Sunday
June 23
Once More to the Lake
By Marsh Chapel
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When I am out of funds and sorts
And life is all in snarls,
I quit New York and travel east
To Boston on the Charles.
There’s something in the Boston scene
So innocent, so tranquil,
It takes and holds my interest
The same as any bank will.
For Boston’s not a capital,
And Boston’s not a place;
Rather I think that Boston is
A sort of state of grace.
(EB White)
We need refreshment and a reminder of a state of grace, a natural grace. For the winds are blowing. The winds are blowing today. And in three words our Lord Jesus Christ, riding the waves of time and storm, guides us home. In the command to go. In the announcement of peace. In the call to faith. Go! Peace! Faith!
We return again to Mark 4, once more to the lake, in the happy phrase of E B White’s little story of that title. Once more to the lake. Again, we find ourselves out on the water with the wind blowing. Again, we find ourselves on the great lake, so like a great lake in shape, in depth, in length, here Tiberias, here the Sea of Galilee, a fresh water glory, a fresh water gem.
The Lord Jesus Christ is asleep in the stern, not stern, but in the stern, sound asleep. Around him the wind is blowing… as the winds are blowing around us today. The winds are blowing in your life and mine. A wind may be blowing through your family, a steady hard breeze of change, of illness, or of loss. A wind may be blowing through your church family, your community of faith, a steady hard breeze of change, post Covid, with aging, at a time of decline of respect for any and all religion. (And hammering commandment lists on public school walls is surely no substitute for loving, excellent Sunday school teaching). A wind may be blowing through your precious, honored institutions—government, school, University, business, all. A wind may be blowing through your denomination, a steady hard breeze of decline, of disorder, of demise. A wind may be blowing—it surely is—in and through your culture, a steady hard breeze of loss of memory, of loss of morality, of loss of honesty, of loss of character, of loss of the true and the good and the beautiful.
So, again, we find ourselves out on the water with the wind blowing. Again, we find ourselves on the great lake, so like a great lake in shape, in depth, in length, here Tiberias, here the Sea of Galilee, a fresh water glory, a fresh water gem. But when the wind blows? We need the voice of the Lord to command, to announce, to call. Once more to the lake, as E B White put it in his old story title, once more to the lake.
We, you and I, you and all, will need some faith to go on, the announcement of faith to rely on, the call to faith to count on, in 2024. Any clear look to the future, to the next sixth months say, abounds with a need for faith, a need for faith, a need for faith. So Jesus in today’s Gospel speaks to us in three words.
First, says the Lord, come eventide, ‘let us go, let us go across, let us go across to the other side’. Once more. We have been on the lake, and now are back. And the wind is blowing. Hard. You have an unforeseen illness. You have a congregation awaiting growth. You have an institution in the throws of inevitable but challenging change. You have a beloved, now freed but weakened religious denomination, facing hard financial and personnel choices. You have a country and a culture that does not seem to want to face or honor the difference between right and wrong, between truth and falsehood, between service and self-service, between greed and good, between morality and immorality, between personal conviction and criminal conviction. The wind is blowing! You did not cause it, you cannot control it, and you cannot cure it. But just here, it may be, the dominical word, read and spoken and heard today, may be your safe harbor, your port of entry, your crossing to safety on the other side. Crossing to safety…hm…Wallace Stegner’s exquisite novel of that name…Robert Frost’s poem of that theme…hm That is, the next six months are going to come and go, one way or another, like a hard lake wind. We can do our part, and row as hard as we can, and aim for a safe harbor. As we go, it will take some faith, it will take some faith.
EB White you remember wrote Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little, The Trumpet of the Swan and other children’s books. He also, along with his Cornell Professor Dr. Strunk wrote the unsurpassed book on writing, ‘Elements of Style’, including the marvelous three-word admonishment, ‘omit needless words’. Omit needless words! As true for preaching, one must confess, as writing of any sort. White also wrote about skating in Boston on the frog pond (a habit we continue on February 2 each year, and did so this winter, with the fruitful invitational support of our colleague and chaplain for student outreach Mr. Lee). With his uncle White left his shoes on a bench, for an hour of skating. He returned to find his shoes gone, and had to limp up Beacon Hill on the tips of his skates. But his uncle said, ‘whoever took them needed them a lot more than you’, and White remembered. Somehow, we have to find a way to remind ourselves and to teach another generation about generosity of spirit, and we are long way from the shoreline on that quest. Somehow, we have to find a way to remind ourselves and to teach another generation about generosity of spirit, and we are long way from the shoreline on that quest.
