June 11, 2023
It’s hard to
write a sermon at the beach.
I told Gene
that a day or two before we left for North Carolina. He told me—“write about
what you’re experiencing.”
I decided to
do that.
Our first few
days were cool—like the temperature.
Much like the
Pharisees were “cool” toward Jesus when they saw him eating with sinners and
tax collectors—both ‘unclean’ to devout Jews.
But Jesus
heard them and told them: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but
those who are sick….I have come not to call the righteous but sinners.”
The Pharisees
and Sadducees didn’t trust or like Jesus. They saw him as a threat to their
power.
But some, like
the leader of the synagogue in today’s gospel, understood he had great power—the
power to bring the dead back to life. Like his daughter.
The beach here
faces south. The sun rises to my left and crosses the sky directly overhead,
finally setting on my right.
During the day
there is an island miles away which looks like an ocean liner by day. But at
night, it lights up and reveals itself to be an island. That’s a lot like ‘looking
for Jesus’ in our world. Jesus can’t be seen in the sunlight, but in the dark
night of our souls, he shines in the distance.
That’s what
the woman who had suffered from hemorrhages a dozen years saw as Jesus passed—a
light shining in the darkness of her pain.
She touches
the hem of his garment as he passes and the power flows out of him to heal her.
Jesus turns to
her and says: “take heart daughter, your faith has made you well.”
As broken and
you and I may be, our faith—what little we have—can make us whole again.
Then there is
the wind.
The wind blows
almost constantly on Oak Island. It sweeps across us wherever we are.
Tim and
Eleanor put up a kite today—shaped and colored like a monarch butterfly. It
flew higher and higher and higher in the wind. It took both of them and Mimi
and Bern to bring it back to earth.
God is like
the wind—blowing us always toward Him. Resist as we might, the wind blows our
souls higher and higher toward the Almighty.
It is as it
should be—always moving toward God, propelled by the wind of his Voice. Always
upward….Nearer and Nearer….
And the birds…the
birds!
Three young
women were on the beach feeding bread crumbs to a sea gull. Within moments they
were surrounded by 40 or 50 gulls. They ran out of bread and had to flee the
birds, laughing as they ran.
But my favorites
are the Pelicans. A few hundred yards beyond the western edge of Oak Island,
there is a tiny island known as Pelican Island. Hundreds of pelicans nest there
and fly east each morning over our heads and return west in the early evening.
Their shadows
fall over the house we’re in both morning and evening. During the day they fly,
in formation, just above the water, occasionally swooping down to catch fish.
Birds are the
last of the dinosaurs and the forerunners of the angels of God.
Finally, there
is the ocean itself.
Vast and
seemingly endless, the Atlantic stretches from the Artic to Antarctica. Between
North and South America and Scandinavia, Europe and Africa to the East.
Like the
ocean, God’s love is vast and eternal.
It is that
vast love, surging through Jesus, that takes that dead girl’s hand and gives
her life again.
“She is just
asleep,” Jesus tells those gathered outside the synagogue leader’s house.
They laughed
at him. How could he not know dead is DEAD?
But when he
comes back, holding the girl’s Oh-so-alive hand, they laugh no more and tell of
Jesus’ miracle throughout the district.
So much here
at the beach points me toward God.
Just pay
attention to the wonders all around you each day and turn your hearts toward
Jesus and your imagination toward God.
Try it—pay attention
to what surround you and long for God…
Long always
for God….
Amen.
