Sermon: Don't you care?

If we want a complaint against Jesus that will stick, not caring would probably be one of the last we'd think of. After all, the gospels seem to be full of Jesus caring for people and the author of 1 Peter tells his readers to cast their cares on God for God cares for them. Yet twice in the gospels Jesus is asked ‘Don't you care?' and on both occasions the question is put by his close friends who, of all people, should have known that he cared for them. One occasion is when Jesus has been invited for a meal by his close friends Martha, Mary and Lazarus and in exasperation Martha says to Jesus ‘Don't you care that my sister has left me to do all the work? Tell her to help me.' The charge is that not only Mary but Jesus is taking her for granted and ignoring her.

We've just heard the other - the panic stricken disciples are terrified that they will all die in a storm while Jesus has the nerve, or the tiredness, to sleep through it all. For seasoned fishermen, the fact that on this occasion they are scared to death tells us that this is no mere gust of wind, this is one of those very strong storms that blow up with no warning on the landlocked Sea of Galilee. So in desperation they wake Jesus up - Mark describes him as absolutely exhausted, taken into the boat just as he was, sound asleep on a cushion, too tired to be woken even by a storm. No wonder his reply was rather short - think how you answer the phone when it suddenly rings in the night. Although the question, ‘don't you care that we are perishing?' was irrational - Jesus was asleep and oblivious of the storm - it shows the depth of their fear which is not only about drowning but about whether Jesus cares. It's a very human fear, that we are being ignored. God knows we all need to be cared for, to be loved and valued - the words to Jesus at his baptism were immensely affirming and loving: ‘This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased'.

Once woken, Jesus did what was necessary - stilled the storm - and then asked them ‘why are you afraid? Have you no faith?' in other words, ‘What is the matter with you?' Jesus expected better of them. Which takes us to Paul and his correspondence with the Corinthians. His relationship with this very new church was rather fraught, not only was he having to tell them some unwelcome home truths, but there were people from undermining his authority as an apostle. So the catalogue of his hardships is not so much blowing his own trumpet but an attempt to persuade them of his authentic credentials as an apostle. We can rattle the list off without thinking about it - afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labours, sleepless nights, hunger - but if we pause even for a few seconds and think about what he has been through, suddenly the fact that he has kept faith in God becomes remarkable. Think what a few sleepless nights or delayed meals does to our temper, then add to that beatings, imprisonment riots and unspecified hardship and calamities and his becomes quite a package of fidelity to God.

How did Paul cope without losing faith? I'm sure that at times he asked God the same question the disciples asked, ‘don't you care?' It is a healthy question to ask in prayer at times of distress; it keeps God in the dialogue. When faced with disaster or bad news, the easy option is to dismiss God from the equation and say, ‘I always knew there isn't a God and this just proves it. If there was a God I wouldn't be in this mess.' The harder way is to trust God's care despite the adversity. We don't have to pretend to sail serenely through difficulty, it is OK to say we are frightened or worried and there are times when some vigorous fellowship with God is called for. You only have to look at the Psalms or the books of Job and Jeremiah to realise how much a part of Jewish faith this questioning of God is, but it is done from a position of faith.

Allowing that Paul did pray about his troubles, what enabled him to tell the Corinthians that he could endure? Again we can rush over his words. He endures by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech and the power of God. It's one thing to be kind and truthful when all is going well, quite another when we are under intense pressure or falsely imprisoned. Purity and holiness of spirit sound rather pious but nevertheless desirable and we think of people like Mother Teresa of Calcutta. But after her death her journals revealed that she struggled daily with doubts, and her holiness was suddenly understood not an easy attribute but a hard-won purity, forged in the thousand and one little daily decisions made in the slums of Calcutta and the commitment to prayer whether or not she felt like it. Remember Kierkegaard's saying, ‘Purity of heart is to will one thing', in Mother Teresa's case to will to love God.

