Don Friesen
It seems prudent to avoid a storm. For example, if travelling in Nebraska at this time of year, one might want to pay close attention to tornado warnings and steer well clear of their predicted path. Pedestrians are increasingly at risk in our city, and after a near-miss this week Dorothy has become insistent that when I approach a car pulling out of an intersection I walk behind the car rather than in front of the car.
It seems prudent to avoid trouble. In one of James Michener's tales of the South Pacific (Rascals in Paradise, 1957; A. Grove Day, co-author) he tells the story of a learned man in Australia who in the late 1930s could see that a great war was about to engulf the world. He had no desire to be part of it, so he began to search for a place far away from this war. He foresaw it spreading from Europe to Asia, and down to Australia, but Australia would be left undefended because its troops would be called to Europe to fight the initial battles there. One by one he eliminated potential destinations, including the United States, believing that it too would be drawn into the war. He decided a deserted island somewhere in the South Pacific would be safe from the insanity engulfing Europe and eventually the world, so in the late summer of 1939 he established a home on a little known island called Guadalcanal. In May of 1942, however, that very island became one of the focal points of World War II, becoming one of the most hotly contested campaigns for control of ground, sea, and sky.
Tough and Disorienting Experiences
It seems prudent to avoid thunderheads, warheads, and any other troubles coming to a head, but we cannot escape everything that threatens us. Several years ago (2000) our nephew was on a high-school field trip in northern California, and as the group hiked along an isolated coast a rogue wave swept one of their parent-chaperones out to sea! Two of the students jumped in to save her, but they too drowned. Our nephew and a teacher jumped in as well, trying to save those who jumped in before them, and they nearly drowned as well!
Things can spiral out of our control. One day we get a biopsy, and a few days later we receive the devastating results that change everything! One day we're working hard and making vacation plans, and the next day we're suddenly unemployed! One day your marriage seems secure, and then suddenly your spouse tells you, "I don't love you anymore. I'm leaving" – turning your whole world upside down! It's impossible to avoid some of these crises.
We don't always have control over the storms of life that assail us. My parents lived through the Great Depression on the prairies, and one of our family stories, potentially a tragic one, is of a time when they had two children, no prospects of employment, and no social network to cushion the blow. Eventually employment was found, but a family of two children had become a family of five children, and I remember a winter when we lived through a snow storm so bad that my father finally had to find his way through the storm to get some badly-needed supplies for us. The storm worsened, however, and it took him three days to walk eighteen miles back to our home, through deep, deep snow, one slow, sinking step after another.
Maritime Tales of Tragedy and Woe
Our Gospel reading features the story of a storm, an unexpected storm. It's a short story but it's sufficiently vivid that it caught the imagination of Rembrandt (1606-1669), resulting in the only seascape he ever painted. ("The Storm on the Sea of Galilee," 1633) Unfortunately, it was stolen from a Boston museum in 1990; it seems that biblical themes are no guarantee against theft!
Rembrandt's painting catches the high drama of this tense experience, for at Jesus' suggestion he and his disciples boarded a boat to cross the Sea of Galilee, when a "great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped." (Mark 4:37) One translation describes it as "a furious storm ...of hurricane proportions...." (AMP) "Waves poured into the boat, threatening to sink it." (The Message)
The Sea of Galilee was notorious for its storms, which could arise with terrifying suddenness. Apparently the numerous funnel-type ravines around this body of water make it subject to sudden squalls – but – what's the big deal? There were seasoned fishermen in the boat! Well, this storm frightened even them!
The boat they were in was probably about twenty-six feet long, seven feet wide, and carried fifteen people. Jesus was exhausted from standing in the boat all day, addressing those standing on the shore, and as they set off for the other side he fell asleep in the back of the boat, his head cushioned by a pillow, Mark adds. Even the huge and violent waves threatening to swamp the boat could not rouse him. Eventually the panicking disciples brought him to a rude awakening, and after some reproachful exchanges, Jesus bid the wind cease and the sea return to calm. (Mark 4:39)
This is a significant story, in part because for Israel the sea was symbol of chaos and disorder. Yes, some of the disciples were fishermen, but theirs was not a long and noble sea-faring tradition. They came from a long line of desert nomads. The sea has a negative connotation throughout the Scriptures, starting right at the beginning, where the opening words of Genesis describe the beginning of the world as a watery chaos, a primeval sea to which God brought order. Later God begins to have second thoughts about the crown of his creation, and a flood becomes a symbol of judgment. The Red Sea represents a major obstruction to liberation. Later a terrifying storm at sea becomes a teacher Jonah does not want. The sea was also the home of Leviathan, a monstrous sea creature symbolizing evil. And in the story that follows our Gospel reading demons ask Jesus for permission to move in on a herd of pigs, who then rush off a cliff into the sea (Mark 5:13, KJV), in the Gospel writer's view an appropriate home for demon-possessed swine! This is probably the first reported case of swine flu, as those swine flew right off that cliff. (Sorry!)
