Have you ever had a close call? Have you ever been in an accident where you almost died? Have you ever been overwhelmed by an event or loss so great that you wondered how you would ever get through it? When a close call came, have you ever felt that God either didn't care or that he was asleep because you couldn't reach him?
That is what is going on in our story, the story of the apostles in a little boat during a violent storm on a lake called Galilee where the wind rushes down from the hills with such velocity that even seasoned fishermen are sure they are going to die. This storm is called a "furious squall" in the NIV of the New Testament. The NRSV simply calls it "a great wind storm." Whatever you call it, it was one of those moments the men who experienced it would call a near-death experience, a close call.
The Jones family moved to a new house in south Florida near a pond. There were two other houses on the pond, one owned by a doctor. One day, shortly after they moved in, the Jones' three children went swimming in the pond. Suddenly, out of nowhere a 400-pound alligator appeared. The doctor happened to be out and saw the alligator. He yelled to the children. Two of them heard the cry and headed for shore. The third child, Mike, was under the water using his diving gear to look beneath the surface. The other two children got near the shore, looked back, and saw the alligator bearing down like a torpedo on their brother. One of them started back to warn Mike, but it was too late.
The alligator was upon the boy. He was about to swallow him whole, but when the alligator chomped down on the boy's head, he found the diving gear distasteful and spit him out.
Mike swam as fast as he could underwater toward the shore. The alligator swam round and round in circles trying to find the boy. When Mike surfaced, the alligator located him and headed toward him again. Mike was about twenty feet from shore when the alligator caught him, this time by the feet.
By this time, Mike's mother, who was on shore, had waded out to where the boy was. She grabbed his extended hands and started to pull. It was a 400-pound alligator pulling in one direction and a 100-pound mother pulling in the other. The flippers, which were distasteful to the alligator, caused him to let go. The determined mother won the tug-of-war.
Today, Mike's only evidence of the horrifying event is scars on his head and feet from the alligator bites and scars on his wrists where his mother's nails had dug in when she pulled him to safety. "That close call gave us a new perspective on life and God," Mike's mother said. "At first we doubted God, but now we have reordered our priorities; we've gone back to church and put the Lord first."
Most of us don't experience close calls that extreme, but we know what close calls are. Life has a way of dishing out close calls of one kind or another and yes, when that happens, even the best Christians at first may ask: "Does God even care?" Later, we may get the big picture.
Our story leads us into the deep waters of two life-changing questions: Is the Lord asleep when we need him most? and Who is in charge here?
That's what the apostles thought and said to one another on the storm tossed waves of the Lake of Galilee. In fact, as the waves broke over the boat and nearly swamped it, the exhausted Jesus was sleeping in the stern. The frightened apostles, some of them fisherman by trade, woke Jesus with a question, "Teacher, don't you care if we drown?" We can identify with the disciples. That's how it feels sometimes when life comes tumbling in, when the storms of life threaten to take our life away, when the God we love and have followed suddenly seems to go silent when we need him most.
In his book The Silence of God Helmut Thielicke tells of times like these in his life, especially during World War II, when the terrible physical suffering of war-torn people were further complicated by what at times seemed like God's silence. Thielicke suggests that John the Baptist had thoughts about the silence of Jesus when he was in prison, just before he died.
How long do you keep us in suspense? Tell us freely whether you are the Christ. Call down from heaven that you are. Do you not see how dreadful are the effects of your silence? Do you not see how much more merciful it would be if this voice were to ring out so that all would have to hear it... Why do you not make things clear, God?[1]
The apostles were perishing and Jesus lay there sleeping, silent. They knew he cared. They had experienced his care. They had seen his care for the needy. But they felt at that moment like he didn't care. If he cared, wouldn't he be awake and doing something to save them? Have you ever felt that way? Many Christians, even the most faithful, have gone through this midnight of the soul.
Thielicke describes it this way: "How many meaningless blows of fate there seem to be! -- life, suffering, injustice, death, massacres, destruction; and all under a silent heaven which apparently has nothing to say."2 Martin Luther knew the meaning of the silence of God. He called it anfectugen, a claustrophobic feeling of being suffocated and seemingly having no way out.
All of these feelings about heavenly silence are summarized by the apostles' question, "Don't you care?" It is a moment of desperation for them and us. We want an answer. We must have an answer. We demand an answer.
Jesus gave an answer. In part, it is an answer we hoped for, but part of the answer, the part we might call "the reversal," we do not expect.
Jesus got up from his sleep, rebuked the wind and spoke to the waves with authority like the apostles had never seen before. "Be still," Jesus said, and the wind and waves obeyed him. That's what we hoped would happen. Because we've heard the story before, that's what we expect to happen. But this massive word from Jesus to the elements must not be taken for granted. It is astounding. It is shocking that nature obeyed Jesus. Nature is his to command.
Jesus, the great I Am, is telling his obedient servants, nature's elements, what to do. Amazing -- staggering -- moving -- no wonder the apostles asked, "Who is this? Even the wind and waves obey him!" Here Jesus as Lord commands the forces of nature, like so many puppy dogs.
The surprising part of the story is the questions and the meaning of the questions Jesus asked. "Why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith?" Who wouldn't be afraid in a storm like that? Who wouldn't fear for their lives? Who wouldn't scream at the heavens for help and receiving none, feel deserted? What do you mean, Jesus, by your question about faith? We have faith, but this is a life-threatening emergency. We haven't lost faith, we are just scared to death.
