First Presbyterian Church Albuquerque New Mexico

06/21/2009

"Storm Wrestling" - A Sermon Preached by The Rev. Mike Elliott

Storm Wrestling A Sermon Preached by The Rev. Mike Elliott June 28, 2009 I Samuel 17:32-49; Mark 4:35-41 Do any of you have fears? Rational or irrational? Healthy or unhealthy fears? So, what are you afraid of? In our world, there is an awful lot to be afraid of these days. The economy. Our personal finances. Global warming. Terrorism… you name it, we all have lots to be afraid of. The good news for those of you who fear is that chances are there is a big fat Greek name for whatever gives you fits… Phobialist.com has them all listed in alphabetical order for those of you who like to self-diagnose! There’s arachnophobia (fear of spiders), agoraphobia, coulrophobia (the fear of clowns) which is another one of my fears! Zoophobia (fear of animals), bibliophobia (fear of books), there is even, believe it or not, barophobia, the fear of gravity!!! Like I said, there is a big fat Greek word for pretty much anything you can possibly be afraid of, no matter how rational or irrational that fear may be. There are many dangers out in the world waiting for us and it’s perfectly okay to fear them. Fear is a natural reaction and a God given reaction to anything that threatens us or may cause us harm. Sometimes though, fear, as natural as it may be can lead to paralysis… a complete inability to do anything. Anything at all. Have you ever had a situation in your life when you have been completely paralyzed by fear and totally unable to do anything, anything at all? Just stand there with your mouth hanging open and afraid to act? Fear can prevent us from dealing with what threatens us; and it can permit the things that we fear most to destroy us; and not just our bodies, but also our hearts, our minds, and even our very souls. That is what was happening at the time when the Philistines came to make war on Israel during the reign of King Saul. The Philistines came with their champion warrior - Goliath of Gath - and this guy was huge, even by today’s standards! He was one big ole boy!!! Over nine feet tall and well armed. Big as a barn and tough as nails too. Every day he would taunt and tease the Israelites and challenge them to pick their best soldier to go one on one against him - and whoever won the battle - their side would win the war. Each day, over and over, for forty days, he would tease them with this challenge - and each day - the Israelites fled in absolute terror at the mere sight of him. Just the thought of going one on one with this brute scared the daylights out of every man in Israel and no one would go forth to do battle with him. That is except for David, the youngest child of his family, the one who had been relegated to tending his father's sheep while his older and bigger brothers conducted business and served in the army of King Saul. David, the scrawny little runt of his family. He wasn’t afraid of Goliath, not one little bit. Well, maybe he was afraid, and that would certainly be natural for him, but he knew there was a job to do and he know that it might as well be him to wrestle with the big ole storm named Goliath… Hear the Word of the Lord from the Book of Samuel: “David said to King Saul, "Let no one lose heart on account of Goliath the Philistine. Your servant will go and fight him." Saul replied, "You are not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him; you are only a boy, and he has been a fighting man from his youth." But David said to Saul, "Your servant has been keeping his father's sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God. The LORD who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine." Saul said to David, "Go, and the LORD be with you." Then Saul dressed David in his own tunic. He put a coat of armor on him and a bronze helmet on his head. David fastened on his sword over the tunic and tried walking around, because he was not used to them. "I cannot go in these," he said to Saul, "because I am not used to them." So he took them off. Then he took his staff in his hand, chose five smooth stones from the stream, put them in the pouch of his shepherd's bag and, with his sling in his hand, approached the Philistine. Meanwhile, the Philistine, with his shield bearer in front of him, kept coming closer to David. He looked David over and saw that he was only a boy, ruddy and handsome, and he despised him. He said to David, "Am I a dog, that you come at me with sticks?" And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. "Come here," he said, "and I'll give your flesh to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field!" David said to the Philistine, "You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the LORD Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the LORD will hand you over to me, and I'll strike you down and cut off your head. Today I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel. All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the LORD saves; for the battle is the LORD's, and he will give all of you into our hands." As the Philistine moved closer to attack him, David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet him. Reaching into his bag and taking out a stone, he slung it and struck the Philistine on the forehead. The stone sank into his forehead, and he fell facedown on the ground.” On the 40th day of big mouth Goliath’s taunting, David who is bringing provisions to his brothers who are camped with the army of King Saul, sees Goliath, hears his challenge, and is amazed and angered by the fact that no one in all of Israel will stand up to him. So David volunteers to do the job. As we heard - David has a hard time convincing Saul to allow him to do this - Saul is sure that the boy is too small - too inexperienced - but David assures Saul that he can do it. Not that Saul has any choice in the matter, but David knows that he can, with God's help, defeat Goliath. Piece of cake. But that’s what storm wrestling is all about. It doesn’t take any special skills or tools. Anyone can do it. Life experience plus a little faith gives each of us what we need to stand up to those big, taunting storms of our lives and cut them down to size. And so David does just that - he defeats hurricane Goliath - and not in the way that the army of Israel expected. Not with a sword, a helmet, and a coat of mail - but with the instrument that he used as a shepherd - a sling -and with the name of God. Like I said, storm wrestling requires nothing more than the skills we already have and a little faith. The trick is to understand that God is able to help us - and that God will help us, that God has power over the wind and the waves, that God can still the raging storm and calm the troubled waters, that God can triumph in the face of overwhelming odds because God is, plain and simple, the God who is in all things and through all things and over all things. It is that way with all our fears, with all of the dangers and with all of the troubles