There are many other unfavourable references to the sea in Scripture, but the most striking one for me is the one in the book of Revelation, right near the end, where we are promised a new world:
It's ironic, however, that the Scriptures, produced by a non-sea-faring people for whom the sea represented chaos and evil, contains a number of sea-faring stories. Luke devotes one whole chapter and part of another to a sea voyage! He uses sixty verses (Luke 27; 28:1-16) to get Paul from Jerusalem to Rome – by sea! And writing to the Corinthian congregation, trying to convince them that he has paid his dues, Paul rattles off a long list of things he has endured as an apostle, dangers he has faced in a number of circumstances, including "dangers on the high seas...." (2 Corinthians 11:26, TEV) Paul, in fact, was shipwrecked three times, and on one occasion spent twenty-four hours in the water!
Our call to worship, from the psalms, recites a catalogue of catastrophes, and there, among the rest, is the story of those who "went down to the sea in ships, doing business on the mighty waters...." (Psalm 107:23) A "stormy wind" (107: 25) arose, and up and down went the ship, as they "mounted up to heaven, (then) went down to the depths...." (107: 26) "Their courage melted away in their calamity," states the psalmist; "they reeled and staggered like drunkards, and were at their wits' end." (107:26-27) It was a time of great "distress" (107:28) for them.
Our Old Testament reading from the book of Job is not a Maritime tale, but it features a storm of unparalleled personal devastation. In a delightfully twisted use of Scripture, revealing his anger and sarcasm, Job takes the well-known verse from Psalm 8 – "what are human beings that You are mindful of them, mortals that You care for them? Yet you have made them (just) a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honour" (Psalm 8:4-5) – and Job twists it into: "What are human beings, that you make so much of them, that you set your mind on them, visit them every morning, test them every moment?" (Job 7:17-18) Or, as another translation renders Job's reproach:
(The Message)
Walter Brueggemann, a leading scholar of the psalms, says that some psalms were written for good times, when all is well and the world is sane, safe, orderly, and free of storms. He calls these psalms of orientation. However, the Scriptures, including the psalms, never gloss over the troubles of life, and so we also have what Bruggemann calls psalms of disorientation, written for times when things look bleak and people are feeling weak and anxious. These are psalms written for times when our world is falling apart, times when things are beyond our control, times of radical change when old certainties no longer hold.
There are numerous Scriptures-of-disorientation, including our Gospel reading, our reading from the Psalms, and our reading from the book of Job. All of them convey the assurance that God is present not only in the good times, when nature is kind, the sea calm, the crops plentiful, the children all healthy – and above average – and our personal well-being secure; God is also present, and may be relied upon, when nature is unkind, when the mountains shake, and waters of the sea roar and foam! (Psalm 46) God is also present, and may be relied upon, when nothing feels safe and secure.
The storm that attacked the disciples on the Sea of Galilee was frightening, but in some ways it was but a portent of storms to come. The disciples got in the boat to cross "to the other side". (Mark 4:35) Well, what greeted them on the other side, upon landing, was a man so demon-possessed that he ripped apart the chains holding him, using only his bare hands! A crazy man, out of control! (Mark 5:20) And calm came to him only at the cost of the entire local pork industry!
Then follows the story of an official of the local synagogue who begged Jesus to heal his little daughter. (Mark 5:21-24, 35-43) And as Jesus was accompanying the man to his home, a woman who had consulted umpteen doctors about her illness touched the hem of Jesus' garment (5:25-34), and while she received relief, Jesus felt the power go out of him". (5:30) Then follows Jesus' visit to his home town, and there he suffers rejection at the hands of those who knew him best! (6:1-6) The storm on the Sea of Galilee was but the first in a series of disorienting experiences.
