how do we get through this?

I preached this sermon at the end of a long week and the stories wound together.

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A couple of weeks ago, Ginger was helping Lizzy!, our little blind Schnoodle, find her way outside from our kitchen. Lizzy! got down the stairs to the patio on her own, but then she had to turn either right or left to find a way around the small stone wall that separates the patio from the back yard. She didn’t turn. As she got close to the stones, Ginger yelled, “Walls,” and Lizzy! turned away, only to almost walk into another section. “More walls,” Ginger yelled, and she and I both started laughing. Then Ginger said, “Well, that’s going to show up in somebody’s sermon.”

When I got to this scripture about the wind blowing so hard that the disciples couldn’t cross the lake, I knew she was right. I pictured Jesus walking toward the little boat yelling, “Wind!”

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

We have spent the month of July reading through Mark 6 together. We started with Jesus and the disciples returning to his hometown of Nazareth where people were astounded at first, but then became belligerent and unwilling to let him grow up. Then we saw how Jesus sent them out in pairs to build relationships wherever they could and to move on from the places and the people where they could not. Last week we read the story of Jesus’ big garden party—a meal for over 5000 people that started with the disciples saying they didn’t have eight months of wages to cater the dinner and Jesus showing them there was enough to go around.

They were tired. Jesus was tired. He wanted some time to himself to pray and reflect and he wanted them to get some rest, so he told them to take a boat back to the other side of the lake and he would meet them there. When they finally got in the boat and out in the water—a place they knew well—the headwinds were so strong that they spent all night rowing and couldn’t get to the other shore. It was getting close to dawn. The disciples were working hard. They were doing what they knew to do. Several of them had fished for a living. They knew about boats and wind and water, but on that night it didn’t matter. They were stuck. And tired.

When I imagine the conversations that might have taken place that night, I hear at least one of their voices asking, “How are we going to get through this?”

Perhaps I pictured them that way because it is a question I have been asking this week. I told you a couple of Sundays ago that my audiologist had recommended I pursue a cochlear implant because of the severity of my hearing loss. Ginger and I met with a surgeon who concurred. I have felt hopeful about this process, even though it is going to be a significant change. It seems like that offers me a chance for life to be very different that it has for the last twelve or fourteen years.

Last Wednesday I went for another battery of tests that were the penultimate step before we meet again with surgeon to set the date for me to get a new ear.

For about two hours I repeated words and sounds and sentences as best I could. After the test I learned I had done too well. It wasn’t so much that my hearing had improved as it was I figured out a lot of the sentences from the context, so I scored too high for my insurance to approve the implant. I was devasted. I felt like I hit a wall of wind like the disciples.

I was immobilized by my despair for most of the day wondering, “How am I going to get through this?”

I understood what it felt like to be in that boat. But then something happened to them that did not happen to me. They saw someone walking toward them on the water. He was not bothered by the wind. He didn’t even seem to be coming to where they were. They thought it was a ghost at first and screamed, and then realized it was Jesus and called out in fear and desperation.

Jesus got in the boat, the wind died down, and they got to the other side. The disciples were amazed, but still confused. The gospel writer said they still didn’t understand about the loaves even though they had gotten through it.

The Lesson of the Loaves was not a parable Jesus had told. Jesus never said, “Here’s what the loaves mean,” to them or to us. But look back at the story again. Jesus told them to feed the people and the disciples said, “We don’t have enough money to do that,” which I hear as another version of “How are we going to get through this?”

And Jesus asked, “How many loaves do you have?”

They gave him the loaves that they had and when the meal was over there was more than enough for everyone. They had gotten through it.

As for me, late Wednesday night I sent an email to all three of my doctors telling them how I felt about what had happened with the test. It didn’t change anything, but it at least gave me something tangible that I could do. Thursday afternoon I heard from my audiologist saying she understood and asked me to come in for more testing this coming week. It doesn’t mean I am going to get the implant, but it does mean the story is not over.

I got through it. I found enough to keep going. I felt like I had to learn the lesson of the loaves.

Let me be clear: I don’t mean the lesson of the loaves is, “Just hang in there and everything will work out for everyone,” because everything doesn’t always work out. Sometimes the boat sinks. Sometimes people go hungry. I still may not qualify for my implant.

I am not saying that when God closes a door, God opens a window. Sometimes doors close because they need to be shut, and most of the time God is not the one closing them. God didn’t make those people get hungry in the middle of that pasture or set the wind against the disciples just to teach them a lesson, any more than God inflicted me with profound hearing loss.

And that brings me to Gladys Knight and the Pips. (I mean, the connection is obvious, don’t you think?)

Last Sunday evening when word came that President Biden was not going to seek reelection, I was stunned by his news, but what disheartened me was how some of his political adversaries responded with attacking words rather than show the slightest compassion for what must have been a difficult decision. That was another night that I asked, “How are we going to get through this?”

I kept hearing an old song by Gladys Knight and the Pips. The opening lines say,

I’ve just got to use my imagination
to think of a reason to keep on keeping on.

Maybe Motown is not where you look for inspiration, but it spoke to me, in part because when I hear the word imagination as a sibling to the word image—as in the image of God in which we were created. The Spirit of God is imagination: the eyes to see beyond the limits and fears of the moment.

Can you see the imagination of Jesus in response to the disciples saying the had no money? He took a sack lunch and started sharing and invited a hillside full of people to join the party. And then he came walking across the water because his disciples still couldn’t hear the music.

We have so much inviting us to despair. I’ve already mentioned our political climate. Friday I saw the video of a police officer shooting a woman named Sonya Massey as she stood in her kitchen. The death toll in Gaza is almost 50,000. The people of Ukraine and Sudan are suffering from wars in their countries. And those are only three of the almost one hundred wars around the globe. We have all kinds of reasons to keep yelling, “Walls!” and putting up our defenses.

So, how do we get through this?

How do we imagine life beyond our fear and pain, beyond our confusion and concern? How do we trust the lesson of the loaves—trust that God is with us and we are with each other and that is enough, even when things stay tough?

We live in important days, days that feel critical, maybe they even feel like the world has never been this bad. May we be imaginative enough to remember that we are not the most important people who have ever lived, or the most troubled, we are just the latest ones. I am not the first one to ever have been denied medical care because my insurance wouldn’t cover it any more than the people on that hillside were the first to be hungry or the disciples were the first sailors to get caught by the wind.

We belong to a legacy of love, a lineage of people who got through it because they trusted that the love of God never let go, of people who imagined that love was enough—and got through it. May we go and do likewise. Amen.

Peace,
Milton