Proper 7

June 23, 2024            Proper 7         Mark 4:35-41                                           The Rev. John Reese

I try to take it one day at a time, but sometimes several days attack me at once.

Stress is when you wake up screaming and realize you haven’t fallen asleep yet.

I stress about stress before there’s even stress to stress about.

Stress causes hazards to our health, our peace, our relationships, and our ability to live life to the fullest. Stress inhibits our ability to handle the unexpected. It can keep us in a state of “fight or flight,” which means what it sounds like. Instead of engaging in life and loving, we will either “fight” it or we will “flee” from it. Stress can close us off from life in ways that make our journey one of terror instead of one of adventure. 

What can we do? Some would say we need to increase our “joy ratio.”

Psychologist Barbara Frederickson says that every negative emotion we experience is best countered by three positive emotional experiences. This is called the “joy ratio.” This three to one ratio can help us to stay healthy, calm, and resilient through life’s challenges and storms.            

Now joy is not the same as happiness. Joy comes from a feeling of satisfaction with life, a feeling of being blessed. The more we live out of a feeling of joy, the more our physical and emotional health and ability to deal with life’s unexpected curveballs will improve.

But experiencing joy is not the same as having mountaintop moments of happiness, taking vacations, or inserting more “down time” in your day. It doesn’t mean “not working.” Joy is not all about play. Joy is a frame of mind, or more accurately, a frame of spirit, in which you feel a sense of joy no matter where you are or what you are doing.

When you live out of a place of joy from the depths of your spirit, you feel joy in your work, you feel joy in your time with others, you feel joy in your challenges. You even can feel joy in moments of hardship. Joy comes from a sense of “deep satisfaction and calm” that runs deep below the surface of your psyche.

Barbara Frederickson, who has done extensive research studies on the effects of living out of a sense of joy, tells us that joy, whether from optimism, positivity, laughter, inspiration, or gratitude, can entirely change the way we look at ourselves and the world. Joy literally changes not only our point of view but our entire physiological, psychological, and spiritual make up. Joy has the power to shift our minds and hearts in a way that opens us up to see things differently.

As our vision or perspective changes and widens, so does our awareness, our ability to see possibilities, to be more creative, and to change our sense of value about difficulties and impediments. Joy can also help us see things in a more unified way, see ourselves as part of a bigger picture, and help increase our trust in ourselves and others.

Whether our joy erupts from gratitude, positivity, feeling at one with our surroundings or with our creator, or a feeling of peacefulness and contentment, the more we experience joy in our lives, the more we will see our lives in terms of a grand, exciting adventure rather than a series of hardships and difficulties. As Jesus assured us, it’s all in the way we “see.”

So, how do you “flip your ratio” from stress to joy?

That’s where Jesus comes in.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus has been speaking and teaching from one of the disciple’s boats. When evening comes, he asks them to start rowing to the other side, so they, along with other boats, set out across the Sea (Lake) of Galilee. Meanwhile, exhausted from the day, Jesus lies down on a cushion in the boat’s stern and falls asleep.

When a storm rises up, the disciples begin panicking. The wind whisks the boat about and waves beat against it, so that the boat is taking on water. Jesus continues sleeping, how I don’t know.

Meanwhile, the disciples are becoming more and more distressed. At last, they wake him up, incredulous that he was sleeping through the storm and not equally perturbed.

Jesus calms the wind and sea, and they experience instant calm as well. He then says to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”

Why does he say this to them? I mean, if Jesus was there with you in your boat, wouldn’t it make a difference? But they still had not come to a point in which they were sure who he was, secure in what he could do, and unsurprised at the power of God that flowed from his presence. To them, he was still just their teacher.

Now, this is important for us to understand, just as it was important for Jesus’ disciples to understand.

We don’t gain assurance in our faith from believing that Jesus was merely a talented teacher, a good person, a gifted prophet, or a wise leader. We don’t get a sense of stability and a feeling of joy that exudes the entirety of our being from imagining that Jesus is just a man who lived long ago, who continues to teach us lessons and gives us advice about life and love.

We gain assurance and experience joy when we suddenly realize who Jesus is –Son of God, Lord of Lords, imbued with all of the creative power of our Creator God, the Saving Grace of the Son, and the continuing authority and change agency of the Holy Spirit. And he is present with us in our “boat.”

When Church of England priests John and Charles Wesley set out to sea for America, they too experienced stress and fear when they hit storms that tossed the boat and waves that crashed against the stern. Yet, they were astounded in hearing the Moravians calmly singing hymns. This would be a turning point for John in his quest to find not just an understanding of Jesus’ salvation, but a personal knowledge, trust, and assurance of Jesus in his heart, body, and soul.

Storms are frightening. But our peace does not come from an absence of storms. It comes from the presence of Jesus within us and around us as we sail on through. Discipleship is a risky business. When we sail the open seas as a disciple of Jesus, we will encounter storms. No one lives a stormless life. But Jesus is our calm in the midst of the storm and our joy in the midst of the wind.

Sometimes, in our lives, we can fear that Jesus does not hear us, that somehow, he is “asleep” to our experiences, our challenges, and our pain. But he is there, and he does care. What we cannot control, he will help us maneuver through. This is cause for joy.

Children can teach us about faith and joy. One day, a storm rose up, and a young mother began shutting the windows in the house and securing the shutters, but she could not find her child. She looked high and low and all through the house, and then she began to become very worried. As the trees creaked and swayed and the sky grew dark, she glanced out to the yard, and there in the midst of the grass was her five-year old son, twirling and laughing and shouting in the wind. She called out to him and asked him what he was doing. He answered, “Mommy, come and see. I’m dancing in the wind!” 

That’s what disciples of Jesus do, those with the joy and assurance of Christ in their hearts. They dance in the wind. They aren’t afraid to take their discipleship boats out on the open seas, for life is a grand adventure when Jesus is with you on your journey.

An Episcopal priest from Massachusetts named Paul Bresnahan once found himself undergoing radiation treatments for prostate cancer.

Sitting in the waiting room one day, Father Paul heard the technician call out his name. He quipped — for everyone in the glum assembly to hear — “My turn to shine!” The room erupted in laughter.

“Who is that man?” somebody asked.

“He’s my parish priest,” said a friend who’d been sitting there with him.

Here’s what Father Paul wrote, later on, about the experience:

“Inside the treatment facility, as I lay on the table with a giant metal fork rotating around me and beaming its rays within my body, I saw the hand of God and sensed a healing touch within me. I saw no vision other than the hand of science and medicine ministering to me out of the gifts God so generously bestows upon the caregiving community in my home city. The beaming rays of radiation give me the gift of healing and of life, and I am brim full of gratitude.”

Brim full of gratitude. In the radiation suite!When the storms of life rise up, know that the calm in your heart will always sustain you through. Joyfully dance in the wind. Be brim full of gratitude. And remember: stressed is desserts spelled backward!