God of the Storm
This is the sermon I preached last Sunday, the Third Sunday of Creation, at St. Timothy Lutheran Church. The gospel text was Luke 8:22-25. We mostly read of Jesus and his disciples with crowds. It’s rare that Jesus has time alone to minister to his disciples, which is the scene before us. It is a crossing story. Crossings can be dangerous. Any decision to cross the unknown for the sake of transformation is fraught with danger. Jesus’ decision was to go to the foreign country of the Gerasenes. Let’s look a bit deeper and discern the choice, the crisis, the call, and the calm in this crossing story. The choice was to go across to the other side of lake (v. 22). Choices that do not have the potential of life threatening crisis within them are trivial and non-transformative. Television advertising gives us enough examples of trivial choices that fed to us as being truly revolutionary. Jesus’ choice was for the sake of spreading the kingdom of God. The exhausted Jesus slept in ...