Sermon Tone Analysis

Greeting

The story of the boat

G

It is great to be back with you.

On behalf of your sisters and brothers, I bring you greetings.

You are part of a family from Jackson Wyoming to Moab UT to Albuquerque.

Through your mission support, you are sending missionaries to every continent except Antartica.

You are working with girls and boys who have been trafficked into the sex trades and domestic service.

You are working with Syrian refugees in Lebanon, and here in our region, you have a sister church of refugees from Myanmar.

Sometimes we think that we don’t touch the world much, but you do.

Introduction

How to we engage the the storms of life?

Are we washed overboard?

Do we panic?

Do we climb the mast and scream at the storm, at God, like Captain Dan in Forrest Gump?

For some, the storms of life are simply a sign that you have sinned.

They teach us in various ways, that when we struggle and have problems, when life attacks, we must have done something wrong.

I think most of us have let this creep into our thinking.

When I went to Africa, they asked us to teach on Stewardship.

When we had been there a week, we realized that part of the problem was that those who preached a propserity Gospel had so enamoured their people that they were leaving their churches or just sending their money to one of these “billboard” preachers in the hope of getting their blessing.

These are challenging days for churches.

ABC Fort Collins, “Do we go on?”

Grace River, “What happens when 1/4 of your church says, we can’t keep doing this?”

As I have said before, many churches are simply struggling to maintain.

One pastor said to me, “It won’t be long until we have to choose between stained glass windows and ministry.”

I don’t want to cry out that the sky is falling.

Nor do I want to ignore the very real dangers and challenges facing.

I want to tell a bit of a story.

It is a story by a preacher who I first encountered my freshman year in college.

I hope that as I prepared this sermon, as I preach this sermon, and you engage with this sermon, it will give us a sense of hope.

First, I want to read a very familiar passage of Scripture,

Storm Clouds

It is January 15, 1933, the Second Sunday after Epiphany in Berlin Germany.

A young (27) German pastor and scholar is asked to preach for vesper services.

What to preach on?

What do people need to hear?

I need to remind us of a bit of history.

I feel a bit like the History Channel, because we are going back to the days before World War II.

For the past 10 years, a firebrand politician has been stirring up the crowds against the government.

Germany had endured fifteen years of hardship since the end of World War I.

The reparations they were required to pay crippled their economy.

Then came the Great Depression.

There was anger and unrest everywhere in Germany.

The Communists in the Soviet Union were making inroads into Germany.

This young firebrand was offering hope, a better tomorrow economically.

He was promising that the once proud Germans would regain their status in the world.

He would not let the hated Russians win.

He appealed to many Germans.

He wanted to be German Chancellor.

He was offered other positions, but he refused.

It was Chancellor or nothing.

While many in Germany enthusiastically cheered his rhetoric, not everyone did.

This young pastor was afraid that the rhetoric would become reality.

He knew that many Christians (especially pastors) were afraid to stand up to the popular upswell.

He knew that many Christians were sympathetic or even supportive of this rhetoric of hate and fear.

They were fed up and secretly agreed with Hitler.

He also knew that the political philosophy espoused by Hitler could not be stand unchallenged.

For this young pastor, Christianity and this political philosophy could not coexist.

Would the German church have the courage to stand up to Hitler in spite of the consequences?

He chose that night on January 15, 1933 to preach on Overcoming Fear.

He was right.

Two weeks after this sermon, Adolf Hitler would be elected Chancellor of Germany.

The church, at least the Confessing Church, that part of the church that would not swear allegiance to Hitler and the Nazi Party would face horrible persecution.

Jews and others would be slaughtered.

The world would be drug into the most devastating war imaginable, only two decades after the War to End all Wars was fought.

Over the next twelve years, this young pastor would challenge and fight the rhetoric of hate.

He would leave Germany, but would always return to be with his people.

He would challenge the older, more comfortable pastors.

(Pastors like me?)

He would stand up in defense of Jewish professors and people.

He helped establish and taught at a seminary for those pastors who refused to follow the state church.

On April 9, 1945, two weeks before the Flossenbürg concentration camp was liberated, he was tried and hanged for treason and sedition.

He became one of the most famous Christian martyrs of the 20th century.

His name was Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

He preached on overcoming fear.

The Boat

Bonhoeffer began his sermon with this version of the story

Let’s say there is a ship on the high sea, having a fierce struggle with the waves.

The storm wind is blowing harder by the minute.

The boat is small, tossed about like a toy; the sky is dark; the sailors’ strength is failing.

Then one of them is gripped by . . .

whom? what? . . . he cannot tell him­self.

But someone is there in the boat who wasn’t there before.

Someone comes close to him and lays cold hands on his arms as he pulls wildly on his oar.

He feels his muscles freeze, feels the strength go out of them.

Then the unknown one reaches into his heart and mind and magically brings forth the strangest pictures.

He sees his family, his children crying.

What will become of them if he is no more?

Then he seems to be back where he once was when he followed evil ways, in long years of bondage to evil, and he sees the faces of his companions in that bondage.

He sees a neighbor whom he wounded, only yesterday, with an angry word.

Suddenly he can no longer see or hear anything, can no longer row, a wave overwhelms him, and in final desperation he shrieks: ‘Stranger in this boat, who are you?’

And the other answers, ‘I am Fear.’

Now the cry goes up from the whole crew; Fear is in the boat; all arms are frozen and drop their oars; all hope is lost, Fear is in the boat.

Then it is as if the heavens opened, as if the heavenly hosts themselves raised a shout of victory in the midst of hopelessness: Christ is in the boat.

Christ is in the boat, and no sooner has the call gone out and been heard than Fear shrinks back, and the waves subside.

The sea becomes calm and the boat rests on its quiet surface.

Christ was in the boat!

Followers

This is a “Follower” story.

Yes, it is a miracle story, but it is more.