Sunday, June 23, 2024, 5th Sunday after Pentecost
“Fellow Workers”
Psalm 124; Job 38:1-19; 2 Corinthians 6:1-10; Mark 4:35-41
Order of Holy Matins
Hymns: #586 “Preach You the Word”; #812 “Come, Let Us Join Our Cheerful Songs”; #662 “Onward, Christian Soldiers”; #700 “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling”
Dear brothers and sisters, my fellow-workers in Christ; Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
Years ago, in my home church back in Michigan, four of our gentlemen took a fishing trip on Lake Huron, out on Saginaw Bay, in a boat just big enough for the four of them. The fishing was good that day. They were about five miles out, and having a wonderful time … until a squall line came boiling out of the west, too fast for them to outrun. They told us how the waves quickly came up to four or five feet, and the rain came down in buckets, and “If you’d stood up in the boat, you could have touched the bottom of the clouds; and we couldn’t tell if the lightning was coming down from the sky or up from the water.” Absolutely terrifying. It took them over two hours to make it back to shore, and it’s good that they were all praying men in that boat, because they were pretty sure they were going to die. But the Lord heard their prayers and saw them through and kept the lightning bolts away. Four very thankful men made it safely back to shore, and back to church on Sunday to tell the tale.
We’re all in the same boat, folks. St. Paul, in our reading from 2nd Corinthians, calls us “God’s fellow workers.” The Greek word there is sunergountes, workers together; co-workers, companions, compadres, companeros. We’re a lot like my four friends in the boat, praying together not to die. We’re like the disciples in the boat in our Gospel reading, rowing against the wind. We’re the Church St. Paul describes, putting up with troubles, hardships, and distresses together, all for the sake of Christ. We have a mission of grace and mercy God that has given us to accomplish a world that’s storming, broken, bleeding, and dying all around us. How blessed we are to have companions to help us along the way, and fellow-workers to share our joys and troubles with.
So, fellow-workers… just who is the God we’re working for? Who is it who’s by our side, and on our side, always? Knowing the answer to that should fill us with peace, joy, and confidence, no matter what may happen. In our reading from the book of Job, it sort of looks like old Job is getting yelled at, that God is chewing him out for being unfaithful. But that’s not exactly the case here, and it isn’t really being fair to poor Job, considering everything he went through.
You remember the story about what happened to Job. Job was righteous and faithful, and doing the best he could to serve God; he was a good and faithful man. Yet God allowed terrible troubles to come into his life. God didn’t inflict those troubles on Job; “God tempts no one,” our Catechism says. He only allowed the devil to have his way with the man for a little while. And yes, there’s a difference. The difference is between a capricious God who’d punish us and hurt us for no reason at all, and a Father God who loves us enough to discipline us and teach His children what we need to know. Whatever it may take to get it through our thick heads and stubborn hearts, it’s always for our good.
Job’s life was met with one disaster after another, storm after storm after storm. First, he lost his flocks and herds, which were livelihood and source of income. Then he lost his dear children to a storm – all of them, seven sons and three daughters. The roof fell on them, and all of them died. Then the Lord allowed Satan to inflict him with sores and boils and he lost his health. He’d tried his best to hang on to his faith; but he was reduced in the end to sitting in an ash heap, sitting in the ashes his life had become, throwing dust on his head, scraping at his wounds with a broken piece of pottery, while his own wife was telling him, “God must really hate you; why don’t you just give up and die?” and while his three so-called friends tried to tell them it was all his own fault.
Job did his best to be faithful, in spite of his circumstances, but who could blame him for slipping into the “why me’s?” He began to question God, and to wonder what he’d done to deserve all this. He prayed and begged God for a hearing, for some explanation for it all, but all the while he was thinking that God wasn’t listening, and that God really did hate him, and that God didn’t care. He was on the verge of giving up, throwing in the towel. He even asked God, “Why don’t you just kill me and get it over with?”
