Sermons for the Month
High Rollers
DATE: June 25, 2000
SERVICE: Pentecost II
TEXT: Mark 4:35-41“To all of you Saints here this morning, grace and peace to you from God our Father, from His Son, Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit. AMEN
The Beast. Son of the Beast. Super Saturator. Mean Streak. Steel Phantom. The Raptor. Chances are that your children will be spending time this summer on one or more of these monsters like the youth from Faith did this past Monday when they headed to Cedar Point on an Anderson buss to ride the biggest, baddest, tallest coaster of them all -- the Millennium Force. These tourist-magnets are made of steel or wood and stretch like humping, slithering snakes across the landscape, ready to give you a wild, warp-speed ride guaranteed to toss your cookies. About a dozen of these beasts - from the Arkansas Twister to the Superman Krypton Coaster - are opening for the first time this summer in amusement parks across North America. But the most spectacular entry among the bunch is the Goliath steel coaster, the "Millennium Force" at Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio. Billed as "the tallest and fastest roller coaster in the world," its fear-inducing features will result in the breaking of 10 world records, including: a monumental 310-foot-tall first hill at a 45-degree incline, speeds of 92 miles per hour over 6,595 feet of track and a first drop of 300 feet at an extraordinary 80-degree angle. Termed a "giga-coaster" for its extreme height, Millennium Force will be the first and only roller coaster in the world to break the 300-foot-tall barrier. "We want to enter into the next century with the 'knock-your-socks-off' roller coaster of the millennium," says Don Miears, general manager of Cedar Point. Millennium Force will send riders on a rampage over the rails that begins with a 300-foot drop at almost 100 miles per hour, followed by a 169-foot-tall turn that overbanks at a dramatic 122-degree angle. Then they will dive into a tunnel, cross a lagoon, and scale a hill that stands 182 feet tall, before plunging onto a small wooded island. On the island, the coaster will race into an 87-foot-high turn, zoom into a curve 100 feet in the air at an overbanked 122-degree angle, and then travel back across the lagoon and through a second tunnel. After emerging from the tunnel, riders will experience some "airtime" before flying into a final 68-foot-tall overbanked turn and then return to the station. Hotdogs, anyone? Millennium Force, Mean Streak, Thunderbolt and Steel Phantom are names designed to inspire mega-phobia this summer at parks across the country, and they appear at a time at which roller coasters are bigger, higher, faster and scarier than ever. "There are 27 varieties of roller coaster," reports Sports Illustrated, "including standup coasters such as The Riddler's Revenge, at Six Flags Magic Mountain," and a brand-new coaster at Paramount's Great America, on which passengers lie back and are propelled into concentric circles of hell. What fun! "In Utah there is one prototype for a coaster on which the car itself turns, and another for a ride on which the car races through the threads of a cylindrical track like an Archimedes' screw." These new designs will join innovations such as the "shuttle coaster" at Six Flags, which shoots its passengers from zero to 100 in seven seconds, exerts 4.5 G's on the rider, "and is roughly equivalent to taking off in an F-16 from the deck of an aircraft carrier" (August 9, 1999, 80). We are living in a roller-coaster renaissance, an era in which fun is found in fear, fright is considered fantastic, and terror feels terrific. Millions are riding on today's high-tech thrill-rides every year now, including an astonishing subculture of hard-core coasterdinks and rollerwonks, men and women who simply live to ride these rails and be scared half to death. All of which brings us to 12 men in a boat on the Sea of Galilee. Taking a dinghy out on the lake was all in a day's work - something as routine as a day in the life of "Dreadlock Jim," a multi-pierced, Rasta-haired coaster addict who visited 101 amusement parks back in 1998, putting 80,000 miles on his car. Would the disciples be scared by a stiff wind blowing down from Mount Hermon? No more than Dreadlock Jim would be truly terrified by a trip on Millennium Force. Granted, Dreadlock Jim is not your typical person. He rides coasters hoping to be scared silly. The disciples were just a bunch of working-stiffs doing their job. But the