Mark 10:13-16

People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.

It might surprise you to know that as a little kid I was a homebody. I didn’t go to sleepovers or overnight camps, heck I even made excuses about why I absolutely needed to go home when I stayed with my grandparents. But somehow, my parents talked me into going to Lutherwald, a Lutheran camp up in Howe, IN. Some friends from church were going too so that helped.

But I was a chubby little kid who talked too much and was more excited about Bible Study than most other 10 year olds. I was nervous, told my parents I didn’t want to go, and yet they took me anyway.

The first day and night I was pretty homesick, but then I started to catch on to the songs. And the skits around the campfire were really funny, and my counselor really seemed to listen when I talked, which was a lot… and each day I got to buy a heath bar from the canteen and my mom couldn’t tell me no, and we played all these games, and the Bible Study, oh the Bible Study, every day sometime twice a day! I loved it. By day 3 I was sold, I loved camp, I loved the friends I had made, and then on day 4 they asked me to be in a skit; these girls, middle school girls, asked me!

Because apparently church camp is the one place it can be cool to be a chubby 10 year old who talks too much and gets over excited about Bible study.

It felt like the kingdom of God on earth, more than anything else I had experienced up until that point in my life. My parents knew I would love it, I just needed a little help getting there.

I know I am not alone in this experience. In fact, camp is reported as one of if not the most formative faith experience in both little kids and counselors. About two-thirds of ELCA pastors attended overnight camp as children, and a remarkable 40% served on summer camp staff. Yet you could also say that lots of kids attend camp and don’t go on to be pastors or even stay involved in a church. One of the critiques of camp is that it’s emotionally manipulative, leaving kids with just a camp high that quickly fades away with little lasting impact. But that’s not true according to recent research.

One study done by Jake Sorenson called effective camp has collected data from over 18,000 campers and 7,000 parents from 80 different camps all over the country and found that yes, there is a camp high that kids come down from after 2 or 3 weeks. However, and more importantly, Sorenson also found that there are lasting effects from camp, even just one week. Over 90% of campers reported having more self-confidence after camp, they did devotional practices more after camp, they attended church more frequently, had more conversations about faith in their homes, and recognized that faith was relevant to their everyday lives, and all of this lasted greater than three months. All from one week of camp.

And what I found really fascinating is that even the kids who were forced to go reported that they grew in their faith and had a very positive experience at the same rates as the kids who wanted to go. Now there are all sorts of reasons why camp has these effects: it’s communal, participatory, safe and away from the stress of screens and home, and centered on faith.

Knowing all of that, wouldn’t you want to take any little kid you could find to camp, whether they wanted to or not? Don’t you want them to have that kind of experience, to encounter Jesus in that way?

And that right there, the belief that something is so good that you’ll take anyone you can to experience it, helps shed light on today’s story, which is really a strange scene if you think about it. Jesus had just finished teaching about divorce first to the Pharisees and the crowd, and secondly to his disciples. Then suddenly the text just says “people were bringing children to Jesus”, which makes one wonder…

who are these people taking little children? And where are they taking them from? They likely aren’t their parents or else Mark would have said so. And what about these children… were they on their way to see Jesus but couldn’t get close enough because of the crowd? Or did they give no care whatsoever about this Jesus, had no idea who he was, but suddenly found themselves picked up by some stranger and brought to another stranger who takes them up in his arms, puts his hands on their hands and shoulders, and blesses them. And where were the parents in all of this?

We don’t know and the text doesn’t tell us. What we do know is that some people thought that a blessing from Jesus, a single hand laid upon their heads, was so important that they were willing to grab any child they could; whether they knew this child or not, whether it was in their family or not, whether it was sick, dirty, smelly, or whinny which it likely was all of those things, or not, they took that child, fought through the crowd, stood up to the disciples who tried to turn them away, and brought the children to Jesus because they knew how life changing this one blessing would be.