Lessons in Gaining our Spiritual Sea-legs
What lessons do these tales of tempest hold for us? One source I read proposed a negative lesson, that these stories suggest various ways to sink our ship in life's storms. Why would we want to know that? It seems a rather mean-spirited approach to Scripture!
1) Look for God's Presence within the Storm
Allow me to suggest several lessons, positive lessons, and the first one emerges out of Job's experience. Having experienced a sustained attack upon himself, his family, his livelihood, his network of friends, his health, his faith, Job is at the end of his tether, and then comes that wonderful verse, "Then out of the storm the Lord spoke to Job." (Job 38:1, TEV) Out of the storm God answers Job, not necessarily in the way Job expects, but the Divine silence is broken. God is no longer asleep in the back of the boat.
The first lesson for us is the encouragement to look for God, not in some utopian time and place where storms and tempests no longer exist, but in the heart of the tempest. God meets us in the eye of the storm. It is often out of our experiences of suffering, sorrow, anxiety, tension, pain and uncertainty that God's presence and comfort are experienced in a powerful way.
2) Trust Christ, the Pantocrater
I would suggest that a second lesson is one of trust. Trust in the Christ who can bring calm to troubled waters. Once the disciples had roused Jesus in the back of the boat, he got up and "rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, "Peace! Be still!" Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm" (Mark 4:39), reminiscent of a verse in the psalms that reads:
The image of Christ that emerges from this story is of the One who has dominion over creation. It is a high Christology, mirrored in Colossians, where Paul declares that "in (Christ) all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers – all things have been created through him and for him. ...in him all things hold together. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell," (Colossians 1:16-17, 10) We can trust him.
3) Put a little Effort into Imploring Christ
I would suggest that a third lesson might be the encouragement to put a little effort into waking Jesus. Having Jesus in your boat does not guarantee smooth sailing. It seemed to take more than a little jostling for the disciples to get Jesus' attention.
My friend, Jack, who lived in Colombia for a time, often cites a Colombian proverb that states: "We have decided to postpone our pessimism until times get better." I'd like to adapt that proverb to say: "Let's postpone our pessimism until we put a little effort into imploring Christ for help!" Postpone your pessimism until you've put a little effort into praying! When the storms of life are raging, wake Jesus! The crisis at hand deserves more than a few prayerful jostles.
4) Be a Calm Christian Presence in Turbulent Times
A fourth and final lesson might be an encouragement to be a calm Christian presence in turbulent times ourselves. We are Christ's body, the Church, called to be Christ's presence in the world. There is a curious observation made in our Gospel text, just before the onslaught of the storm. Mark tells us that "other boats were there too". (Mark 4:36, TEV) In other words, the other boats in the area also benefited from the stilled waters. Christ's presence among us is not for our benefit alone.
The Old Testament philosopher wrote that "calmness will undo great offenses." (Ecclesiastes 10:4) Or, as another translation reads, "Don't panic; a calm disposition quiets intemperate rage (10:4, The Message), or anxiety, we might add. In the days when sea voyages were more common, a man was aboard a ship crossing the Atlantic when it encountered a violent storm. There were a group of Moravian Christians on board, and when the storm was at its height and most passengers were very sick and frightened, the Moravians sang! They sang hymns and psalms, rejoicing in God's presence among them. Back in London, the man sought out this Christian community and found in their midst the love of Christ. His name was John Wesley, and thanks to the calm and deep faith of this Christian community Wesley went on to make an immeasurable contribution to the wider Christian community.
May God in His mercy minister to us in times of trouble, and may God also convey through us His reassuring love and calm presence. AMEN
"Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more." (Revelation 21:1)
Right up there with a the promise of a new heaven and a new earth is the promised elimination of the sea!
"What are mortals anyway, that you bother with them,
Scriptures of Disorientation
that you even give them the time of day?
That you check up on them every morning....
Let up on me, will you?
Can't you even let me spit in peace?"
"O Lord God of hosts ...
There is an icon of Jesus used in the Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic traditions called "Christ Pantocrater," the latter word, a Greek word, commonly translated as "Almighty," "All-powerful," or "Ruler of All". The Apostle Paul uses the word in 2 Corinthians (6:18), and it's also used – nine times – in the book of Revelation.
You rule the raging of the sea;
when its waves rise, You still them." (Psalm 89:9)
Quotations of Scripture are from the New Revised Standard Version, unless otherwise noted.