You are on an airplane, settling in for a two-hour flight across country. The person sitting next to you has already signaled they are the "talkative type." Then they ask: "Are you saved?" What do you say? It is a powerful question, maybe even the right question. To be polite, and yet to cut short this tangled line of theological conversation, I usually just say "yes." You suddenly realize, though ... this is going to be a long ride.

The Gospel Lesson for today asks a similar question. Jesus is in the boat asleep. It is as if God has gone to sleep. As disciples we ask if all this following of Jesus has amounted to very much. A storm is raging. Does God have the "power to save" us? It is a powerful question, maybe even the right question.

And deeper down, are all the raging storms, everything that "has us," that "terrorizes" us. Does God have the power to save us from this, too?

We must keep in mind, the first century disciples were professional fishermen, who had seen many a storm on the sea; but they were afraid. These early disciples were "desert people," too, and everything evil came from the sea, the "monsters" of the deep, described in all the ancient Hebrew myths. No, there is more going on here for them and for us, than meets the eye. Well might we ask the question: "Are we saved?"

Today's Gospel lesson is not in the genre of "miracle story," but "epiphany story," a revelation of who Jesus is...( The -- "Who is this?" -- of verse 41).

The New Testament Gospel of Mark distinctively downplays "miracles," and magical solutions. Mark even portrays Jesus urging his disciples to keep it a "secret" about the miracles and other aspects of his purpose, which they "may not be able to bear." There were other healers, exorcists and magicians in the time of Jesus. Jesus is not merely one more of these. Remember the magicians in Pharaoh's court performed many of the same miracles as Moses. Magic will not save us.

The "storms of life" for us are also quite complicated. "Stuff" and the sheer speed of our life threaten to "overwhelm" and "swamp" our life boat.

Early on we struggle for mastery over our environment. This poem by Judith Viorst (Imperfect Control: Our lifelong struggles with power and surrender, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1998, p. 68):

I'm getting a higher bunk bed
And I'm getting a bigger bike
And I'm getting to cross Connecticut Avenue all by myself if I like.
And I'm getting to help do dishes
And I'm getting to weed the yard
And I'm getting to think that seven could be hard.

We live a complex life. The sheer pace and "speed" of it must be considered.

"Our life is lived with the kind of intensity and excitement that our forebears only knew in times of battle." (Mark Helprin) "Our ability to work fast and play fast gives us power. It thrills us. We have made our choices, and are still making them. We have chosen speed and we thrive on it -- more than we generally admit. Fast food restaurants add 'express lanes.' These days, if we have learned the name of just one hormone, it is adrenaline.

'Time is a gentle deity,' said Sophocles. Perhaps it was, for him. Today, it cracks the whip" (James Gleick, Faster: The acceleration of just about everything, NY: Random House, 2000, pp. 12-13).

Does God have "the power to save" us from this?

The 2 Corinthians text is pure, first century "rhetorical form," with Paul reciting a , "hardship list," and raising the level of argument about "emotional or spiritual reserves" and developing capacities for "endurance."

How do we do this and what is the role of "church" in the process?

Our 2 Corinthians text, appeals to "truthful speech," "speaking frankly," "opening wide our hearts," and the "power of God," so that everything in our life may become a "new creation."

Now may be the time to lay down some pretty heavy theology... it won't hurt much, and you are up to it.

We have, today, been "blinded to the radical nature of the biblical sense of community that the Holy Spirit brings " -- which is the "first fruits of a new creation." "At Pentecost, with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, promise becomes actuality." God's promises are "incarnated in a new humanity, a people commissioned to represent the gospel of peace to the alienated and hostile powers of the world. This communal reality the New Testament calls koinonia (which has always been roughly translated as "fellowship," which sounds a lot like mere "socializing;" but the word more accurately means something like a process of togetherness in Christian practices of mutual accountability). This reality challenges the old competitive order of self interest and private privilege with a new collaborative order of interdependence and mutual accountability (Inagrace Dietterich, " Missional Community: Cultivating Communities of the Holy Spirit," in Missional Church: a vision for the sending of the church in North America, ed. Darrell L. Guder, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998, pp. 142ff.).

Mutual accountability, or "one-anothering" one another (as we find this process described throughout the writings of Paul)...portrays church as our being transformed into a "peculiar people" and an "alternative community," the "first fruits," a "sign" and "foretaste" of what Jesus called the "Kingdom of God."

The Church proclaims that life can happen in the presence of huge problems that bear externally upon us.

We live lives at the "multi-tasking," "hurry sickness," "five alarm fire" level. We conduct business in fevered "spurts." Jeff Greenfield recalls a former time when we had time to reflect upon ideas...compared today, to an emotional climate: "...caught in this maelstrom of semi-informed, uninformed wind-baggery."

Worship is "deliberative time," "slowed-down" time, enough time to "know what time we fill," (W. H. Auden) so that we can listen to the beat of our own hearts, the timbre of our own lives..

And if we would be delivered from all that terrorizes and swamps us in this culture of 'overwhelm," we must slow down just enough in worship-time to reflect on matters of the "ultimate," of "end-time things," to "remember the One before Whom we stand," and to Whom we are ever "accountable" for the very gift of life itself --- the One, Who, alone, has the "power to save."

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