Job 38: 1-11 Psalm 107: 1-3, 23-32
2 Cor. 6: 1-13 Mark 4: 35-41
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
When my kids were little they loved a children’s book called Home For A Bunny. It’s an old story, originally published in 1956, about a bunny rabbit who is looking for his home in the spring of the year. The rabbit encounters a variety of other creatures and has conversations with them about their homes. He learns that the robins make their homes in nests high above ground, the frogs make their homes in bogs…which is fun for the sake of the book because frog and bog rhyme. The groundhog’s home is under a log, which is also not suitable for the bunny. My kids could repeat the refrain of the book from memory long before they could read “A home for a bunny. A home of his own. Under a rock. Under a stone. Under a log or under the ground. Where would a bunny find a home?”[1]
The story that this beloved book tells is deeper than the story of one singular rabbit looking for a place to call home. It is that deeper, more profound pull that is experienced by all creatures to seek a place of refuge, of safety, of sanctuary. Even if one is drawn to adventure and travel, the promise of returning home is meaningful.
As we anticipate the arrival of our intern in August, we are engaged in finding her a home for the year she will be with us. We want her to be comfortable, to be safe, to feel some sense of belonging here at Luther Memorial but also in that space where she retires at the end of the day.
Others among us have recently moved and changed homes, some going as far away as Atlanta, as Vince and his family recently have, and others making a change in level of care and moving to an assisted living facility.
But like the rabbit in the children’s book, we’ve found a home. One suited to our needs. One where we can place what is familiar and beloved to us on the walls or on the shelves and where we feel…well, at home.
Reading books with our parents or other loving adults is a part of childhood for many of us. Can you remember being a young child? How many of you can recall what it was like…those first days of summer when you were young? Anticipating getting out of school for the promise of a long summer that lay ahead. Maybe a summer where you collected rocks or seashells or other treasures that you stored away in a cigar box in your room. Do you remember days like that?
And how many of you remember being a teenager when summer break finally arrived? Maybe you had a summer job or maybe you just looked forward to sleeping a little later and hanging out with friends at the pool or the park.
Imagine with me, then, if you can, what it is like to be a child or a teenager as school comes to a close for another year and to have no place that is home. You don’t have a bedroom to store your found treasures – you don’t even have a bed. If you are a teenager you don’t have what most teenagers prize above all….privacy.
This week it has been our privilege at Luther Memorial to offer a place to call home, however temporarily, to six women and their eight children. By day these children have done all of the things any other children have done. The teenagers have taken final exams. They have celebrated the end of another school year. They have traded cell phone numbers with their friends and promised to keep in touch over the summer. But at the end of the day they have waited on the van from yet another church to pick them and their mothers up at the Mary’s Place Day shelter and bring them to the latest in a long list of local congregations who can offer a warm dinner, a dry building, and shelter for the night. In the morning, though, they pack up what they need for the day, and go back out into the world.
Their mothers spend the days looking for ways to make life better for their children. They call long lists of potential employers and potential places to find a permanent home. Just like the bunny in the story book they meet up with different people in different circumstances who tell them that no, this is not the place where they will find a home. And they go on. They do whatever they can manage or stomach in order to find ways to support their children. Some sell plasma. Others trade things. They get aid but it doesn’t go far enough.
Those of you who have given of your time and of yourselves to be with them know that it is us who receive from them far more than we give to them. What we give makes a difference for them and for their days. That they have warm food, coffee or tea or orange juice waiting in the morning. That they have another person to watch their beloved but lively child.
And what we receive in return is a reminder of the common mission of all humanity. That our call is not and has never been to go into our own homes, however comfortable and comforting they may be, and lock our doors and close our blinds and forget that there are other people out there who are looking for a home. A home of their own. Under a rock. Under stone. Under a log or under the ground. In a shelter, in a congregation, on the street. Where will our sisters and brothers find a home?
In the Gospel reading today, Jesus is tired. He is tired because ministry has required so much of him. He isn’t tired because he’s the Son of God, his very humanity is weary. So weary that the disciples take him, we are told, just as he is, and put him in a boat, to escape the crowds, to escape the work of ministry he had been given, if even for a little while. And while they are on the water, a storm blows in and the boat is battered with big waves and the disciples are afraid. They are afraid that they are going to die. That this storm that has come up all around their boat will effectively end their lives…they are in danger. So they wake Jesus up with all sorts of accusations. Don’t you care that we are about to die here? Hello? And Jesus stills the storm.
This is a familiar story and a comforting one to us. We find comfort that when the storms of life are threatening we can call to Jesus who can still the storm so that we are safe. But you know, back in verse 36 of this story….the text says that other boats were with him. There were other people in other boats who had set out on these same waters and were in the same storm. But the disciples didn’t cry out for Jesus to save the people in the other boats. The disciples cried out “Don’t you care that we are perishing?”
Dear friends, life’s storms will come and they will blow into our lives…each one of us. We will buffeted by strong winds and waves will lap into our small boats and we will be certain that we will not survive. But one of the ways that we come to know Jesus in the midst of the storms is by caring for the ones in the other boats as well. When the chance to help comes to us, to help those in the other boats, let’s not be like the disciples who say “don’t you care about me?” and forget about those in other boats. Because the storms will always be with us. And if we wait until it is convenient for us to help, or until we feel that we can fit it into our schedules….those in the other boats may in fact perish.
Let me share a story about life in one of those boats this week. When we pulled up to Luther Memorial in the van on that first night, the younger kids peppered me with questions about our facility. Did we have a pool? Could they roller skate in our parking lot? Did we have any skates? But one little guy, about 9 years old, asked if we had a washing machine. No, I said, we didn’t, but what did he need one for. He said his shirt was very dirty and he just wanted it to be clean. In his boat, all that he wanted at age nine in the final week before summer vacation, was to wash his favorite shirt….maybe his only shirt.
Jesus knew that there were more boats than just the one carrying him and his disciples. That’s why he stilled the whole storm. As followers of Jesus we are called on to remember those other boats and to care for those in them.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
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