In the Spring of the Year

         [Sermon written the day after a tragic death in my parish.]

          In the spring of the year, the time when baby lambs wobble across flower-studded fields and love caresses our hearts like a warm breeze, gallant King David and beautiful Bathsheba fell in love and lived happily ever after.

          Oh wait, that’s not how the story goes? The story starts off right for a happy romance, “in the spring of the year,” but that promising beginning shifts quickly into a minor key: “In the spring of the year …….the time when kings go out to battle” … David gets bored, grabs something that is not his, forces himself on someone else’s wife, takes, lies, kills, abuses his kingly power, his sins ticking past us as automatically as the seconds on a watch. Violence and manipulation quickly take over in a story that first seems to set up love and new beginnings. Stories are tricky that way. They can change in the tiny space between punctuation marks, leaving us to scramble after them, shaken and unprepared.

          “In the spring of the year,” full of confidence and hope after a long winter of rehab, the elderly man stood up, proud to walk with a cane, rather than the ungainly walker he had been using, and moved forward triumphantly across the living room … losing his balance and falling into the fireplace, shattering his newly healed bones.

          “In the spring of the year,” pregnant with a long-awaited daughter, the young woman waited contentedly on the ultrasound table, expectant eyes turned toward the screen where her baby’s face would soon appear …. and the nurse said, “there is no heartbeat.”

          “In the spring of the year,” in the cool breezes that finally chased away the oppressive heat, planning retirement adventures with his beloved wife, Daryl jumped on his motorcycle to run a quick errand…. and in the dark, they found his wrecked bike and body by the side of the road.

          “In the spring of the year,” before last night’s storm, I started out preparing a spiffy sermon that would decry the abuse of power in the David and Bathsheba story, but those preachy words have turned to dust and blown away in the storm, and now we are all sitting huddled in that boat yet again, the boat full of disciples, the boat of the Church that keeps being tossed around on stormy seas. We are shaken and unprepared. We can’t rely on happy endings. We can’t manipulate our way out of sin or plan our way out of death and disaster. We are at sea, at the mercy of wind and waves and sun and season and God and one another and ourselves … We are stuck together to toss and turn and perhaps even to capsize, caught up in a story so much bigger than we can even wrap our minds around, a story where the security of land is too far off to be seen.

On a glorious, sunny day in Nova Scotia, with cool breezes that felt to me just like springtime, my friends and I decided to go whale-watching. On such a beautiful day, even I could put aside my fear of riding in a little boat. From shore, the water was the deep blue of sapphires, the waves were tipped in bright white, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. My carefree, vacationing heart was as light as a feather, and I was relishing the adventure of going out to sea in the little Zodiac raft, excited about spotting a powerful whale, and proud of myself for my courage to live a bit on the wild side for once. “Won’t my kids be surprised at my exciting escapade,” I thought to myself. “I’ll have to tell my parishioners how brave I am, too, after all those sermons about being afraid of water!” I especially thought about bragging to Daryl, who loved to tease me about my fears and who got me to promise that I would ride his motorcycle if he ever consented to becoming senior warden.

They gave us ponchos to wear and said that we would probably get  a little wet, since the winds were so unusually strong that day, and I began to wonder if that meant that the ride might be bumpier than I had imagined. And then we were seated in the boat, and pulling out into the harbor, and the captain announced through the microphone that it was rough going out there, and that the whales were going to be extra hard to spot with all of those big waves, and that the last cruise had lasted an extra half-hour before they found the promised whales. And it was no longer springtime, and I was very afraid. Suddenly, the deep water, only a few feet from me now, looked more blackish-green than blue, and the little raft hit the oncoming 8 foot waves with splash after splash, rising high into the air and crashing back down with a spine-jarring, heart-stomping thud. The crazy captain sped straight into the wind, and I closed my eyes and held the seat and rail with all my might, while I pictured my death from either drowning or fear-induced heart-attack. Even my fellow passengers became ominously quiet as we got further and further from shore and the wind and waves continued entirely unabated. I wanted to stand up and shout that I wanted to go back to shore. I wanted a do-over. I didn’t like the way that this story had shifted. “This situation is out of control. I don’t care about the stupid whales, just get me out of this boat!” I thought, over and over, but all that came out of my mouth were low moans and a bit of very un-priest-like vocabulary. For an hour we fought against those high seas, the captain determined to find a whale so that he wouldn’t have to refund our money and me praying silently to God for all I was worth.

After awhile, I did have the presence of mind to think about my recent sermons about water, and I thought about the story that we read today, with the disciples in their boat, as Jesus approached them, walking on the water. I began to open my eyes and glance cautiously around, but I didn’t see Jesus coming toward us over those roiling hills of water. Yet suddenly, there they were! A whole pod of pilot whales, complete with mama and baby whale, slipping under and over those big waves with grace and slippery ease. They swam in amazing synchronicity with one other, diving and jumping as one body, unfazed by the stormy seas or by the boats full of seasick tourists or by the captains with their loudspeakers. They were Job's Leviathan, the magnificent beast that God made for the sport of it, sporting through a world that had terrified me, swimming with the power and joy of God striding across a stormy sea to reach out a hand to his fearful followers. “'I AM' is with you," cried the bobbing whales through their blowholes; "there is beauty out here on these waves." There is strength in the divine hands and feet that are reaching out to you. Awe can replace panic. The Creator is in control of the Story.

Suddenly, I noticed that the captain had turned the boat around and we were speeding almost smoothly toward shore. The sun was shining. The waves were sparkling. And I smiled. “You look like you are happy to be alive,” joked a friend. Indeed. Alive in my God, in the spring of the year.

          “In the spring of the year, at festive Passover time, God did miracles through his Son, and the people hailed him as their king …. Yet he ran away to a deserted place. and God was nailed to a cross and died,” goes our Story.

“In the spring of the year,” Jesus rose from the dead, and rough barley bread becomes his broken body, and we all sit down together on the green grass beside the still waters and are fed until we can eat no more. And there are leftovers. And nothing is lost. And the lost are found. And the boat reaches the land toward which they are going, even when life stories change in midsentence. For nothing can separate us from the Love of God, the God who will cross over to us as we huddle in our little boats...

In every season of the year.

Amen.