remember one particular trip where I had gone to Dublin to watch Wales play one year. 

Wales had won the game and there was a good degree of celebration – for some bizarre reason which I don’t recall now, we had booked the 9am ferry back to Holyhead the following morning, and it was raining and it was very windy. When we got there we found many other supporters had booked the same ferry – it was packed and it was a very rough crossing and it had been, for many, a long night of celebration – I’ll leave the rest to your imagination !

In our gospel reading this morning (Mark 4:35-41) Jesus went out in a boat with his disciples. Given the most comfortable position on the boat he fell asleep, and while he was sleeping a great storm developed. Eventually, panicking madly, the disciples woke him, wondering why he was leaving them to perish. As he calmed the waters, he challenged them, asking them why they had not had more faith – why didn’t they trust him that everything was going to be ok?

The Church is in many ways like a boat or a collection of boats sailing through all kinds of different waters. There are the calm waters where the boat sails steadily along. It needs little work to make it happily go along, and action is only needed if you want to speed it up or drastically change course. Very often the crew will just be happy to allow the weather to take them along at its own pace. 

There are the rougher waters where a lot of work is needed to keep the boat on course. In such waters, the crew on the boat will be alert to what is going on around them at all times and be ready for any work that may be needed. 

Then, there are the really rough waters, where, a bit like in the gospel, it seems that the boat is being swamped, that there is nothing that can be done to keep it on course. Then, it’s a question of all hands on deck and, ultimately, relying on the experience of some and the work of all, the storm is calmed, and the boat hits quieter waters. 

It’s not hard to see the comparisons with the Church... In this country for many centuries the Church has occupied a fairly privileged position. The church has sailed through pretty calm waters generally. Up until the last 100 years or so many people went to Church as a matter of course. We have relied on their attendance to pay the bills and even to make people think that the Church is healthy.

But that has certainly not always been the case – the ease with which people went to Church made many in the Church complacent and made many unaware of the need to be committed to really following Jesus; Jesus, who never once took the easy road. That comfort has led some to become far more committed to building the church they want rather than building the Church that God wants. It has also perhaps led to us forgetting that the gospel of Jesus is challenging and sometimes hard… So, calm waters, much as we like them, come with some problems…  

Then there are the slightly rougher waters – where there is a challenge for people. Perhaps money is a little bit tight, or the congregations have started to drop a bit and we’re struggling to attract new people….  In that situation some Churches have risen to the challenge. They have made changes where necessary, they have looked for opportunities and built on the foundations they’ve had, rather than just battled off the storm and retreated inwards as others may have done.

Then there are those caught in really rough waters – when churches are really threatened, and by churches I don’t just mean buildings, but communities of Christians – where sharing the gospel feels like something completely alien. In those circumstances some have battled through, some have fallen along the way. 

At the end of the storm those Churches, whatever they may look like and if they’ve survived, will often be unrecognisable from the ones that entered the storm.

And so what state is the Church in today ? Well, there will be all kinds of answers to that simply because there is no one answer – worldwide the Church is growing rapidly and there are now something like 2.6 billion Christians in the world (Center for study of Global Christianity). In the Anglican Church in Wales alone there are still a lot of  worshippers every week, many more of course at Christmas and Easter, and there are about 1300 Churches providing centres for worship, but also very often involved in all kinds of different projects and community activities. 

And yet too often, we talk ourselves down, but in doing that we actually talk down the power of God. As Jesus was awoken in the boat, he asked, ‘Have you still no faith?’ Just as his disciples lost confidence in him, we sometimes seem to lose faith in God’s ability to grow the church. 

And instead of looking at what we have, the blessings and benefits and assets, sometimes we look at what we haven’t got and become disheartened. But, in Christ we can always have heart. He has not, and he will not ever leave us, and though we may face challenges, though we may go through what seem like difficult seas, we can be strong, and we must keep looking to God for the vision that he has, for the power that he offers, and for the strength that he gives. And we must be ready to move to different waters as God leads us…. 

An anxious, worried, rather depressed church is a particularly unattractive church – a church that is radiant with the love of God for all people will draw people to it…. And so I think God may have a message for us and that is that rather than asking him why it seems he is leaving us to perish, we should instead be asking, ‘What do you want us to do next ?’ 

Today we can go through relatively calm waters if we want – we can take the easy road of being a comfortable place for people to gather together for worship and fellowship. We can happily travel along, hoping the money doesn’t run out (although if we do that, it probably eventually will !), and that people will keep coming, or we can journey adventurously looking to Jesus for all things, seeking his strength and inspired by  his example. 

In this gospel reading we are left with little doubt as to which path Jesus would have us choose…. He never chose the easy way, he chose the most effective way. He chose a way of hard work, even of pain, knowing that what he was working for was so important to him and to everyone that he could do nothing else. 

Today the Church here, and everywhere in this Country, is faced with a choice. ‘Yes’, we can retreat into the background as sadly so many Churches have done for so long, or we can listen to Jesus, we can trust him, we can have faith and we can make our presence felt, and far more importantly, we can make God’s love known here and everywhere. 

It won’t happen automatically – it won’t happen without work and without challenges and sometimes inconvenience but reaching out to people to share good news is what Jesus has told us to do and it is what we must do if we’re listening to him – and through stormy waters it’s essential that we confidently do that knowing that Jesus, the Prince of Peace, will be with us wherever we journey and in whatever we do.  AMEN