Earlier this year I gave an overview of Mark's gospel and people who were here that Sunday may remember that Mark tells his story in a particular way with a plot that the other gospels don't have that is all to do with who Jesus is. Mark uses the storyteller's omnipotent voice to tell us in the first verse of the gospel that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. But the disciples don't know this and as the gospel unfolds we watch them trying to grasp what we already know. The first half of the gospel is not very complimentary to them in their rather bumbling attempts to work Jesus out; they don't understand what they are seeing and hearing and at times they get the wrong end of the stick.

Mark's plot line is that Jesus does not want his identity and thus his source of authority being shouted abroad in a shallow way, it is something the disciples have to discern much more profoundly for themselves. They manage it by chapter 8, but at the end of the gospel it is still a crucial and unanswered question for the authorities. So the religious leaders ask him ‘are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?' while Pilate, the Roman Governor, is more worried about Jesus' political identity and asks ‘Are you the king of the Jews?' Mark's gospel is framed and pervaded by questions about who Jesus is, questions about his humanity and his divinity.

In that context, Jesus' sharp question to the disciples in the boat is partly annoyance at being woken up but also part of this plot line about their understanding of who he is. They have seen him perform miracles and draw crowds by his teaching but until now their own lives have not been on the line. And under this pressure it is clear that they have failed to grasp who Jesus is but have panicked and expressed their root fear that Jesus doesn't care.  So what was it that enabled Paul, with a few years experience of following Jesus, to be more secure in his response to crises than the disciples who were newer at discipleship?

I've spoken before of the cantus firmus in our lives. Put simply, this is our deep-seated song that is at the core of who we are and enables us to live with vivacity and faith. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor murdered by the Nazis in the dying days of the War, wrote from prison of, ‘a kind of cantus firmus to which the other melodies of life provide the counterpoint. ... where the ground bass is firm and clear, there is nothing to stop the counterpoint from being developed to the utmost of its limits. ... only a polyphony of this kind can give life a wholeness, and assure us that nothing can go wrong so long as the cantus firmus is kept going. ... put your faith in the cantus firmus.' Michael Mayne, the late Dean of Westminster, and I had discussed this idea of Bonhoeffer's but it became movingly real for him when he was diagnosed with cancer of the mouth. In his final book, written as he was dying, he described his discovery in adversity of his own cantus firmus which he describes as truths which lie not at the surface but at his deep centre, which have been tempered and pruned over a lifetime. He wrote of his need in the face of cancer, to desire to see how to play new improvisations that are faithful to the melody that has proved enduring for him, embracing the darkness and not find it destructive. Notice that he writes of the need to desire to do this, the desire does not come easily; like the disciples in the boat and Paul reviewing his sufferings, he knew that it is hard to face adversity and to improvise and create new harmonies as we do so.

For some of you this is almost your last service in the cathedral because you will be graduating. What is your cantus firmus? Are you leaving with the basic assurance that God cares for you? To those who are staying: what is your cantus firmus? When you, like the disciples and Paul, face life-threatening danger, how will you cope? When you receive bad news about cancer or about redundancy or about marriage breakdown, what will keep you stable? It is alright in extreme circumstances to shout to God ‘don't you care?' and, as the disciples discovered, there will be an answer. But if you have gained wisdom as well as knowledge while you have been in Durham, make sure your cantus firmus is rooted in Jesus Christ so that you are equipped, like Paul, with the inner resources to face whatever life throws at you. It will take slow, deliberate and at times unexciting work as we not only build our character but build our trust in God. It is the work of a lifetime. But it will enable us to trust in God when waves rock our boat.

At the end of this service we will be blessed with the assurance that the peace of God is among us and remains with us always, and then dismissed with the words, ‘Go in the peace of Christ.' The stories of the disciples and Paul assure us this is no flight of fancy if our cantus firmus, our bottom line, is the assurance that God cares for us. There will still be storms, afflictions and hardships but we will know the truth of the words we have just sung, ‘when in distress to him I called he to my rescue came' and, as our final hymn will put it, can ‘run our course with even joy and closely walk with thee to heaven'. Amen.