Do Not Be Afraid
Matthew 14:22-27; Romans 8:14-17
Sunday, May 27, 2007

This is a sermon for anyone who has ever had to beat against the wind. I think I have the term right – beat against the wind. I am not a sailor, although years ago when I was a pastor in Newport , Rhode Island , one of the members of my church would take me as crew out on his sailboat once in a while. His name was Pete. Pete used to tease me by introducing me to his sailor friends by saying, This is Rev. Heinrichs. He’s not much of a minister, but he’s got the makings of a good sailor! Being a good sailor, of course, was more important in their eyes!

Anyway, crewing on a sailboat taught me that some days you just can’t beat the wind. You can tack back and forth, back and forth, hoping and praying for the wind to shift a point or two, but the wind’s in charge. These days what you do in that case is take the sails down and turn the engine on and motor home pretty much in a straight line. But in the days of Jesus and his disciples: the wind was against you, you would be out on stormy water for the duration.

In Matthew’s gospel today, Jesus says to his disciples out in the storm: Do not be afraid! You were a disciple, you might have wanted to say back to Jesus, Easy for you to say. You can walk on water! But the point Jesus is making is not just what to do in a small boat out on open water in a storm. No. Jesus is indicating what to do in a life-storm when you’re far from firm ground.

Perhaps I should check in with you here. Anybody ever found him or herself in a life-storm? How about what comes with grief, loss, illness, addiction, losing a job – or just plain growing up and getting older? Or maybe it’s even simpler. We all live in a terrifying time, don’t we! War abroad with no end in sight. Anxiety and rage rule our politics at home. Health insurance and social security – how many members of even the middle class will soon be without it? Education – where should I start? And maybe you don’t know who and what to believe anymore. Anybody have a presidential candidate in mind you can put your finger on and say: That one. He/she can get us out of Iraq with honor, bring a divided country together, and address the big issues! I don’t think so! Pardon the pun, but we’re most of us in the same boat, politically speaking. Republica, Democrat. We don’t know who to turn to. Not yet. And to be in this place, if we are honest with ourselves, is terrifying.

At least I am. Terrified, that is. I love this land. I love this nation. I am American heart and soul. I tell you this on Memorial Day Sunday when we remember our war dead. I think about our war dead and what they gave their lives for. I ask as I watch more war dead come home week after week – I ask, are we worthy? Is our politics worthy? Is our educational system worthy? Are we as a nation practicing a worthy economics? I am haunted by the question. I see the caskets and I ask: How can we be worthy of what you have given?

I am also a disciple of Jesus. And that comes first. I ask the same question of Jesus: How can I be worthy of what you gave on the cross? You poured yourself out, Jesus! I don’t have to be afraid because you didn’t back off! You could have played God, played safe, but you didn’t! You hurt and you wept in the night and you still got up in the morning to do what needed to be done. Hate and division and addiction and sadness – they do not win! They are not in control after all! God wins, it turns out. God wins in you!

Now, there’s a huge difference between asking our war dead how we can be worthy and asking Jesus. You see, Jesus is alive! He is alive! And he comes to us when we are beating uselessly against the wind and says to us: Take courage. I am here. Do not be afraid!

Because Jesus is alive and footloose somewhere here among us, we do not have to be afraid of our future! We do not have to be afraid of measuring up to the past! We do not have to be afraid of people who do not look or sound or walk or sing differently from us! We do not have to be afraid of the winds, because Jesus comes to calm the storm inside us!

Last week one evening I accompanied a group of youth from our YSET program to the annual meeting of Junior Achievement here in Hampden County . Junior Acheivement has been working with our kids and they have been impressed with the music program at YSET. The kids have been working on producing rap music that is clean, not violent, not mysogynist. You might call it worthy music.

Our Youth Director Paula Moore was unable to go. So I went to support the kids. Our group included a couple younger staff members and about eight youth. They’d been asked to present a song from their new CD as a sort of prelude to the JA theme of the night – helping kids lead worthy lives. Two of our youth were to sing. The rest were there for moral support.

It was an odd setting, the annual meeting of Junior Achievement at the Baystate Conference Center in Holyoke . A couple hundred people (nearly all white), in suits, and our kids (all black), dressed informally but nicely. Now, the kids have produced a sort of karaoke version of the CD that they can sing along with. Two of YSET’s young men got up to sing. The song they sang – composed and produced by YSET – is called The First Question. I got this much out of the song. I admit I didn’t get it all. The first question is: Do you want to know me? To know who I am?

So there it was – Junior Achievement and YSET, black and white, young and old, whatever and rap, all in this stuffy conference center, and the song asks this essential question: Do you want to know me? To know who I am? This is the question, isn’t it? The question in this church, in this urban community. Do we really want to know each other? Can we break through and be truly interested in one another? Or, are we afraid?

Clearly the audience wanted to be polite, but didn’t quite get the question, weren’t quite clear about what the kids were doing there at the Annual Meeting of Junior Achievement. You want me to know you? Huh?

The song ends. The two young singers come back to our table and sit down. The JA meeting begins as our salad is served. I lean over to the two singers and say, Wow. That took courage. I’m proud of you. One of the young men, kind of a big boy, says back to me, Pastor, that was really uncomfortable. He pauses and then he says, But I am not alone.

He means Jesus. He means that when he is asking his question – do you want to know me? -- to a crowd that has little idea what to do with him, he’s not just beating against the wind. He is afraid. But someone, sometime, has said to him: Take courage. I am here. Do not be afraid.

So I conclude this brief sermon series on Jesus with an invitation to you. Let us be Jesus-centered. It doesn’t matter what we call it. But let us be Jesus-centered. Calling ourselves Christian alone is about being good people. That’s nice. But there’s more to say. Calling ourselves, say, Christ centered is about the big theological picture of the purposes of God. That’s thoughtful. But there’s more to say!

Being Jesus centered – just being Jesus centered -- that’s about beating against the wind and knowing you aren’t alone and you’re going to make it to firm ground!

Jesus centered. It means you don’t have to be afraid!

Are you with me?

Amen