Second, says the Lord, and now comes the second word, the second dominical utterance: ‘peace, be still’. Jesus has been asleep in the stern, comforted by cushions—a nice touch, and a good nautical practice to have nice cushions in your boat—and he has no worries, no cares, no furrowed brow. He awakes and commands. And the wind ceases! For he says, ‘Peace. Be Still’. And all is still. Once more to the Galilean lake we come, today, to receive a gift of peace, of stillness, of inner calm, both individual and communal. Whence this story, what its origin, what its history, what its historical grounding—who can say? Not I for sure. It may have arisen amid first century persecution of the nascent church. But the main point in the Scripture is crystal clear. The Lord Jesus Christ offers, brings and confers peace. The wind is blowing! Yet, right in the heart of it, right in the teeth of the gale—a stillness, a peace, a quiet, a quiet heart. With all the storming micro bursts of this season, we may well covet such peace. ‘Breathe through the pulses of desire thy coolness and thy balm’, your Boston poet wrote. I wonder…Upon this summer Sunday, may we, for a moment, receive a gift of peace, hold onto a sense of peace, accept the blessing of peace? EB White said of his marvelous writing, ‘All I have written is a love for life’. Peace. Peace. Peace. Be Still. Be Still. Be Still.
In a way, this is what the Apostle to the Gentiles conferred upon the Corinthians, a wayward lot were they for sure. It is in and within each of our sermons in the summer series, ‘A Look to the Future’. And it has been at least in the background of the sermonic work each summer and our work for this summer: the Upper New York Conference of the United Methodist Church, May 30-31; Asbury First United Methodist Church, June 1-2; Union Chapel, NH, July 21; and sermons for Marsh Chapel on June 23, August 4, and August 25.
As Paul wrote: We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance (and he gives examples)…by purity (and he gives examples)… as having nothing, and yet possessing everything. We have spoken frankly to you Corinthians; our heart is wide open to you. There is no restriction in our affections…open wide your hearts also. His letter echoes Jesus announcement of peace.
Yet it is the third moment of speech which Jesus confers in the midst of the storm which includes or builds upon the others, and carries in full the Gospel, the state of grace, for this day. The Lord calls us, calls all, to faith. Faith as contrasted with fear. Faith, daily faith, by which the buffeting winds and serious frightening storms—and they are serious and they are frightening—are faced down. We my friends are going to need some faith, hour by hour, this year. In season and out, faith. In failure as well as success, faith. In defeat, should and as defeat should come, as well and more so than in success. This is why the Corinthians passage fits so well with the Gospel. Life includes trouble, mistake and failure. In and through these, the gift of faith brings perseverance. When it gets dark enough, you can indeed see the stars.
We may today return, once more to the lake. God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself. The faith of Jesus Christ and the freedom of Jesus Christ we celebrate today. Our forebears were disinclined to leave the pursuit of freedom to others. They lived with faith that the center could hold. They seized freedom in their own hands and by their own lives. They did not wait on others. They did not pause to seek a secret blessing. They did not wait until some ethereal sign emerged. They did not expect some magic insight. They preferred deliverance to diffidence. Real love means taking historical responsibility.
In earshot of our Lord’s teaching, there awaits us every Lord’s day a personal question: as a Christian person, what are you going to do to continue to expand the circle of freedom, spirit, life and love in our time? Speaking of lakes, with Hiawatha, where is your tribal council to create? With Harriet Tubman, where is your slavery to escape? With Frederick Douglass, where is your North Star to publish? With the Shakers, where is your libertinism to avoid? With all, where is your hope to share?
As one wrote long ago, along another shoreline: “This is what one thirsts for, I realize, after the smallness of the day, of work, of details, of intimacy – even of communication, one thirsts for the magnitude and universality of a night full of stars, pouring into one like a fresh tide…I would like to achieve a state of inner spiritual grace from which I could function and give as I was meant to in the eye of God.”
So too, may it be for us, here in Boston on Commonwealth Avenue, and with friends around the world…
When I am out of funds and sorts
And life is all in snarls,
I quit New York and travel east
To Boston on the Charles.
There’s something in the Boston scene
So innocent, so tranquil,
It takes and holds my interest
The same as any bank will.
For Boston’s not a capital,
And Boston’s not a place;
Rather I think that Boston is
A sort of state of grace.
