-
Contact Info
- Office Hours
- M-Th 8:30 - 3
- Closed Friday
- Telephone
- (503)640-1775
- Address
- 168 NE 8th
- Hillsboro, OR 97124
- Directions
-
Email
- General Info
- Office
- Spire
- Webmaster
- Gwen Drake
- Pastor
- Christine Webb
- Family Ministries
- Coordinator
- Lefty Schultz
- Visitation Pastor
- Laura Lillegard
- Office Manager
- David Walters
- Music Minister
- Youth E-mail
- Youth Ministry
- Oregon-Idaho UMC
- Main UMC Website
Sermon - June 14th, 2009
Red In Morning
Rev. Dick Gay
Scripture: Mark 4:35-41
As a child, I can remember my mother saying:
Red at night, sailors delight
Red in morning, sailor take warning.
There are several versions of this little rhyme, but they all point to the idea that if the eastern sky is cloudy when the sun sets, the storm has passed. If, however, the western sky is cloudy when the sun rises, you could be in for more than a bad hair day. It’s a fairly easy way to predict the weather, even if not totally accurate. If we’re able to predict the weather from the signs in the sky, why are we not able to detect the coming of a storm in our lives or in society by the signs we see?
The idea is as old as time. Even Jesus used the same analogy. In Mt 16:3 he says “You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.”
Well, who cares?
It seems everyone is interested in the weather, but few care about the climate in society, including the church.
Many time people have joked with me: “Did you order this weather?” My usual reply is, “I’m in sales. I have nothing to do with production.”
But I have never, that I can remember, had anyone ask me to pray about the storms of life, unless they were personally involved. For example, where were you on 9-11? Did you pray? How? That the storm would be calmed? That no one you knew was in New York? That it was all a hoax? We were in Shrewsbury, England that day and we felt helpless and somewhat alone. We prayed for our families back home and for the victims. When we recalled visiting the bombed out shell of Coventry cathedral a few days earlier, we also prayed for the perpetrators. Behind the altar of that victim of WWII Nazi bombs are the words, “Father, forgive.”
A little closer to home, how many prayed during the storm a week ago? Again what did you pray for, that no one would be hurt? Or that it would not hit you?
We were coming home from church a on Sunday and saw a column of smoke in the direction of our home. I prayed, almost without thinking, “Lord, I hope that isn’t our house”. In other words, “I hope it is someone else’s house?” It turned out to be a brush fire in the woods next to our home. The firefighters thought it serious enough to call in a tanker drop, but it was out in a matter of some very exciting hours. Yes, we prayed! But how should we have prayed?
The recent economic storms have hit much closer to home. Jobs have been lost within our church family, stock portfolios and IRA’s have lost value. Our children’s schools may be losing teachers. How do we pray? “Lord, do you not care if we perish?”
When it hits close to home, you care very much about the social weather forecast. Don’t we ignore God’s peace and help during the good times, but cry out to her in times of fear and panic? The WWII assertion “there are no atheists in the fox holes” rings true to our tendency to trust our own efforts until it is clear our own efforts cannot save us. Wouldn’t it be a whole lot better to call on God’s help to preserve and enhance peace before war breaks out – either in society or in our lives?
Sidney Harris once observed that in times of peace, the true Christian is praised for resisting evil and returning good for evil. But in times of war, society can’t afford this moral luxury, and the cowardly pacifists are thrown into prison.
Most of us think of God and prayer much as we would a life preserver hanging on the wall of a ship. When we think the ship is in danger of sinking or we see someone has already gone overboard, we grab for the life ring.
Would it not be better to wear our faith as we might a life vest, even though it might seem uncomfortable at times? By the way, those cork life rings are dangerous. In the Navy, as we practiced throwing one to a guy in the water, it hit him on the head. Knocked him silly. I’d rather wear a vest.
Such a vest kept me afloat during the worst storm of my life. Ten years ago, my wife, Marcia, was taken ill with a blood infection. We were told she had a one in ten chance of surviving. I told the doctors she wasn’t a statistic. Beside that we had God on our side. She survived. She was completely free of the infection when she was discharged from the hospital five weeks later. In the rehab center twelve hours later, her weakened heart gave out on her.
In the course of that illness, there were people from literally all over the country in constant prayer for her. There were total strangers on prayer chains in churches I never heard of in places like Martinsville, Indiana and Charlotte, NC. There were UMW executives in New York and Denver and clergy colleagues in the UMC, UCC, Assemblies of God, and Roman Catholic parishes across the state of Montana. How do I know this? I heard from them. As our e-mail list for the updates on her condition expanded, more and more people were involved in the prayer. And some began to write back.
And what were we all praying for: A miracle and nothing less. And we received our miracle.
