The story of Jesus calming the storm has always been a favorite story of the church. It has prompted the writing of many hymns, such as "Jesus, Saviour, Pilot Me" and "Give to the Winds Thy Fears," to say nothing of the Navy Hymn and others. The story has also provided the church with a graphic symbol of who we are. When the World Council of Churches was formed, leaders sought a logo to identify the whole family of Christ. They drew a fishing boat with the cross as its mast. It was a good symbol. Christians are people who are in the same boat with Jesus. Our destiny is intertwined with his. Through baptism, we have been fished out of a sea of despair and destruction. Now we belong to Christ. We put our hands in the hand of the man who stilled the water.
Yet as familiar as this story has become, it continues to have a dark and mysterious quality. Try as we might to grasp its full meaning, the story slips out of our grip. In fact, I have known people who quickly jump to a conclusion about what the story means, only later to have all certainty battered about by wind and waves. The story pushes us into deep and murky water, to the boundary between faith and fear. Like the disciples, we are left to ask, "Who is this, that even the wind and sea obey him?"
It happened, as you know, on the Sea of Galilee. Jesus had begun to criss-cross that body of water, teaching and healing on different shores. He finished a full day of telling parables, and told his followers it was time to leave. It is typical, in Mark's Gospel, that Jesus will teach for a while and then withdraw. He will perform some kind acts of mercy and then he will disappear. If someone discovers who he is, or learns what he is up to, Jesus muzzles them and refuses to let them speak. According to Mark, Jesus Christ is a mystery. He will not be captured by a title or a nickname. He simply acts, then disappears, leaving people to wonder, "Who was that Masked Man?"
This time, the disciples are with him in the boat. A fierce storm sweeps in, threatening their lives. As the twelve shake Jesus awake, bellowing for help, there is no question what he does. This may be the only time in the entire Gospel of Mark when Jesus directly helps his disciples. Once in chapter one, he relieves Peter's mother-in-law of a headache, but that doesn't count. Apparently the disciples never asked for help, or he never offered, or he was too busy preaching to the multitudes and healing the crowds.
Now, however, his safety was at stake, which meant they were in trouble, too. Those in the boat grew nervous. They poked Jesus, shook him, and said with an emphatic (and nervous) voice, "Teacher, we're in trouble here. Aren't you going to wake up?" With that, a weary Savior blinked twice, rubbed the sand from his eyes, and said, "Ah, shut up!" The wind ceased. The water smoothed out like glass. And the disciples grew really nervous. "Who is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?"
We know about the storms, don't we? Not just the little storms inside us, but the furious, full-scale storms out there. Even in a temperature-adjusted, climate-controlled world, there are bursts of fury within the natural world. Earthquakes shake human confidence. Rivers swell beyond their banks. Wind smashes our windows. Creation seems strangely indifferent to creature needs and comforts. A storm can explode with rage, and remind us how powerless we are.
On May 31, 1985, a tornado system touched down in the northwestern corner of Pennsylvania. The wind whipped at 250 miles-per-hour, tossing trees like matchsticks, throwing automobiles into the air, and killing fifteen people in two counties. What should have been a Friday afternoon of relaxation turned into a weekend of horror. The little town of Cooperstown, Pennsylvania, was in the direct path of a twister. A retired woman by the name of Isabella Stewart watched nervously as the low, black clouds blew in. The wind blew furiously. Suddenly a string of oak trees began to topple like dominoes. The woman went for her car keys, but the wind was too wild to go outside. In a sheer act of panic, Mrs. Stewart reached for the only tangible means of comfort and order. She grabbed her purse. Then she sat in a chair and waited for the worst to happen. Fortunately she did not lose her life, although her dog and cat were never seen again. The brief storm was devastating in a region that was already under economic distress. Over ten years later, Mrs. Stewart says, "Whenever I see a black storm cloud coming, I fall apart inside. You can't know quite how that feels unless you have been through it yourself."
No wonder that people in the first century identified the unruly powers of nature as demonic powers. A storm, particularly a storm at sea, seemed every bit as irrational as the forces that drove people out of their minds. You cannot reason with a tornado. You cannot negotiate with the wind and waves. It is true that the earth is nourished by rain sent from heaven above. But lightning bolts and furious winds are another thing altogether. So they poked Jesus awake, and he screamed at the storm. The wind was fierce, but he was fiercer. Jesus shouted at the storm as if the clouds were possessed by a demon ... because, after all, they were. The twelve wondered: If wind and sea should conspire to destroy, who is this that grants us safe haven?
Jesus, Saviour, pilot me over life's tempestuous sea;
Unknown waves before me roll, hiding rock and treacherous shoal;
Chart and compass come from thee:
Jesus, Saviour, pilot me.1
We know the storms, don't we? Not just the unmanageable storms out there, but the storms that rage inside us. Outer destruction breeds inner despair. A tempest outside can provoke a squall of fear. When a safe, predictable world comes unglued, so do we. We need some assurance to hold us together. We listen for a voice to silence the anguished cries for help.