Was Job sliding into sin at that point? Well, yes. But trusting God is hard for us sometimes, and God knows it. God knows, the Scripture says, that “we’re only made of flesh,” and He takes pity on us because of it. What God is doing in Job isn’t so much rebuking him (well, maybe a little), as He is encouraging him, lifting him up, and calling him to look up. He’s letting him know the storm is over and God is still there. He’s reminding poor, suffering Job who his God is, and who’s still with him. And don’t we all need that sometimes?
The Lord answers Job out of the storm. Out of the middle of it, in the depths of his sorrows, and in the worst of his troubles. "Who is this that darkens My counsel with words without knowledge?” the Lord says. “Brace yourself like a man (literally, “Gird up thy loins”), and I will question you, and you shall answer Me.” What the Lord is saying is, “Job, I’m God and you’re not. You know only a little, but I know everything. You can’t see past tomorrow, but I hold eternity – your eternity - in My hands. Having faith means trusting in Me, even when you can’t understand what I’m doing - even in the worst of storms, even in the dark.”
“Job, do you know who it is who’s still with you? I’m the One who laid the earth’s foundation, the One who said, ‘Let there be,’ and it was. I’m the One who marked off the dimensions of the earth, the One who set the earth on its footings and laid down its cornerstone. I’m the Author of Creation, the Divine Architect, the Builder of everything, and the One who made you. I’m the One who makes the morning stars sing together and the angels shout for joy. I’m the One who made the wind and the clouds and the seas and the rain, the one who makes the sun come up over your poor head, and makes it go down again.”
“I’m the One who’s going to take the world by the corners and shake all the wickedness out of it one day. The devil who’s been troubling you is going to be dealt with by and by (that happened at the cross); and I won’t let him have you. I’m the One who divides the darkness from the light, the good from the bad, the right from the wrong. If only you could know everything I’m doing, and everything I’m planning to do, for you and for all My children. You can’t see it now, because your eyes are full of tears and your heart is full of fear; but one day soon you will.” (Read the last chapter of the book of Job for yourself to see what God does for him in the end).
So, who is that in our Gospel reading, with His head laid on a cushion, taking a nap in the back of a boat, in the middle of a storm? It’s the same Lord who spoke out of the whirlwind to Job, the same God who created light and darkness, now come down to walk in the world. The 12 disciples, those fellow-workers, needed to learn who He was. They should have known, by this time, after seeing Him do miracle after miracle, day after day. But they were only human, and only sinners, too. And they were still only disciples, only students, learners, rookies, with so much more to learn and so much more they needed to know about trusting God. And that’s true of all of us, too. So the life lessons go on.
Jesus, according to Mark’s Gospel, had spent that day by the side of the lake, the Sea of Galilee, preaching to the crowds, and teaching His disciples; not a ten-or-fifteen-minute sermon, say “Amen” and go home again; but preaching and teaching and helping and healing the people all day long. He taught them about how God is the sower of seed, the Lord of Creation, and how God is like a farmer who plants and tends and waters and causes things on the earth to grow.
Now the sun was going down and the day was almost over, and you’d think it was time for everyone to rest. But Jesus knew, according to Mark, that there was a man possessed by a demon who needed His help, waiting on the other side of the lake. (That story comes next in Mark’s Gospel). So the demon-possessed man was one reason Jesus had for wanting to cross the lake; and giving His disciples a lesson in faith was another. (Jesus was multi-tasking!) So into the boat they all went, with darkness falling, and “they took Him along just as He was.” And those in the crowd who had access to boats followed along; “Other boats were with them.”
And of course, Jesus knew that a furious squall was coming. He’s the omniscient, all-knowing, Sovereign God of the universe. And not only did He know a storm was coming, He had the power to raise His hand and call for it. He could also do what He did in Job’s case, and hold back His hand and let the devil do his worst, for just a little while. So, in a matter of minutes, a peaceful sea turned into a nightmare. A violent wind slammed into their boat, and into the other boats. The waves were pounding and crashing and breaking over the boat, and filling it with water, faster than all the brothers working together could bail. (Life gets that way sometimes.) The disciples were in a panic, certain they were all going to die.
