Does it Not Matter to You That We are Perishing?

Today, the disciples and Job as the question that most of us - at one point or another - have asked or will ask of God: “Don’t you care?”  Here we are, struggling to get by, struggling to make it, and sometimes, it feels as though God is ambivalent toward us.  And, at times like that, I begin to wonder: am I here all alone?  As their boat was being tossed by the waves, engulfed by water, beginning to bail as the rain and the wind and the waves beat down upon them, with Jesus sleeping sweetly on the pillow, there is no pretense, there is no filter, there is no political-correctness about what the disciples say to Jesus: “Teacher, does it not matter to you that we are perishing?” 

We are faced with the age-old question of, if God is good, and if God made the world, why does evil exist?  Is God somehow responsible for the evil in the world?  If God isn’t responsible for it, who is?  And we begin distracting ourselves with these questions.  We start thinking about ourselves and what we deserve and how we deserve better and our sense of entitlement to happiness, our entitlement to a family that always gets along, our entitlement to the love we think we deserve, and we make the conversation all about ourselves.  Evil becomes a problem for which we seek a solution because, if we could just solve the problem of evil, we would find the answer to human suffering.  But, as one of my professors points out in a commentary for this week, “Neither Job nor we will find in God’s creation or in God’s words an ‘answer’ to human suffering.

But this does not mean that God is silent on the matter.  Enter: Job.  This is a man who had everything and lost it in a short amount of time.  This is a righteous man, who is seemingly a pawn between the power of God and the power of Satan.  Job, in righteous indignation, brings his complaint to God, asking for a response.  And respond God does:

The LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind: “Who is this - that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?  Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me.  Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?  Tell me, if you have understanding.  Who determined its measurements - surely you know!  Or who stretched the line upon it?  On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?  Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb? - when I made the clouds its garment, and thick darkness its swaddling band, and prescribed bounds for it, and set bars and doors, and said, ‘Thus far shall you come and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stopped’?

This is where the reading ends, but the rest of the chapter continues the amazing list of creation.  Is this the same God, who two weeks ago asks Adam, “Where are you?”  This God, who produces a litany of accomplishments, taking on a human in a debate, shows up and, again, asks: “Where were you?”  Where were you, Mandy, when I made you?  Where were you when God was knitting together the fabric of creation?  Where were you when God prepared your way behind and your way before?

The answer: probably bailing out our little fishing boats for fear that God wouldn’t show up.  How many times in our relationships, to our spouses, to our parents, to those we love, have we said, “Fine, if you’re not going to help me, I’m just going to do it myself!”  The hot angry tears of independence and stubbornness fall down our cheeks as we fear we are alone.  After a while, the tears become real, because we fear that whatever we have done has made it so that we cannot be forgiven, so that we will truly be alone.  The disciples’ words sound a lot like words I have said to Ben or to my parents: “Aren’t you going to help me?”  But I’m not really asking that.  What I’m really asking is, “Are you sure you really love me?”  “Are you going to give up on me?”  Has anyone else ever felt this way?  There are times when we fear that we are truly unlovable, untouchable, and unable to be saved.  The waves start crashing on our little lifeboats, and we cry and, with no filter, with pure raw emotion, we cry out to God: “Don’t we matter to you?”

And Jesus takes our little lifeboats, cups some water in his hands, and says: “I baptize you, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”  You matter to me so much that I thought to create an infinite universe so that you might know the extent of my love.  You matter to me so much that I would create oceans and lakes and streams teeming with fish.  You matter to me so much that I ask the sun to rise every morning so that you might feel its warmth on your face.  You matter to me so much that I would create stars to chart your voyages and so that you might marvel at the beauty of the heavens.  You matter to me so much that I would let you accuse me of not showing up even when I have been right beside you all along.

You are of infinite worth to the One who created the universe and all that is in it.  The God who created the song of the stars that sang at the dawn of creation comes to us, in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Christ, in the waters of baptism, and in the bread and the wine of communion.  This God thought to create you and loved you so much that he came to earth to save you, though you did not ask for it, and though you didn’t deserve it. 

In a few minutes, we will baptize Lily into the family of sinner-saints not only gathered here at St. Peter, but with all those who have gone before us and all who will come after us.  This love, my dear Lily, is a gift - an outpouring of grace and forgiveness that you will be claimed, from now and forevermore, as a child of God.  None of us will ever understand it.  There will be times when it seems your boat might capsize from the storms of life that will inevitably come.  Whatever storms may come, know that Christ is with you, bearing you up.  Though you might feel lonely and scared, and though your faith might seem too small to save you, it is enough. 

It is enough.  It is enough to be loved by the Master of the Universe.  God, who thought to hang the stars in the heavens and teach them to sing, though to create you.  Christ, who came to save the least of these, hung on the cross to save you.  The Holy Spirit, who continues to breathe life into the church on earth and the saints in heaven, breathes life into you.  “Does it not matter to you that we are perishing?”  It matters, dear children.  It matters because you have been claimed as his.  It is an eternal claim upon your life, and it is an eternal claim upon your salvation.  You are of infinite worth to God, so much so that He would claim you and name you as His own before time began and keep you in his grace until the end of time.