If it had not been for those people, whoever they were, the children would have been left wherever they were and no encounter with Jesus would have happened that day.

This is not a sermon telling you to take random little kids to church camp whether they want to go or not. It is rather about how, where, and thanks to whom do we encounter Jesus Christ in our lives.

Jesus says Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it. To receive the kingdom of God like a child is not romanticizing children or their innocence, and certainly not their naivete. A child at the time of Jesus had no status, no honor, no money, they provided nothing to the family. They had little to no agency and relied on their families, particularly their fathers, for all of their needs, not only as children but as adults too. In society they were the lowest of the low, the unimportant.

And so of course Jesus says that’s how we are to receive the kingdom of God, as a child, because that’s the only way we can receive it. We are not able to do or offer anything that gets us the grace Jesus offers. We rely completely on Jesus to give it to us. We’ve done nothing to earn, and yet somehow God is still mindful of us lowly humans. That’s how we receive the kingdom of God.

Where we encounter Jesus Christ can be anyplace; there are no limits to where God will go to meet you. But we know camp is often one of those places. And there are others to be sure.

What was that place for you? Or what experience was it? Whatever it was, if it had the same effects on you as camp, if it was something that made an encounter with Jesus happen,

then I dare say it was a glimpse of the kingdom of God on earth and don’t you want any and all people to experience that?

My prayer is that we would be those people who bring the little children to the encounter, to the experience. Jesus does all the work, all the blessing, all the grace giving; but people just need a little help getting there.

Amen.

Mark 4:35-41

On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, ‘Let us go across to the other side. And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him.

A great gale arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, ‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?’ He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’ Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm.

He said to them, ‘Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?’ And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?’

We all have a storm story. Here’s mine. Several years ago, Katelyn and I went camping in upstate New York. We were most excited about renting a boat and fishing on this small lake. And here’s us in our boat, just as we began fishing. Now it wasn’t big, just a simple row boat. Which means I rowed and Katelyn fished. And Katelyn is a really good fisherman but not so good at taking the fish off. So by the time I got us to a good spot, she would have already caught multiple fish, which I had to remove.

I rarely had a chance to toss out my own line before moving to another spot. Finally we got to a spot on the far side of the lake where we had our anchor down, bait on the hooks, lines out, and ready to reel 'em in. Then, the wind kicks up and dark clouds start moving in. We hear thunder and its pretty close. So we both agree we should make our way back across the lake to the docks. We reeled in our lines and I started rowing. I rowed for maybe 15 minutes, but I wasn’t getting very far.

The wind is really picking up now and those clouds were nearly on top of us. So I rowed harder and harder, but with each stroke forward, I felt like the wind picked up just a little bit faster, pushing us backward. At this point we are only half way across the lake and the heavens could rip open at any moment.

Both of us are scared, I’m tired from rowing as fast as I can, and rain is starting to collect in our boat. I started rowing like a mad man against the wind, cursing at the paddles and this boat for not going faster, when Katelyn said to me “just take a break for a second and catch you breath.

So, I said to her “okay, put the anchor down so we don’t drift backward”... and then it dawned on us: the anchor was down the whole time. I had drug this cement filled coffee can clear across this whole lake. When I pulled it up, 10 pounds of seaweed covered the can. I was outraged at the situation: the rain, the boat, the anchor! Katelyn, though, was beside herself in laughter, nearly in tears at how funny it all was. I rowed us to the dock and we made it to the car just as the hail began.

Katelyn has always been good humored, able to laugh at herself and situations outside her control. I get frustrated, impatient with the wind and waves that arise in life. Our literal storm experience mirrored our lived experience. There’s nothing like a storm to teach you about the people who are in your boat, yourself included.

At first, Jesus doesn’t seem to be the person you want in your boat when the storm hits. He’s been preaching and teaching all day, using the same boat as a pulpit. So I’m not surprised at all that he’s sleeping on a cushion at the front of the boat.When the wind kicks up and the waves start crashing, the disciples seem more than a little frustrated that Jesus isn’t acting like a concerned friend, let alone a messiah.