And where was Jesus? Laying down in the back of the boat, sound asleep, with His head on that cushion. Have you ever said it? Have you ever said it? Lord, where are You? Lord, wake up! Lord, I’m dying down here! Lord, don’t You love me? Lord, don’t You care about me? Here I am, at the end of my rope, feeling forgotten as old Job… and where in the world are You? Sometimes, folks, it takes getting to the end of ourselves to get us to remember God. And so often, at the end of our strength is where God chooses to reveal Himself.
“And the Lord spoke out of the storm.” Jesus opened His eyes, sat up, yawned, stretched, and took a look around, maybe even a little bit amused at the panic His compadres were in. Then He rebuked the wind (which was His, after all, to rebuke); and He admonished the waves, and said, “Here is where your proud waves halt! Be quiet! Be still! Shhhhhhhhhh….” The same God, the same Creator, the same Sovereign Lord who spoke to Job, now standing in a fishing boat, changing the weather with a word.
And at His Word, the wind died down – immediately. It abated, it ceased, it just stopped, and the waves pulled themselves back into the sea, like “someone” had flipped a switch. And “there was a great calm.” A raging, life-threatening storm one minute, a sea as still as glass the next. The natural gives way to the supernatural, just…like…that. Ah, who is this? “Even the wind and the waves obey Him.”
And the point of this exercise, of course, was “the guys in the boat,” who were just beginning their course in discipleship, and hadn’t really seen anything yet, compared to what was coming for them. They were going to need faith in God and faith in His Son, the kind of faith that can win out over fear, if they were going to do the mighty work the Lord had in mind for them. They were going to need what St. Paul called “the mutual encouragement of the brothers, a shared faith, to keep a brand-new Church together in the face of all the trials, troubles, and challenges that were coming their way. They were going to have to be sunergountes, workers together, co-workers, companions, as they gave witness to the cross and Resurrection of Jesus, and spread the Good News about Him into the world. They’d need faith that would cling to Jesus in spite of everything the world and the devil would try to do to them, and hearts that loved their Lord so much, they’d be willing to die for Him, as He had once given His life for them. There was a reason Jesus sent them out into the world two by two, and not alone. It’s the same reason Jesus created a Holy Church where His people could gather and support each other and work together. It’s hard, nearly impossible, to be a faithful Chr. by yourself – but that’s why we’re all in this boat together. Welcome to your support system!
Isn’t it grand to know that the same Lord who spoke to Job in middle of his troubles, the same Lord who calmed the wind and the waves when His disciples were sure they were going to die, is the same God who’s still here with us, as we work together for Him? My “fellow workers” – my sunergountes, my co-workers, my companions, my companeros, my compadres – we still have a continuing mission to spread the grace and mercy and Good News of God in the world around us; and that’s a mission we can’t neglect or put aside or ignore; “Go ye therefore” is still in full effect. If it sometimes seems like we’re the disc. in the boat, rowing against wind, that’s OK; because as Jesus was with them, wind and waves and all, to teach them and lift them up and make them stronger, He’ll do the same for us, as we pray and turn our hearts to Him.
It’s still a sinful world out there, and it will be until Jesus comes at last to shake the sin out of it. But until then, we’re going to be Church St. Paul describes, putting up with troubles, hardships, distresses, and storms for sake of Christ; that goes with the territory. How blessed we are that Christ, our brother, is working with us, in us, and beside us, and that we have one another to share in the work. “Now is time of God's favor, now is day of salvation,” Paul says. “Let’s work while the sun is shining,” Jesus says. This is day Lord has made! Let us rejoice and be glad in it! In Jesus’ name; Amen.