Picture Jesus and the disciples on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. The day had started off well enough -- crowds clamoring to see Jesus, bringing their illnesses and troubles to him as they always did, seeking his help and healing. Jesus was in control. He helped them all. The disciples observed the power of the Lord as they had so many times before. A good day to be alive! A good day for a sail and a rest! As they moved onto the water, the waves lapped against the small boat. The boat gently rocked back and forth. Jesus, exhausted from the healing which always took something out of him, fell asleep in the little boat. Picture the storm which then took them all by surprise. If you have done any fishing or sailing, you know how a storm can come up suddenly. The sky grew dark. The wind began to blow. The waves began to rise and beat against the little boat. Stormy weather is a real problem for a small craft on a turbulent sea.
The Small, Frail Craft And The Turbulent Sea
Life is like that too. You go along happy with how things are, taking a little rest, and then wham, bam, slam -- everything changes in a moment. The stormy clouds form. The wind begins to bang against your small boat. Someone gets sick. Someone dies. You get fired from a job. A loved one suddenly turns on you and accuses you of something you would never even think of, much less do. Conflict arises. Suddenly, unpredictably, you are in the middle of a storm you cannot handle. It doesn't seem fair. It seems like God doesn't care. Life is like that. We have only a little boat. The sea is so vast, so huge and so stormy. And the boat on which we ride is so precarious, so vulnerable. Life is like the sea. The sea -- the turbulent, unpredictable, wild, stormy sea. Have you ever been on a wind-tossed lake or in a storm at sea? One sea captain describes a storm at Cape Horn at the tip of South America like this:This mighty swell of waters that giant force seems to be pressing upon us. This crowding together of millions of tons of turbulent water creates a sharp piling up of eddies and backwaters in which the largest ship can become unmanageable. Current fights swell, and the rocks wait with the cold sea snarling impatiently around them. It is not an ordinary ocean swell rolling on and on as one is accustomed to see. These waves rush perpendicular as if cast up by an invisible power, and fall to run again on the same spot -- savage ship stoppers going nowhere but all 100 percent against you. In storms at sea there is a hellish concert in the rigging, a universal roaring in the air. "All hell breaks loose," the sailors say. They cannot hear one another except by shouting directly into one another's ears. The air is gray with flying water. Mountains of water ... screaming winds ... and weariness. "What is going on here?" sailors ask, even if they are on a large ship.
The bind in our story is not a large ship in a raging ocean storm off Cape Horn, but a small boat in a nasty storm on the Sea of Galilee, but the question is the same: "What is going on here?" The feeling is the same -- something big and evil out there is 100 percent against you. We feel strangely misplaced in the storms at sea and in life. The storm is the bind, the discrepancy, with which the gospel story begins. The apostles, many of them experienced fishermen who have lived through many storms before, are frightened by this one. Jesus, asleep after an exhausting day, is awakened with the words, "Teacher, don't you care?" The friends of Jesus who spoke these words knew that what they implied wasn't true. