In our Scripture passage for today there is a wonderful story that is told about Jesus and the disciples. The scene is a vivid one. It’s the story of a small boat tossed in a furious squall on the Sea of Galilee. The disciples, who were experienced fishermen, find themselves in a situation which was beyond their control, more than they could manage. And where was Jesus? Where was their master? Where was the one who they were following?

Here is the story as it is told in Mark’s Gospel in the fourth chapter. We are told that at the end of a long day of teaching and preaching and healing and helping, Jesus said to the disciples, "Let us go over to the other side of the sea." They left the crowd behind and they took Jesus along in the boat just as He was: tired, worn out, and exhausted. There were also other boats with Him. A furious squall came up and the waves broke over the boat so that it was nearly swamped. Jesus was in the stern sleeping on a cushion.

The disciples woke Him and said to Him, "Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?"

He got up, rebuked the wind, and said to the waves, "Peace. Be still." Then the wind died down and it was completely calm. He said to His disciples, "Why are you so afraid? Do you still have your faith?"

They were terrified and they asked each other, "Who is this? Even the wind and waves obey Him." The disciples who knew what a storm was like knew that they were in over their heads. They had done everything that they knew how to do. If they were at the end of their human resources in that circumstance they looked for the person they expected to help them. They had learned as they had walked with Jesus that He had extraordinary powers and abilities. They had seen His heart of caring compassion. And yet here they were in the worst night of their lives and Jesus was sound asleep.

Sometimes when circumstances of our lives break in upon us, it feels like that to us. It feels as if when the waves are threatening to swamp our boat that God is asleep and is no where to be seen, no where to be found. In that circumstance we wonder just as the disciples wondered about Jesus. It is interesting that their question about Jesus is a question that says: Don’t you care, Lord? Don’t you care, Rabbi (or teacher)? Don’t you care if we drown? Are you so indifferent to what we have to deal with that you can just sleep right through it?

Thrown out of work, faced with an unexpected and frightening medical diagnosis, struggling with financial pressures, caught in a relationship which seems to be deteriorating and going no where, or a phone call that comes and all of a sudden the heart leaps in pain and anguish, we cry out in spite of ourselves, "Lord, can it be that I have looked to you, I’ve sought your help, I’ve discovered so many good things about your love, and yet here in this circumstance it seems that you don’t care, that you are not here, that you are sound asleep? Don’t you care if we drown?" And yet they did the right thing in the midst of those circumstances. They knew where to cry out. They knew who to cry out to. And the person they cried out to was the Savior. They were discovering more and more about His love, about His compassion, about His ability, and they woke Him with their cry.

Jesus in other places in the New Testament says to us that it is alright to cry to God. In fact, God invites us to cry. We are told to ask, to seek, to knock, and to pound on the door of heaven. You can almost see the disciples here as the waves break in and the storm is furious. They do the one thing that is left to do. They had done all that was possible to do with their human skill and now they cry in their neediness to Jesus. And Jesus hears and responds to that cry. Our fears are so often very strong when the storms threaten to overwhelm us, that we can cry to Jesus and know that he hears and that he will respond to the cry of our hearts.

Some years back I received a phone call from my oldest child, a daughter, who was expecting a baby. She called me and she said, "Mom, the baby came. It came early. I held the baby, but the baby died." As we wept together over the phone and when I got into my car to go and join her, my heart was broken and I found myself crying out, "God, where are you?" And in my cry I knew no answer, but I knew that I wanted to experience the presence of God in the midst of these difficult circumstances. I wanted to know that the heart of God was the heart that is shown in Jesus who was compassionate and caring.

In the account with the disciples we find that after the disciples had cried out, that Jesus got up. Then he did something that even the disciples, with their experience of Jesus, had not expected. He actually speaks to the waves and to the wind. The word that he speaks is the word peace, be still. And then the wind died down, it was completely still, and there was calm. Much of the turmoil in our lives isn’t simply the turmoil from the outer circumstances, it's the turmoil that churns within us, tearing us apart. We cry out to God and then to our astonishment we discover that God comes. God is not absent, but present and God speaks to the storm that is within our turbulent and tossed spirits.

As I went and was with my daughter and her husband, we wept together just as Jesus wept at the grave of a friend. And as we went to the tiny grave side and as we cried and prayed there and experienced in ways beyond understanding what the disciples experienced, we found that God gives peace—peace that passes understanding—because God is not simply a God of compassion, He is a God of power. He is a God who is capable of taking control when we are out of control.

