The Gospel reading today is an account of an extraordinary happening: a storm which comes to an end because Jesus commands it to. The miracle… for that is what it was… simply could not have been ‘coincidence’, because the wind and the waves stopped, both. At the same time. Nor could it have been some kind of conjouring trick; rabbits out of top hats can be managed by an entertainer, but not the stilling of a storm. We are left with a simple choice: either it happened, or someone is telling lies. Once again, we come to the question of the reliability of the witnesses and the writers of the ancient documents. And as usual some people think the account reliable, others not so.

As is so often the case, the Bible sits us atop a fence, and asks us which way we will fall, the believing side or the unbelieving side. It is passages like this that make it very difficult indeed to be, as is the easy get-out these days, ‘agnostic’. You really cannot pretend that you are ‘without knowledge’ and so unable to evaluate a story like this. You have the knowledge, anyone who has lived by the sea has it, and you either do not believe a word of it, or you believe it. The one thing you cannot be is ‘agnostic’ about it.

People wriggle if they can… “Jesus was a good man, with a wonderful social conscience, but not God, that was made up by his followers, who made up the miracles to convince foolish ignorant people to believe.” Friends, if you believe that, you’ll believe anything. The miracles do not convince, they challenge belief. You’ll only believe the miracles if you have very good reason to… Talk to believers, and you’ll find that they have validated their opinion by experiment. Believers have evidence, their own evidence, that comes from their own experiments; done with their own lives. Believers believe because they have experienced the Love of God and the Fellowship of the Holy Spirit, because they are forgiven sinners, because they have encountered Jesus. Not because they have read an account of a miracle; though the account of the miracle may well have started a thinking and evaluating process, of course.

When Liz and I were young, we traveled to Africa on a ship: we are so old that we remember the age of the liners, the time when the best, most efficient, cheapest way to travel was on a ship. We still have the movie of the ‘crossing the line’ ceremony, an hour or two of silly fun around the swimming pool, during which each of us who had never before crossed the equator were tipped out of Neptune’s barber’s chair and into the water..

Crossing the line was an incident on a journey that had begun in Tilbury, taken in a storm in the Bay, Barbary apes in Gibralter, the purchase of a salt-and-pepper set in Genoa, and the Pyramids, all before we crossed the line. After we crossed the line, we arrived in Mombassa, traveled by train through Kenya and Uganda to Kampala, were we arranged to buy a car with an advance-on-pay, before being driven the 167 miles to Mabarara to a new life teaching in a school built around the Cathedral at Ruharo.

It was an incident on a journey; the journey was the important thing. Of course, we had to cross the line on the way, the journey could never have been completed, had we not done that.

The Christian life is a journey: an incident in that life is the moment we believe. We can never finish that journey unless we believe; belief opens up to us the rest of our journey. Our journey had the fun of the ‘crossing the line’ ceremony, it was one incident, a joyful one, on our journey. It celebrated crossing the line: not hanging about there. Of course believing is important… about the same importance as being born has for our earthy life… and we may call it being ‘born again’… but it is an incident, an event, and we get on with journey as soon as it has happened.

Paul was impatient: he wanted people to believe, so that they could get on with the Christian journey. To get people started, to spend time with young churches, he lived an extraordinary, incredibly disciplined life. We learn a little of that life in the passage from 2 Corinthians we have read today.

We also learn a very important message about timing. There is a right time to believe, and it is NOW. You might not be able to believe, tomorrow. Who knows what tomorrow will bring. You might fall under a bus; or, more likely you’ll have moved on in some way with your thinking, and no longer be close to the Kingdom, no longer be the kind of person who can believe. And there is not just a question about your life: there is also a question about God’s timing, too. Has He a right time? And if so, when is it? Well, says Paul, NOW is the time, both yours and God’s time. NOW.

We read that we are chosen from the beginning of time, (2 Thess 2 13) we believers, yet we know that we did choose to believe, to trust, to seek forgiveness, to recognize Jesus as Lord: we chose to believe. And at that moment we were chosen, too, from the beginning of time. The Bible speaks, occasionally, of a ‘book of life’, with our name in it, if we are a believer.

If your name is not written in the book of life, there is a right time to get it there, and that time is NOW. The man who can calm a storm and quieten the waves just by saying the word, the man whom the grave could not hold, the man who died for you, is the same man through whom the entire universe came into being, it and everything in it, (Colossians chapter 1 v 15 and on) and He has the power and the authority to forgive you, to give you new birth, to write your name in the book of life, and henceforth to be in you (Col 1 26,27)

I will not suggest that choosing to believe as an adult is easy; you are just going to trust someone you’ve only read about in books with your whole life. But of course you’ve not only reads about Him, you have met other believers, and know how He has dealt with them, and you can, you really can summon up the courage to trust Him with your life.

That is the experiment. When you have done it, you know that Jesus calmed the storm, for He has forgiven you, and is in you, and you know. As Paul said, NOW is the time.