Sermon for 2nd Sunday before Lent – ‘To Make Him Known in Wonder, Love and Praise’ preached at the Eucharist, Sherborne Abbey on Sunday, 23 February 2025 by The Reverend Robert Green (Revelation Ch 4; Luke Ch 8: v 22 – 25).
“To know God and make Him known in wonder, love and praise” is our Mission Statement, and our Readings this morning from Revelation’s Vision of Heaven and the Stilling of the Storm in St. Luke’s Gospel, proclaim the mystery, and the wonder, and the power of God. In both accounts words seem inadequate as the writer in Revelation struggles to describe his vision of Heaven, and the Disciples in the Gospel are left in awe and wonder as the wind ceases and the sea is calm once more. We are confronted with the power and majesty of God. The One who is the Creator, the Beginning and the End, who was, and is, and is to come.
The vision of Heaven given in Revelation involves what one can only describe as mental gymnastics as we try and picture the scene. What is clear is that at the heart of this vision is unending worship; Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty, and this is proclaimed constantly day and night. Worship of someone or something is a basic need in our human lives. We all will make time for what we consider important whether it is a football team, or a particular person or a hobby. A recent advertisement asks us to worship the Wrap! I am not quite sure how you do that! As many of you know I do like the warmth of the sun, and I will go out of my way to enjoy it, but my faith has the ultimate priority.
Let’s now look at our Gospel reading. At least four of the disciples are experienced fishermen, and are used to the sudden storms of the Sea of Galilee, which is 600 feet below sea level, and because of this winds and storms can arise very suddenly. They have sailed on the sea in all weathers, so it says something about this storm that they’re worried enough to wake Jesus up, who was asleep in the boat. “Master, we are perishing!”
What do they think he’ll do? Surely they don’t expect him to speak to the wind and waves, as if he had power over them, or that at his command the wind will drop and the waves will calm down. But that is precisely what happens. They’re probably not expecting the silence that follows, and in that moment, they ask themselves; “Who is this? He commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him.”
The answer to their question has profound implications. Whoever Jesus is, he has authority and power which is solely God’s. The God who is creator of all things that have come into being, and the only ruler of the earth and sea and sky, who was, and is, and is to come. Can Jesus be God as well as our brother and friend?
When all is calm once more, Jesus asks them; “Where is your faith?” The disciples will be thinking about that for a very long time. Where is our faith? How do we react in times of danger or emergency? Perhaps we may have had health issues, or our parents’ or children. We may have been through times of what seemed impossible circumstances and have seriously questioned our faith. We may have had to struggle through a wilderness time of loneliness and despair where God seems very distant. This encounter that the disciples had with Jesus stilling the storm shows us that in the turmoil he is there in the midst. He is there even when, or especially when, we don’t know it and can’t believe it, and that can be awesome. Are we really in the presence of the source of our being, whose name is Love?
In this Eucharist God invites us to share in a foretaste of the heavenly banquet as He comes to us in the bread and wine, and as we hear the words of the Sanctus, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty we are echoing the worship of heaven – a foretaste of what is to come!