Recently I listened in on a radio story about women in the Far East, who long ago in a more traditional Asian culture had been virtual prisoners of their husbands. I was traveling in the car and in a hurry so I did not have the time or the opportunity to listen to the whole story, but what I did hear just before I had to switch off the radio was this one line from one of those women, who years later wrote about her experience: “I’ve spent my whole life,” she said, “just wanting to be loved.”

She was reflecting on a life that was loveless and desperate, joyless and bereft of affection, compassionless, and thus without hope of salvation. Desperate for love, she spent her whole life longing for it. It is into just such a world and into just such lives, lives that can be harsh, painful, sad, loveless and brutal, that Paul, expanding on the words of the prophet Isaiah, who in the name of the Lord, was speaking a word of comfort and hope to forlorn and despondent exiles, cut off it seemed from the promises of the God who claimed to love them, exclaims, “See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!” Love has arrived.

We know that love has arrived, not because we see it all around us, but because we know Jesus Christ. It is in him that God’s love is made manifest, that God’s love wins the final victory over everything that would stand against it. And yet, when we must endure such barrenness bereft of love, when we experience the brutality and indifference of the world, we wonder, is it true?

It is precisely into the darkness of our doubt, hardship and suffering that the bright new day of salvation breaks in. Paul proves this from the experience of his own ministry. “We have commended ourselves in every way,” he says: “through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger.” In the midst of all these afflictions, Paul perseveres, confident of God’s abiding faithfulness and love. Why does he persevere? He perseveres because salvation has come in Christ—come even during and through suffering and hardship. And God’s gift of salvation amidst temptation and trouble makes a difference for those who struggle to remain faithful, and their witness can make a huge difference as well for the loveless crushed under the wheel of cruel worldly fate. “We are treated as impostors, and yet are true, “Paul continues, “as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see—we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.”

When we look for the evidences of God’s love, we usually look in the wrong places. That happens, especially when all appears to be lost. Yet it is just at such times that one must cling to the cross and to the promises of the God of Israel, who regardless of what life dishes out, vows never to abandon his people to their sins or to the evils of an unjust, indifferent and fallen world.

Not long after Paul’s time, the early church continued to undergo great hardships and persecutions and yet continued to maintain the same faith and proclaim the same message. It is amazing how similar to Paul is the anonymous 2nd century Letter to Diognetus. That letter’s author unpacks the meaning of the witness of the Christian community to his interested but skeptical audience. The writer wants to explain that while the Christian community lives responsibly in the world, it is most definitely not of it. Its true home is elsewhere, and the true source of its hope and life comes from elsewhere as well.

“The organization of their community does exhibit some features that are remarkable, and even surprising” the writer explains. “For instance, though they are residents at home in their own countries, their behavior there is more like that of transients; they take their full part as citizens, but they also submit to anything and everything as if they were aliens. For them, any foreign country is a motherland, and any motherland is a foreign country. Like other men, they marry and beget children, though they do not expose their infants. Any Christian is free to share his neighbor’s table, but never his marriage-bed. Though their destiny has placed them here in the flesh, they do not live after the flesh; their days are passed on earth, but their citizenship is above in the heavens. They obey the prescribed laws, but in their own private lives they transcend the laws. They show love to all men—and all men persecute them. They are misunderstood, and condemned; yet by suffering death they are quickened into life. They are poor, yet making many rich; lacking all things, yet having all things in abundance. They are dishonored, yet made glorious in their very dishonor; slandered, yet vindicated. They repay calumny with blessings, and abuse with courtesy. For the good they do, they suffer stripes as evildoers; and under the strokes they rejoice like men given new life.”

Our readings today focus on this theme: how God, who laid the foundations of the earth, limits and commands the seas, for ultimately God has complete control over everything, even over the forces that would overwhelm, overtake, swamp and destroy us. In our first reading the Lord responds to Job’s laments and questions. Job, you recall, was stricken down, and in and through his suffering his faith was severely tested. God answers Job that while the waters rage and threaten our security and our lives, God who created the seas in the first place and set their limit, remains in complete control of them, and of everything else. Job’s sufferings are not outside God’s purview or control, and while God’s ways are always mysterious and beyond comprehension, God’s faithfulness to his people is sure. Our gospel reading about Jesus’ stilling the waters illustrates this point, namely, that Christ, who was threatened and harassed at every point in his life and ministry, and who was clearly on his way to death at the hands of powerful enemies, exercised nothing less than divine authority over the waters of chaos. He who is helpless is in complete control, and the peace of God finally will be victorious over everything that terrorizes us. His is the power of God. “Who is this,” even his own disciples ask themselves, “that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

Now we are in the storm and the boat is sinking! Now also is the day of salvation! How to reconcile these two competing truths: Now the storm over overwhelming us, and Now is the day of salvation? Reconciliation seems impossible because both statements are true. We add urgency to truth if we consider the following statements as well: The lament, “I’ve spent my whole life wanting to be loved,” and the biblical declaration that God is love.

Let’s start with the question of love’s apparent absence, and the statement that God is love. The author of 1 John shows a way forward. He writes: “God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:9-10). Love is not something we can find or manufacture; it is something we can only receive as a gift, a gift that comes always as a gift from God, for God is love and it is he who defines the very meaning of the word. But God’s love can only be demonstrated, and so it has been in God’s dealings with Israel, and in his promise of faithfulness to them even through death. Thus not even the death of love or its complete absence is the end of love; for in the life of the risen Christ, in his power over death, love’s triumph has just begun.

If we hold fast to this promise, then perhaps we shall be able to deal with trials, temptations, hardships, disappointments, failures and unfulfilled longings. Then perhaps, like the disciples who marveled at Jesus’ ability to still the storm just as things were going from bad to worse, we can be filled with awe and confidence that, no matter what our current circumstances may be, we can be sure that in Christ the day of salvation has come.

-Amen-