It wasn’t my faith that kept us going; it was the Spirit who intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. It was Christ who stood up in our boat and commanded the waves to be still.
Still later, when the storm returned with renewed strength and fury, it was Christ who lashed me to the mast to keep me from going overboard. And gradually the storm subsided. And waiting on the shore was one of Marcia’s and my best friends of over 50 years, Yvon. She too was an answer to prayer.
Storms come in all kinds of packages. Sometimes they come straight down the street and knock you over and pass on out of town. Sometimes they come around hit you from behind over and over.
A parishioner lost a grand-daughter to SIDS, a daughter to a drunk driver and a son to suicide, all in the space of one year. I had all three funerals. At one point it was the parishioner who comforted me.
What often keeps us going in times like these is the realization that God works for good for all those who love him and are called according to his purpose. It is the knowledge that, no matter how bad things seem something good can come out of it, if we look for it.
I had just preached on that text one Sunday, when a young farmer cam up to me and said, “I don’t care what you say, nothing good can come out of a hail storm.” He had just been wiped out by a particularly large hail storm. He was forced to sell his farm. With the proceeds of the sale, he moved to town and bought the local garage. A few months later he was happy as a clam and conceded that indeed something good can come from just about anything.
No tragedy or disappointment can be so overwhelming that God cannot beam his power into our midst. The promise of the rainbow is never far away.
How can I be sure that God really cares? After all, I’m just one of billions. God could have sent his angels with arm loads of joy power and hallelujah juice. But he did something better; he sent himself. He descended into the foxholes of our racial fears and sexual paranoia, of our marital mud-wrestling and our trillion haunting doubts. His cup of cool water is never far from our lips.
BUT! Remember the Music Man? Professor Hill says, “My friends we got trouble, right here in river city. Trouble – that starts with T and rhymes with P and that stands for pool” He really knew how to stir up the troops.
Well I have news for you; there are a lot of Professor Hills saying we have trouble right here in river city. Trouble - that starts with T and rhymes with G and that stands for gay.
And these professors are not selling music instruments to chase away the devil. They’re selling a snake oil and its called homophobia. While all snake oil is worthless it’s usually harmless. But this stuff can kill -- and has many times. Ask the family of Matthew Shepherd. Just as important however is the fact that this brand of snake oil drives people away from the Gospel of Jesus Christ and it divides the church as no other issue has since slavery a century and half ago.
Those who would deny the humanity and salvation of the homosexual community, use the Bible to prove their point. Use it out of its context, that is.
And many of the arguments for slavery then were taken from the Bible. But the Bible also says I can sell my daughter into servitude. Wonder what the going price is? The Bible says if my neighbor violates the laws of the Sabbath, he should be put to death. Do I have to carry out the sentence myself? The Bible says it is an abomination for a woman to wear a man's clothing. A woman called me one Sunday morning when the temperature was forty below zero and asked if it would be all right for her to wear slacks to church. She was the only one who showed up.
But God is in the midst of this storm. I wonder sometimes, but I have to believe that in God’s good time the storm will be calmed. I have to believe that because my youngest daughter her partner and my two grandchildren are in the middle of the storm.
Here is a young woman who has been nurtured by the church all her life, who because she is lesbian, feels excluded from the church. Whether she really is or not is immaterial. She feels excluded, not only by her own church but by Christianity per se. Is this truly the kind of love that Christ died to teach us? And her experience is for from being unusual. In fact it is the norm. That was evident is a couple of articles in yesterdays paper.
Even those who were closest to the Christ were limited in their knowledge of him. They knew he was capable of miracles, but when they sought his help in this crisis they were awe struck. Nothing catches your attention like a emonstration. He could have told them about his oneness with nature, but to actually tell the wind and the waves to cease, raised the question, “Who are you?”
It is what we witness and experience that helps us believe. And when we have these experiences we are obligated to tell others about it. That is the example that Mark gives us – that we tell others of the Master of the Sea.
Will you pray with me?
Dear God, Creator and Sustainer of life, many and varied are the storms we experience in life. When our boat begins to rock, may we have our life jacket of faith buckled securely around us. Help us to know that you are always near to reach out a saving hand. There are many different kinds of people in this boat we call life. But when you stand up to calm the storm you won’t throw anyone out of the boat first Lord, we know that, as a young man from the Bronx said, “You don’t make no junk.” We know that all persons are of sacred worth and that we are in ministry to all. We thank you for all of those persons whom we perceive as different from ourselves and who make us look at ourselves and question our motivation for action. There are people in this boat with whom we have disagreements from time to time. That also is as you created us. But let us, as we disagree, do so in love. We pray in the name of the Master of the Sea. Amen