that we run into in our lives. If we want to have a chance in overcoming the fears that prevent us from acting and doing something, anything when the storms of our lives are swirling around us. Maybe we are just too conditioned to think that it is our job to stop the storms in our lives, and to fix all of our problems single-handedly. Maybe we are too conditioned to believe that all of society’s problems have to be dealt with by us as individuals or us as the church all alone. That it is up to us to fix everything. But that is not who we are as Christians and it is not what we are called to be about. Our job, our calling, is to be storm wrestlers. Nothing more and nothing less. To stand up, to face our fears and to be ready. To be ready to do what God would have us do. David was by no means the strongest or the smartest or the best warrior in Israel. There were many people far better than him in those respects. But he was the only one who could and would face up to the fear of the giant Goliath. He was the only one who was ready and willing and able to stand up to Goliath. He was the only one, in all of Israel who could say…”Here I am Lord. I may not be much to look at, but I am here. Use me.” David did not know how he could ever stand up to Goliath, but he knew that with God by his side that he was going to do it. Somehow. But he would do it. As David would later write about his faith walk with God: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff they comfort me.” And also: “The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid?” David’s faith allowed him to step outside of his fear and storm wrestle. Over and over again in his life David would wrestle with storms. Storms brought about by other people, storms brought about by his own foolishness and pride. Storms beyond his control and storms of his own making. But he always faced up to them, without fear, and with God by his side. As the Apostle Paul would later write: “What shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” That is something that the kids and I learned this week in Vacation Bible School! Now, doesn’t the story of David and Goliath and the words of David and Paul make a mighty fine sermon for a Sunday morning! So cut and dried and easy. Perfectly good advice on how to deal with the storms in our lives. And it means that my sermon is a short one and you could be getting out of here early this morning! But, you know what, talk is cheap. And it’s far easier to say “Forget your fears and get on with your lives. But walking that walk is a very different thing! And storm wrestling in the midst of our own personal crises is not always so easy. Did I forget to mention before that in addition to being an arachnophobic and a coulrophobic that I am a thalassophobic? Now for you non-greek speakers, that is someone who is afraid of the ocean or sea. I’m okay splashing at the beach, but I do not get on small boats that will be going out to sea. Never!!!!!! When Jesus’ disciples are caught out in the water during a violent storm that threatens to drown them, I understand perfectly how they feel. Just reading the story makes me nervous and more than a little afraid. And yet, as the storm worsens, Jesus just sleeps like a little baby there in the boat. No worries. No fear. Just a quiet refreshing sleep. Meanwhile, unlike Paul or David, the disciples are absolutely paralyzed with terror. Unable to do anything. Unable to calm themselves. Unable to try and keep the boat safe. The absolute exact opposites of storm wrestlers, they are! Thinking about it though, when we encounter the storms in this church or in our own lives, do we act more like Paul and David or more like the disciples in the boat? I can’t speak for you, but for me, my initial reaction is more likely to be like that of the disciples. It’s just natural, basic human nature. When the disciples can take their fear and terror no longer, they wake Jesus up and say to him: “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” It’s not a faith filled question. It’s not a plea for help. They want Jesus to be awake and sharing in their fear. Not to help them, but to be there with them when they finally capsize and drown. If you can’t have solidarity in faith, at least you can have solidarity in death!!!! Jesus, in response, gets up, yells at the storm and everything goes calm. He then says to his fearful disciples: “Why are you afraid? Don’t you have any faith?” Like I said before, the disciples I can relate to. David taking on Goliath, not so much. I have a ceramic plaque on the wall of my office that depicts the scene of Jesus calming the storm to remind me. To remind me of how useless it is to be afraid. To remind me of how crucial it is to hold on to faith in Christ. To hold fast to the promises that David and Paul and countless other people have again and again found to be true. So what are the fears in your life? What are the storms that you are wresting with? Or avoiding? Or paralyzed in fear over? Where in your life do you need to hear Jesus’ words of reassurance and hope? The one sure thing about life is that storms will come our way. Like it or not. We just can’t avoid all of them. But how we choose to act in the midst of them is what really matters. We can run around scared and paralyzed with fear like the disciples or we can face them head on like David did with Goliath. We fear most in our lives what we do not know or understand. We fear more than anything the things that we cannot control. We cannot control what will happen from one minute to the next because that’s just the way the game of life is played. In some ways though, that lack of control was what allowed David to take on Goliath, and it is the same with us. The point Jesus was making in the boat is that the storms and fears of our lives should and must bring us back to God. To the God who is the source of our lives. To the God who is our hope, our strength and our courage. I have been a big fan of “The Deadliest Catch” on Discovery Channel since it first began. The show chronicles the struggles of King Crab fishermen in the Bering Sea. Now, if there is one thing that I have learned from the show, besides that I do not want to fish for crab, its that when storms come, and they always do, that it is crucial to keep the prow of the boat facing right into the storm. That is the only way to survive. To face the storm head-on and without faltering. David knew that when he went out to face Goliath head-on. David knew from where his strength came. He knew who was in control and who it was who could help him. So when you fear and when your life storms threaten to sink your little ship, remember that our God is THE God of overwhelming odds. Our God is there with you to overcome that which would overcome you. Life storms do come and go. We can cower in fear or we can face them head on. But they will still come. You can choose to be a storm fearer or a storm wrestler. Try wrestling. Oh, and one last thing…remember to face into the wind. No matter what. Amen.