But I don’t blame them for being scared and perhaps angry. It must have been a pretty bad storm if at least four, maybe more, professional fishermen who had spent a lifetime fishing and sailing on that lake were scared to death. They knew the dangers of the sea of galilee, especially at night. I imagine they warned Jesus of such things before they left the shore. No wonder they yelled at Jesus, do you not care that we are perishing?

Do you not care that we are perishing? Is there anyone who hasn’t yelled that question at Jesus? If there was ever a shared sentiment between us and the disciples, it's that question.

It’s a sense of abandonment. It’s feeling like you are drowning and God is nowhere to be found, panicking that your boat of life is taking on water and Jesus is asleep at the stern and for whatever reason you can’t rouse him no matter how hard you cry or pray. You are not alone in feeling that way.

We all have a storm story: the doctor giving a diagnosis you never wanted to hear, the day after a beloved’s funeral, your child telling you her marriage is over, the accident you never saw coming. Like the fishermen, we know the damage they can do. So don’t feel bad for yelling at Jesus. So much in the Hebrew Bible is the Psalmist or a prophet lamenting over the same thing.

As Nadia Bolz Weber puts it, it’s no sin to hold God’s feet to the fire and ask, “Why have you abandoned me?”

To the disciple’s great relief, Jesus wakes from his nap and, with three words, he makes the wind stop and a great calm come over the waters. He turns to the disciples and has the audacity to ask, “why are you afraid?” As if taking on water in a shambly first century boat wasn’t reason enough. But then Jesus asks a harder question, “Have you still no faith…”

In other words, don’t you trust me yet? I think the fear Jesus can get over. It’s human, innate to fear. But to show no measure of trust, that’s what Jesus seems disappointed at. Because by this time in Mark’s story, the disciples have spent some good time with Jesus. They have witnessed him doing some pretty miraculous things: casting out unclean spirits, restoring a withered hand, healing a leper, and mending the health of one of their own mothers. They’ve heard his teaching; heard others call him the Son of God, yet how quickly they seem to forget all of that.

In the Psalms, the psalmist writes about how God commands the sea to storm and to cease.

The disciples, or at least the first hearers of Mark’s gospel, would have known that only God has power over the waters. In controlling the winds and the waves, Jesus shows them once again who he is, he is the Son of God, the savior, fully divine living among them.

It took a storm for them to see again who Jesus was. And really the disciples still don’t see it or really get it. All throughout Mark, they constantly get it wrong about who Jesus is and what he’s there to do. But could we not say the same thing about ourselves? Have we not been witnesses to some pretty miraculous things? Have we not been in a boat taking on water and yet somehow arrived safely to the other side?

Faith is having trust in the savior who is right there, in the boat with you. We will be fearful of the storms that come up in life, but faith is choosing to trust Jesus in the moment in spite of the storm.

Notice that disciples didn’t have glass waters to sail across. Even though Jesus was in the boat with them, the storm still came. Bad, hard, even terrible things happen in this life. And people will try to say that if you just prayed enough, or had enough faith, or had the right kind of faith, then these things wouldn’t happen. That, friends, is a lie. Having faith is no guarantee or promise that storms won’t arise. The promise is that Jesus is in there with you.

And look I get that there are still all sorts of questions: why doesn’t Jesus stop the storms from happening in the first place? Why are some storms just so bad? And if God controls the waters, who's responsible for the storm? We could try to answer all these, and many have, but that gives no comfort or relief to someone who feels like they're perishing. Instead, sit beside them when the wind kicks up and the waves crash and let Jesus show you who he is once again.

Because there’s nothing like a storm to teach you about the people who are in your boat, Jesus included.

Amen.

A Little Help Getting There - Fall Retreat 2024

Storm Stories