disciples - who were out on the sea every day - in this case were scared. Terrified. Freaked out. Losin' it. They were riding a thriller called StormCentral and were shaking in their sandals until they managed to rouse the sleeping Jesus. Their fears were like those of the seven people injured last year when their Thunder Road roller-coaster train collided with another one at the Carowinds theme park ... like the 27 riders who were stranded nearly 60 feet in the air on the Vampire roller coaster at Six Flags, Kentucky ... like the 300-pound man who was ejected from the Superman coaster at Six Flags, Darien Lake, as the train was finishing its ride ... like the four people who were left stuck on top of a coaster in Atlantic City after their car derailed on a 40-foot-high section of track. For the disciples, this was the Big One, The Perfect Storm, the boat-swamping windstorm to end all windstorms, and they were so afraid of meeting their Maker at the bottom of the lake that they cried out to Jesus, "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" Even rollerwonks freak out at times. Although coasters tend to be quite safe, there have been 11 U.S. fatalities in the past 11 years. Even marathon rider Richard Gregory Rodriguez - who recently rode a coaster for 47 straight days - had to bail out of a ride one time to avoid a collision that could have broken his neck. So the disciples are feeling mega-phobia, rocking and reeling on the high-rolling ride of their lives, and in response to their cries Jesus wakes up, rebukes the wind, and says to the sea, "Peace! Be still!" Then the wind ceases, and there is a dead calm (Mark 4:39). But Jesus, for one, is not impressed. He quickly lets these coasterdinks know that the miracle is not the point. "Why are you afraid?" he says. "Have you still no faith?" (4:40). In Finland back in 1987, our family went to an Amusement Park in Helskinski. There we road a roller coaster. Each coaster car had its own breakman who would slow us down around the turns so the ride would not get too terrifying, not get to fearful. In real life, however, we are not always going to have Jesus on the ride with us. In life, it's not as if we can say, "Oh wait, I don't like this ride, Jesus. Would you please stop it and let me get off or at least slow it down?" The 11 people who have recently died on such rides certainly didn't have the luxury of a God telling the coaster to "Be still!" And what about the other rough rides that can shake us up, scare us, scramble our brains, crush our spirits and even kill us: the sudden job loss, the unfaithful spouse, the chemical addiction, the rebellious kid, the backstabbing friend, the secret temptation we succumb to again ... and again ... and again. Fact is, we're not always going to get the miracle. Some rides start rough and remain rough. To make matters worse, there are some rides we're on only because our friends or our kids or our spouses made us get on! Like the disciples we need to prepare for the fact that we'll be in many storms over the course of our lives. Sometimes our boats will swamp, and sometimes they won't. Sometimes we'll be paralyzed by fear, and sometimes we'll work our way through. Our boats will be battered, but they won't necessarily sink. There will be plenty of scary storms that Jesus won't stop for us, just as there were plenty of rough seas that Jesus didn't calm for his first disciples. Here's where the true message of the story comes into play. Jesus knows that he won't always be physically right beside us, sitting in the next seat, ready with a miraculous cure. And so he asks, "Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?" We're talking FAITH here, not miracles. Faith that Jesus loves us and is working for an ultimate good, even when waves beat around us and our boat is swamped. Faith that God has created the world and is in control of it, even when chaos seems to reign and evil seems to triumph. Faith that the Holy Spirit is giving us strength and inner peace, even when we're feeling exhausted and stressed and at the end of our ropes. Faith keeps us going in spite of the depressing, disappointing and demoralizing circumstances around us, and it enables us to face an uncertain future without fear. We're high rollers on our roller coaster, the LifeStorm. It's a ride that will thrill us and chill us, shock us and shake us. It's a roaring rampage that will shatter our delusions and test our commitments. But it's an experience on which we'll not only get high - but holy. High rollers. AMEN