They removed a tumor from a friend of mine before Thanksgiving one year. He bounded back, went to work, and immersed himself in Christmas preparations. By New Year's Eve, however, he found himself in New York's Sloan-Kettering Memorial Hospital, scheduled for a second surgery. As nurses came to prepare him for surgery, family members were asked to leave. They said their good-byes. When the family had gone, and the nurses finished their work, suddenly the storm descended upon his soul. Up to this point, my friend had kept a stiff upper lip and taken everything with a kind of clinical detachment. Now he began to weep uncontrollably. He was terrified of a demon called cancer, a sinister force of nature over which he had no control. And he was afraid to face it alone. He said, "As I sat there on that hospital bed, heaving and weeping like a fool, I felt a hand on my shoulder. And then another, and another. My brother had come back with the others. He began praying for me, and all of a sudden, as quickly as the storm had come, it vanished. It was as if Christ commanded, 'Peace! Be still!' And I was ... like I'd never been before." Throughout eight days of recovery in the hospital, my friend had plenty of time to reflect. What came to his mind again and again were all those verses of scripture that he had memorized in Sunday School. "God is my refuge and strength, an ever present help in time of trouble" (Psalm 46:1). "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for Thou art with me" (Psalm 23:4). These verses were more than comforting assurances; they became the means for conveying to him the presence of Christ.
"Sometimes I hear the distant rumblings of the storm," he says. "But I know two things. First, I'm not the only person in the boat; there is Another called Christ. Second, no matter how terrible the storm, I have not been set adrift."
Give to the winds thy fears;
hope and be undismayed:
God hears thy sighs and counts thy tears,
God shall lift up thy head.2
We know the storms outside. We know the storms inside. "Why are you afraid?" asks Jesus. "Tell me, why are you so fearful?" If I were one of the twelve, I would say, "Look, Lord, isn't it obvious? We are surrounded by powers we cannot control. This is a world of tornados and cancer and fear." Jesus presses by asking, "Have you no faith?" Again, I would respond, "Sure, we do. We cling to stories like this one. We trust there is a Savior who can overcome every force to hurt or destroy. We affirm he has the power. But when the One in whom we have the faith is snoring in the back of the boat, we wonder if faith in him will pull us through."
Who is this, who falls asleep while wind and wave pound into the boat? That may be the most troubling question. Whatever the storm, we want everything to always turn out okay. We want a happy ending for every disaster. We want a God who can remain accountable for our damages. In the wake of Hurricane Hugo, a radio commentator interviewed a man who lost everything in the storm. At one point, the man said, "If God's in charge, I'm angry. But if God's not in charge, I'm worried."
Yet Mark tells us that the God we meet in Jesus Christ will not be handcuffed by our assumptions or bound by our requests. He has the great capacity to be in charge, as he calms the storm. But he does not prevent the storm from happening. Neither does he abolish all storms everywhere. Instead the disciples have to shake him awake as waves splash into the boat. When Jesus finally stirs, he seems annoyed. It is not clear for a minute if he is shouting at the storm ("Peace!") or the disciples ("Be still!"). Who could this be? The scriptures say, "He who keeps you will not slumber. He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep" (Psalm 121:3-4). Yet if you discover Jesus snoring in the back of the boat, the very sight pushes faith to its extremity. Perhaps Mark thinks of this story as an object lesson for the sermon that Jesus had just given to that great crowd of people. In the language of his sermon, Jesus is like a sower casting seed upon the mixed soil of his audience. After a demanding day, he tells the disciples to push out to sea. He drifts off into slumber, and the scene looks suspiciously like one of the parables he told that day: "The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed and go to sleep" (Mark 4:26-27). The sower sleeps, and trusts the result to an unseen benevolence at work within a fertile soil. At the crucial moment he wakens to see what kind of crop has taken root.
It was dusk when five of us went out on a boat on Cranberry Lake, in the Adirondack Mountains of New York. About four miles from the dock, a fierce storm blew in. The water turned black. The sky was full of lightning. A full tank of gas did not comfort the crew. Neither did a sufficient number of life jackets. In short, I had rarely been so terrified in my life. There's something unsettling about sitting in a small boat with an outboard motor in an electrical storm. As the captain made a daring run for the dock, questions came to mind. Was it foolish to be out there? Yes, but the storm had come out of nowhere. Would we make it back alive? Probably, although at the moment it looked very risky. If we didn't make it back alive, would we land in some Safe Harbor? I wondered. I worried. At that moment, I could almost picture Jesus waking in the back of our boat. A weary Savior blinked twice and rubbed the sand away. Then he looked at me with blazing eyes, searching me to see if faith had taken root.
"Who then is this?" Who is this, who insists that we trust him as brutal storms pound against the boat? It is Jesus Christ. He is the One who reveals that nothing in all creation shall separate us from the love of God.
Fairest Lord Jesus, Ruler of all nature,
O Thou of God to earth come down,
Thee will I cherish, Thee will I honor,
Thou, my soul's glory, joy, and crown.3
1. Edward Hopper, "Jesus, Saviour, Pilot Me," The Hymnbook (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Church, 1955), p. 336.
2. Paul Gerhardt, "Give to the Wind Thy Fears," The Presbyterian Hymnal (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1990), p. 286.
3. "Fairest Lord Jesus," The Presbyterian Hymnal (Louisville:Westminster/John Knox Press, 1990), p. 306.