Two Poems for Pentecost IV - June 21 - 2015

Pentecost IV - June 21, 2015

Appointed Gospel:  Mark 4:35-41New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

Jesus Stills a Storm

35 On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” 36 And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. 37 A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. 38 But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” 39 He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. 40 He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” 41 And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

A Poem a Sunday I

Church Management

The boat is leaking.

The boards are creaking.

The Lord is sleeping.

God’s people pretend

that all is well.

Surprised

when hell

breaks

loose.

   A storm ensues.

The whirlwind blows,

waves overflow.

We gasp in gulps,

the sea engulfs.

And we’re baptized,

But will be rise?

Kenn Storck

A Poem a Sunday II

Prepare to abandon ship, right now, prepare to abandon ship.

My faith is built on whom, not how, prepare to abandon ship.

So sang a 1960’s Lutheran troubadour

by the name of John Ylvisaker.

Ships we need to abandon:

          denominational labels,

          edifices, buildings that drain God’s mission,

          cocooned communities of faith.

Ships to abandon:

          dogmatic prisons,

          clerical hierarchies,

          Roberts Rules of Order,

          cookie cutter missions.

Yet institutional inertia keeps too many ships afloat:

“Save the building!” cry the shipmates,

“Save the way we’ve done it before!”

And we close the door on the Spirit of God

blowing us, pushing us, off of the shore to

a new ship, a movement of Gospel, of grace

beyond walls, beyond edifice, beyond confined space.

I see on the horizon new ships afloat.

“Abandon the ghost ships!  Man the lifeboats!”

I see beyond safe bays lifeboats emerge

in ocean depths moving to a new birth

 - a spirited ship full of Gospel and grace

that is boldly going toward an unchartered place.

The ocean is calling baptizing us anew

abandoning ships that are no longer true.

The troubadour echoes over rough seas:

Prepare to abandon ship, right now,

Prepare to abandon ship.

My faith is built on whom, not how,

Prepare to abandon ship.

Kenn Storck – June 14, 2015