What do these questions of our Lord mean? Of course, there is the basic meaning. To have faith in God means to trust him in the worst times as well as the best times. Faith means when you get to the end of your rope, you tie a knot and hang on, even in those times when God seems silent like when Jesus cried out from the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Yes, but there is more, much more, in these questions than at first meets the eye or comes to mind.
Consider that the Bible was written by Jews. Consider that Jesus was a Jew. What is going on in this and many similar Bible stories can best be understood if we allow ourselves to get into Hebrew thinking. In Hebrew thinking, the one who asks the question, not the one who answers the question, is in charge.
When Jesus was asked a question about paying taxes, he answered by asking, "Whose image is on this coin?" When Jesus was asked about his origins, he replied, "I will answer your question if you answer this one: 'Was John the Baptist sent by God or not?' " When a lawyer asked Jesus, "Who is my neighbor?" Jesus never answered his question. Instead Jesus left a question hanging in the air for the lawyer to consider: "Are you going to be a neighbor to those in need or not?"
A Jew was once asked, "Why do you Jews always answer questions with questions?" He replied, "Why not?"
In Jewish thinking, the one who asks the question is in charge. A dramatic shift in the meaning of our story takes place when we move from the questions of the apostles, "Are you asleep? Don't you care?" to the questions of Jesus, "Why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith?" In fact, a reversal takes place. The reversal is described in these words: "You are not in charge here. I am."
The bind in our story of the little boat in a really big storm is the human tendency to think there is no option to our being in charge. We ask questions about life and death as if we are in charge. The reversal, indeed the good news in our story, is that in fact God is in charge. He just seems to be sleeping. He cares for us more than we will ever know. To see what I mean, consider interpreting this scripture story with another scripture story.
Consider the story of Job, in many respects, a parallel story to the apostles in an unstable little boat in chaotic waters. Generally speaking, Job is a prototype of unjust suffering. After all, he was a good man, trying to follow God in every way. Then whoosh, like a storm, life came tumbling in on his head. A man of God doing his duty should be rewarded with blessings on blessings, right? But as we know from the story of Job and from our own lives, it doesn't always happen that way. As a matter of fact, the best believers often suffer the most. What's going on here in the story of Job? What's going on in life in your story and mine? Life just doesn't seem fair at times.
Job was tending his farm, taking care of his family, praying regularly, and following God's ways when along came tragedy after tragedy. His crops failed, his health broke, his children died. Then as if to add insult to injury, Job's wife turned against him with biting criticism. His friends insisted that he was being punished for his sins. With friends like that, who needs enemies?
The multiplication of troubles and tribulations caused Job to do what we do. He started to turn his resentment about his situation into speculation and accusation against God. "Why me? Am I being punished for something I've done? God, are you asleep or is it that you just don't care?" Sound familiar? Projection -- blaming others and eventually blaming God for our troubles -- is an all too familiar human reaction when life comes tumbling in and we don't know what else to do. Like Job, we dump on God.
In the story of Job, the reversal came when God answered Job's questions with his own questions. God introduces his questions with a stunning declaration: "Stand up now, like a man and answer the questions I ask you," said the Lord (Job 38:1, 3 TEV). Then the questions put Job's situation into a different light:
"Where were you when I made the world?"
"Who decided how large it would be?"
"Do you know all the answers?"
"Who closed the gates to hold back the sea?"
"Have you ever in all your life commanded a day to dawn?"
(Job 38:4-5, 8, 12 paraphrased)
We are at the turning point in the story. The turning point is that God is asking the questions. Since this is a Jewish story, that means God is in charge, not man. God is in the middle, not man.
In modern life, we have the tendency to think of ourselves as being central. The elevation of man to the middle to replace God in the middle has been a tendency from the beginning of time, but it got a big boost in the Renaissance when art and science began to replace religion as the central theme for intellectuals, then for the masses. Man in the middle, trying to control everything, being critical of everything, evaluating everything, being first, last, and always central in his own thinking -- that's the bind in which we find ourselves today. We can't get ourselves out of our own hands.
No act of the self can lift the self out of the self by the self because too much self is the biggest problem we have. The story of Job in the Old Testament and the story of the apostles on the stormy sea in the New Testament are both biblical correctives for our tendency to think of ourselves as the ones in control of life. When Job calmed down and listened to God's questions and when the apostles observed the calm sea around them, they were astonished to discover who they were really dealing with -- the Lord of heaven and earth. That is what brought peace of mind and soul to them. That is what can bring peace of mind and soul to us today.
When Saint Paul wrote, "From now on... we regard no one from a human point of view" (2 Corinthians 5:16), he was making this same point. The human point of view of people and situations is too limited. Saint Paul had discovered the ability to get up high, high enough to see from a heavenly perspective what most people miss -- God's perspective on how things really are. That's what the story of Job and the story of the storm on the Sea of Galilee are all about.
Saint Augustine put it this way in a prayer: "Watch over us who are still on this dangerous voyage. Frail is our vessel, and the ocean wide, but in your mercy you have set our course."
If you have ever had a close call, perhaps the biblical corrective for thinking too highly of yourself has dawned on you too -- like it dawned on Augustine, Paul, Job, the apostles, and thousands of others. If it hasn't dawned on you yet, maybe it will soon.
1. Helmut Thielicke, The Silence of God (Grand Rapids: William Eerdmans Publishing, 1962), p. 13.
2. Ibid., p. 14.