My brother Adin, who is close to me in age, just about a year and 3 months younger, served a tour of duty in the Army in Vietnam during the war. And like so many veterans of that war, he came home not in the best shape mentally and emotionally.

His way of dealing with that was to adapt a Volkswagen bus into living quarters on wheels—he was handy like that—and head out on the road with no particular destination in mind. When he needed cash, he stopped somewhere, got a job doing whatever—picking fruit, mopping floors. Whatever.

He hated cold weather, so he ended up in Florida and got a job scraping hulls at a marina that tended yachts. It didn’t take his boss long to figure out he was handy, so next thing you know, he had been promoted to fixing yachts and then remodeling the interiors of yachts.

From all that, he got bitten by the sailing bug and next thing we at home in Iowa hear is that he is building his own boat, so to take his wanderlust out to sea. I’ll never forget the first time I visited him in Florida. He had found a place to park his VW bus and build his boat, and he was standing there using an axe to carve a hunk of wood on two sawhorses into the keel of what would become a beautiful, 30+ foot, seaworthy sailboat.

It took a couple of years, but when “Harmony”—that’s what he named his boat—when Harmony was finished, he set out into the Caribbean and repeated the pattern. When he needed cash, he stopped at an island, got a job, earned what he needed then set sail again. Until he stopped at St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, got a job working for a farmer who provided produce to resort hotels on the island, and eventually fell in love with the farmer’s daughter. But that’s another story.

The story I must get to today in light of our Gospel lesson, is that I spent a week living on Harmony and sailing around the Caribbean with my brother. And we had a blast. We set sail from St. Croix to St. John, which is far enough away from St. Croix that you lose sight of land for a while on the journey.

As I recall, we did not go ashore for most of a week. We ate fish and lobster we speared wherever we anchored in sheltered spots around St. John. I should clarify: my brother speared, because even though I was a pretty skilled snorkeler, I was not that good with the spear!

The day came that we reluctantly had to head back to St. Croix for me to catch a plane home. We knew how long it should take, and we set sail in good time. But, lo and behold, we got out in the middle between the islands, where not one speck of land was visible—the 360-degree horizon was all water—and the wind died. I mean, died. The sea was glass. I had not even thought it possible for the sea to be that flat and glassy.

Now my brother’s boat had an engine, but he had told me before we left: the engine is broke. I said, ‘who cares? I want to sail anyway.’ Famous last words, right?

So there we are, with no land in sight and no wind. We put up every sail the boat had. My brother even rigged some canvas into an extra makeshift sail. He lashed the tiller to one side so we would drift in circles, and there we sat. Well, I sat. My brother paced and fumed and finally I said, “Adin, I think God is trying to teach you patience.” To which he replied, “Well, I’ve got news for God: I’m getting my engine fixed!”

Fair enough. I do not recall how long we drifted, except that my flight home took off and landed in Florida while we were out there! But what happened next astonishes me to this day.

I was sunbathing and reading a book. My brother was lounging in the back of the boat. Suddenly, the air changed. So very subtle, yet… Maybe it moved a bit—not quite a breeze but movement. Maybe a fraction of a degree drop in temperature? Maybe the slightest fragrance of… maybe rain? I look up from my book, but my brother snaps to attention. And within seconds, he’s on his feet yelling, “Come on, Betts. (That’s what my sibs called me: ‘Betts.’) We gotta get some sail down, now!”

And we went to work, jerking down sail as fast as we could. Within minutes we were down to the main sail and then streaking toward St. Croix at full speed, pushed by a perfect storm of wind and rain.

Later, I asked my brother for an explanation for jerking down sail when the wind was coming. I was too green to understand that the wind would most likely have pushed us over—capsized us—if it had gotten to us with all the sail we had up while we were becalmed.

My point? Not that my brother is like Jesus. I know him too well. He's no more like Jesus than any of the rest of us in this room!

Here’s my point: We are all boat builders of one kind or another. We spend our lives building boats—or houses. We build savings accounts and investment portfolios, networks of friends and allies. We build marriages and families and communities. These things make us feel safe. With these things, we can face the sea of life with its many storms and have some hope of sailing through.

Then along comes one of the many storms of life, one that threatens to capsize us, and we realize the boat we have built might just as well be cardboard. None of it can save us from grief and loss and fear. And then comes Jesus saying, Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?

Do you still not get that all this earthly stuff is passing away? That your ultimate hope and security does not lie in things of the earth? That this earthly stuff we invest so much time and energy in building is just.. a disposable cardboard boat?

Now, I’m like you. I do not want to have to sail through life without some financial comfort and the physical comfort that comes with a house and friends and family I can reach out to if needed—even though I’m not very good at doing that! So I too build my boat as best I can.

But… let us not be confused about what we are doing and why. Let us not confuse all of that with our foundational source of hope and security. For me, the best reminder… is our liturgy for the burial of the dead. Indeed, more than either of the creeds we say, the anthem spoken by the officiant at the beginning of a funeral service, is for me, our best statement of faith.

It’s on p. 491 of the Book of Common Prayer. I’ll share just a few lines from near the end, which are, in fact, quoting Romans 14:8:

For if we have life, we are alive in the Lord, 
and if we die, we die in the Lord.
So, then, whether we live or die,
we are the Lord's possession.

Jesus stilled the storm and his disciples did not perish that day. But if what we take from this story is that when the sea gets rough and we get afraid, Jesus will miraculously pop in and fix everything, we will have missed the point.

Because some day, some storm will take us out. Us, all of our loved ones, all earthy things we hold dear. All of the boat-building we have done cannot prevent that.

Faith is not believing that Jesus the Miracle Guy will pop in and fix everything for us. Faith is knowing that whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.

And knowing that, friends, is all we really need to get through this life. That, and maybe one disposable cardboard boat, just for the fun of it.*

 In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. AMEN.

*I am indebted to Suzanne Guthrie, who introduces the phrase “1 disposable carboard boat” in a tongue-in-cheek list of liturgical props to accompany Mark 4:35-41. (Edge of the Enclosure, Proper 7, Year B; online, 6-20-2024).