Online Sermons
3rd Sunday in Pentecost (proper 7): June 21, Martha Rogers
Welcome to our website. You are here: The Word --> Online SermonsMay the words of my mouth, and the meditations of all of our hearts, be always pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
I was going thru some all files while moving into my office this past week when I found a newspaper photo of myself taken years ago when I was a teacher, living at Drake University one summer, and taking special training to be part of the team of educational professionals in Iowa who evaluated and consulted with other professions, families and children who had direct contact with individuals with autism The photo has remained one of my favorites over the years, for in the photo with me is Rita.
Rita and I were a team for two summers, working closely together in a special training program for individuals with autism. Rita was one of those with autistic behaviors whose parents had given us permission to study and possibly teach. We lived together: Rita, me, a bunch of professionals from all over the world and a group of individuals that had been diagnosed with autism.
Rita was a beautiful, red haired, freckle faced girl of 13 or so. Rita's autisms were severe. She had no language, made no eye contact, spent hours spinning in circles, emitting a high pitched sound, or she spent hours flapping her hands in front of her eyes to see the sunlight dance through her fingers.
She was irritable, scared, frustrated and this was especially evident when she bit the backs of her wrist where ½ inch high calluses had formed from years of biting.
Rita's world consisted only of herself and she made no attempt to participate in the world around her.
After a few weeks of intensely observing and recording her behaviors, I saw a pattern emerging. Rita changed from one autistic behavior to another whenever the sound in her environment changed.
If there was radio turn on, it sent her into flapping. If a TV was turned on, she spun around the edges of the room. If another student sitting near her spoke, she curled up into the fetal position.
Rita's hearing was OK as far as we could determine, but the world of sound was too turbulent for her. It was my hypotheses that Rita was sound intolerant—she could not handle the craziness of a world filled with noises.
A set of airport employee ear protectors—you know those big headphone coverings to protect tarmac employees from having their hearing damaged by the airplanes they are directing outdoors---well, a set of those were purchased for Rita.
At first, she was really afraid of them. Unsure of what they were, and not previously part of her routine, she avoided them and threw them off. She didn't understand the ear protectors. Rita was frightened by their large presence and by the power they exhibited of changing her world as she knew it.
She refused the very thing that might help her make sense of the world.
Eventually, through sequenced training, Rita got so used to them that she couldn’t' be awake without them . The headphones stilled the world for Rita.
The head gear didn't change her problems, but the headphones helped her face them. The world was quieted enough that Rita began reacting with the world. She even began making eye contact—no simple feat for a 13 year old with sever autism. And that's what the photo in my file was….a close-up of me blowing gentle air on her face and Rita staring right into my eyes.
When her parents picked her up at the end of the summer program, Rita looked up at them and smiled. Her mother burst into tears stating that it was the first time in her life she had seen her daughter make spontaneous eye contact with her and it was also the first time Rita had smiled for her parents.
Rita needed the world to be stilled in order to live into it.
The very headphones that Rita had shunned became inseparable from her. With the gift of the headphones, Rita was beginning to trust.
By the next summer, Rita had begun learning sign language and was still very much an individual with severe autism, but she was an individual who now was beginning to interact with the world instead of withdrawing from the turbulence and agitation it created all around her.
Turbulence is something the apostles are certainly experiencing. And they most certainly act agitated when they cry out for help from Jesus. The world around them has become something they can no longer handle, the storm is raging and they were swamped, overwhelmed. So were the other boats with them.
And all of this because they were simply trying to do what Jesus had asked them to do when he said, "Let us go across to the other side."
These disciples were just trying to get through; following what they thought was expected of them, passing through the water to the other shore. Simple enough Jesus called them and calls us to go to a new place.
But the world around them was causing them to loose headway and was pushing in against them.
They turned to Jesus in their fear. The apostles rebuked Jesus: "Don’t you care about us?" The situation was becoming intolerant and they just couldn't handle it.
And then Jesus stilled the watery world they were in.
This action made the apostles even more afraid, even more afraid. The presence of one whose power changed the world as they knew it, and were experiencing it, was frightening in itself.
Sort of like Rita and her headphones.
The presence of something new and so world-changing was not a small thing to deal with.
It's not everyday that the noisy turbulence you live in is quieted. It's not everyday that the stormy tempest brewing around you is stilled.
Rita didn't understand. The apostles didn't understand. We don't understand.
Yet, we, like the apostles, continue to try to follow Jesus, hoping to get through life…trying to accomplish what we think has been asked of us to do.
We often loose headway and feel that the world, the noise, the storms, are pushing against us.Life sometimes is just too turbulent and intolerable.
And we think we have to face this turbulence by ourselves as evidenced in our attempts to impose our control on the things and the people around us.
If we could only get everything in line, if everything out there is the world would be different, then we would be better off.
If only the world would be the way we want it to be. If only the sea was calmer and things around us weren't churning and changing. If only we were in charge of the situation. If only we could go on the way we're used to doing things. If only……
Just like Rita, we spurn the very thing that can help still us in this world. Maybe we just don't know how to rely on God, or maybe it scares us to death to think that God really desires us. We refuse to rely on or use the very gift that can make sense of the world for us. The grace of God is that such gift.
This grace can still the world for us. God's grace won't make the world go away or make it be much different for us. God does not wave a magic wand.
Instead, God's loving presence will help us face the rough spots we must pass through to go to the other side. God redeems our storms.
When the world around us feels like it's pushing against us or making so much noise that it is intolerable, you and I have to turn to God, know that it is God alone whom stills.
So are we brave enough to dare to ask God those all important questions, the questions that bother and anger us. "Don't you care about me, Lord? God, what's going on here?" Life is incomprehensible and sometimes it just doesn't seem fair.
So we turn again and wake Jesus up one more time. That's biblical. Scripture tells us over and over again that asking those questions of Jesus is what people do. They turn to him in questioning concern. In worry. In fear. In doubt. Even those closest to him raise hard questions.
In that running, and returning, and turning again and again to God, through Jesus Christ, we most likely will still have fear and we probably still won't understand, but we won't be given cheap, simplistic answers.
In place of quick, cheap fixes, we'll experience, instead, instances of that power, that grace, which can still the agitation long enough for us to realize that we're not alone in the chaos, in the stormy areas, in the chances and changes of this life. You'll know. You'll just know.
Jesus is in the boat of life with us enabling us to turn to the world, make eye contact and leave them asking: Just who is this man? Amen.