It must have happened in the evening, a couple of days after we installed the Memorial to the Lost on our lawn in memory of victims of gun violence in this county. I noticed it the next day. First, I saw that some of the T-shirts in the memorial were askew and uprooted. Graffitied on a flyer kiosk installed as part of the monument were these words: “This religion is responsible for the destruction of people and the world.” I was taken aback.
And then as I walked my dog Beau further down Lancaster Avenue, my heart sank even further as I saw the shattered glass on our shadow box sign. That sign is intended to be a gesture of welcome to our neighbors, to those walking by for a stroll or on the way to work, and to those waiting patiently for a bus at the bus stop. The sign, with its multi-colored banner, clearly announces that this parish is a place where all are welcome and can find belonging. Above all, it’s a place where all are intended to feel safe and to know that they are loved by God, without question.
My first reaction to the act of vandalism on our property was to assume that it must have been an angry response to the installation of the Memorial to the Lost. I reported the vandalism to the police, thinking that would probably be the end of it. But a few days later, I was once again walking Beau when I saw a police officer knocking on the church’s office door, even though it was after 6:30 p.m. When I asked the officer if I could help her, she explained that a person had been apprehended in response to the vandalism on our property. Did we want to press charges? It turned out that the person in question had been triggered not by the Memorial to the Lost but by the multi-colored banner of welcome on our church sign. In a confusing but understandable mixture of emotions, a person who had once felt excluded by the Church then enacted their resulting anger on the sign of a church that announces itself as a place of inclusion. Violence begets violence, doesn’t it?
I told the police officer that I’d have to speak with our vestry about whether we would press charges. We wouldn’t gain anything from it, and I wasn’t sure how it would be helpful. Our collective response crystallized in a vestry exchange over email, when one member had a compassionate suggestion. Instead of pressing charges, what if we sent a message to the person who committed the crime? What if we explained that, in a gesture of forgiveness, we were sorry for the hurt this person had experienced by the Church in the past? What if we offered a different witness to the transactional retribution of our society? What if we offered a healing message of peace?
Peace is indeed what has been breathed upon the Church by our Lord, and it isn’t ours to control or possess. It’s Christ’s hallowed gift to us and the world. This is the peace we exchange week after week halfway through Mass, which is far more profound than a handshake or smile. It’s something to be handled delicately and with reverence, because Christ’s gift carries great power. It heals, but it also dispels our fear. It calms the storms of our lives, but it causes violence to dissipate before it.
This is the peace that Jesus speaks to the wind and the sea when he’s in the boat with the disciples during a terrifying storm. Our English translation uses exclamation marks to give emphasis to Jesus’s words, but in the Greek, there are no such tonal cues. The exclamation marks make Jesus’s words sound as if Jesus is fighting the wind and the sea or yelling at them to cease. But I wonder if his speech was firm and yet gentle. He was speaking words of peace, and I suspect his manner of speaking was peaceful, too. His peace is reverential. Just a few words, Peace, be still, and the deadly natural forces of the chaotic universe are put in their place. Or better yet, they find order and calm under the sovereignty of the one who is Lord of all creation.
And curiously, the disciples’ response to Jesus’s action is awe and reverence, but depending on how the Greek is translated, it may be that they simply ended up more afraid. As one translation has it, they were “enormously afraid.”[1] But of what were they afraid? They were, of course, in awe of one who could calm the threatening seas, but they must also have been afraid, with some measure of anxiety, of this mysterious person, whom they thought they knew but really didn’t. Were they afraid of his ability to be so supernaturally calm amid a storm while dispelling any looming devastation with just a few direct words? But even more troubling, were they afraid of what their Lord was demanding of them in discipleship?
Jesus’s calming of the storm is both a demonstration of his miraculous power and a visible sign of an invisible power far more awe-inspiring than even the subversion of natural forces. Faith in the peace of the Lord of all creation is a daring, even crazy, willingness to believe that however real the storms of life are, they have no power to destroy our lives. Our true lives and identities are found in Christ, who gives us life even beyond the grave.[2]
The disciples took Jesus with them in the boat, just as he was. And who he was is who he still is. He is the one who commands us to push away from the shore and venture to the other side. For those earliest disciples, it was a risky and frightening move from Jewish to Gentile territory. For us, going to the other shore means pushing away from our comfort zones. Crossing the sea is getting into the boat with Jesus, just as he is, and setting off into the unknown.
And we don’t know what is waiting for us on the other side. It may be hostility because we carry the Gospel on behalf of a Church that has wounded too many in the past and still wounds people, just as she wounded the person who shattered the glass on our sign. On the other shore, we’ll undoubtedly encounter a culture that might not always intend to be hostile but that constantly demands more time and energy and money from us, while pulling us away from mission. On the other shore, we find even fellow Christians who think about God differently from us, or who think we’ve lost our way, or who might not even think we’re Christians at all. On the other shore, we find the uncharted frontier of the Church’s future in an uncertain world.
To take Jesus in the boat with us, just as he is, is to push away from the shore with Jesus on his own terms, not on ours. It’s refusing to make him into an on-demand magician but to accept his answer to our prayers as his own will. It’s to embrace a Lord who doesn’t return violence for violence but offers forgiveness and unending peace. It’s to accept the presence of a Lord who doesn’t affirm our complacency and comfort but coaxes us into risky discipleship. It’s to accept the mission of a Lord who tells us that we need to cross to the other side and that we can’t stay just where we are because discipleship is about growth and sacrifice. It’s no wonder, then, that the disciples are “enormously afraid” at the end! They’re beginning to understand that to follow Jesus is to push off from the shore in faith with only his peace as protection in a hostile world.
We, too, like those early disciples are probably more than a little afraid. We’re probably afraid of the unknown, of how to be a part of the Church’s growth in an age of malaise, of how to build vibrant ministry amid financial challenges and aging buildings, of how to be a safe and viable place of welcome in a culture that is increasingly reactionary and in a Church that’s often confused. The corresponding temptation is to stay in our shells, retreat behind our stone walls, and refrain from crossing to the other shore. But to do so, is to leave Jesus outside the boat and to ignore his summons to push away into the unknown. The smashed glass of our shadow box sign is only one visible sign of the storms we might encounter as we push off from the shore to engage in ministry on the other side. It’s not without risks, hurt, pain, or some cost.
Sadly, even though we reached out to the police, we were never able to convey our message of forgiveness to the person who vandalized our sign. But I hope our implicit message to that wounded soul is one small step towards claiming the peace that Christ has breathed upon us. I pray that our refusal to inflict retribution as a means of perpetuating the cycle of violence is a visible, if human, manifestation of the peace that always calms and still the storms of our lives. Being a disciple of Jesus is more than saying we’ll follow him. It means being in the boat with Jesus, on his terms, just as he was and is and always will be. And no matter the storms we’ll face in that boat, Christ’s peace is always with us. It’s his eternal gift. And nothing can take that gift away from us.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
June 23, 2024
[1] David Bentley Hart, The New Testament: A Translation (New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2023)
[2] See Eugene Boring, Mark: A Commentary (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2012), 146.