Though our questions are not finally answered yet and are left in the mystery of God’s love, still we see His comfort, His power, His presence, and His strength. His help is there for us. The disciples, when they cried out to Jesus and experienced Jesus rising and rebuking the wind and calling for peace, we are told, had a response that I think sometimes we have when we call out to God. I’ve found myself sometimes wondering if God will really answer, and then being surprised when God does. The disciples were more than surprised when they saw not only the compassion but the power of God at work in Jesus. We are told that their response was one of awe and even terror because they had never experienced this kind of loving power in a person; in Jesus whom they, in the adventure of faith, were discovering about more and more, day by day. This one like them and yet more than they were. One who cared and helped and came to be with them in their circumstances, just as God today comes to be with us in our circumstances. God, our Savior who knows our cry, knows what it means to be in a boat swamped by the storm and yet has the power to give peace and strength and help even of the midst of those difficult circumstances. The disciples called out for peace and God met them at their point of need. We may call for peace and God, through Jesus Christ, will meet us at our point of need as well. May this be true in your life this day and through the days ahead. Amen.

Lydia Talbot: "Does God care?," the central question in your message, is what most people ask in crisis. You shared a very powerful story of your own personal experience with the loss of your daughter’s infant baby. Have there been other moments in your personal life that you have cried out that question?

Roberta Hestenes: Many of them. In fact, while I growing up as a child, I was part of a family that today we would call dysfunctional. My father was an alcoholic. There were instances of violence in my home and I experienced a lot of pain as a child. My family was not Christian at all. As a teenager I found myself crying out to God, wondering if there was a God, and if God existed how could this go on. It was in my college years that I had an experience of God in Christ, a conversion experience in which I discovered in a very personal way the love of God which the Bible speaks of over and over again. But God who created us in the first place loves us and cares for us. Although the world we are in is full of evil and suffering, nonetheless, God can take that evil and turn it to good in our lives. I have experienced that from the very beginning of my Christian journey.

Talbot: And so you were reared in what you have referred to as a pagan home...

Hestenes: A family that did not go to church.

Talbot: Now you are a major leader in the Presbyterian church. What was that moment of conversion, as you say, in college? What was that about?

Hestenes: For me it was discovering that you could have a personal relationship with God through Christ and that God wasn’t just a distant abstraction.

Talbot: But how did you discover that?

Hestenes: A person who had that experience in Christ shared that with me and I found myself simply praying and saying, "God, if that’s true, if you can make yourself known and you want to know someone like me, I’m here. I’m open. I’m willing." And God met me more than halfway.

Talbot: So there was a new kind of receptivity that occurred?

Hestenes: A moment of openness occurred. I think our journeys are different, but for me it was a hunger that came to a climactic point when I discovered that there was something more spiritually than I had not discovered before. It came through inviting Christ into my life.

Talbot: You have had a long and distinguished career, Roberta, as an educator, a college president, an ordained woman, and now as a Senior Pastor of a church in California with twenty four hundred members. What has that journey been like for you as a woman in the church?

Hestenes: My favorite word is adventure. And adventure for me means never knowing quite how it’s going to come out; never knowing exactly what the next turn in the road is going to be, but following by faith as God leads and then discovering a new chapter, a new possibility, a new opportunity. I never expected to be a pastor, for instance, but here I am!

Talbot: You said you met your husband in seminary. He was the seminary student.

Hestenes: And I was the wife! He was a physicist who had an experience of God about the same time that I did and we met at a Christian camp. About a year later we went off to seminary together as newlyweds. He was the student and wives got to take courses for free. So I took the free courses. It turn out that he was called to work in the university and he is a biophysicist today on a university faculty. I was the person called to work formally within the context of the Christian community.

Talbot: Adventures do occur, though not punctually! Let me ask you as an ordained woman in the Presbyterian church, have you had moments of isolation or rejection? What has that pilgrimage been like for you?

Hestenes: For me it first began with working through my own ambivalence about the appropriate role of a woman in leadership. Studying the Scripture s and coming to the conclusion that the Bible—the New Testament particularly—really supports and affirms women in all of their giftedness and all that God has put in their hearts, their lives, their abilities, and their callings. As I worked that through, people then would invite me to new opportunities for ministry and each one would usually come accompanied with people saying, "Yes," and a few people saying, "No, we don’t think so." I made the faith decision to go with the encouragement and the invitations, taking the risks and learning more, understanding the concerns and the objections of those opposed to women, but not allowing those to limit or deny the ministry that I believe God put in my life.

Talbot: How does that understanding, Roberta, inform you about others in the church, the Presbyterian church especially, who may feel isolated over issues of sexuality these days?

Hestenes: My belief is that the Scripture is our first resource and the Christian community is a second resource, and that we need to do our biblical work and work through the biblical material in a careful and thorough way, prayerfully. And then we need a small Christian community. I have always had a small group of one kind or another around me where we studied Scripture, we prayed together, we shared our burdens, we poured out what we were dealing with. That Christian community of accountability and love and learning and growth has always been an important part of giving me courage.

Talbot: You are part of the wider community: your national work with religion and science and the environment.

Hestenes: I’m very excited about the initiatives in the religious community dealing with creation care because I think that God, who gave us this world, intended us to be stewards of that and that Christian people and religious people should be good stewards of the Earth that God has given. That means being thoughtfully, carefully, and proactively involved in environmental issues.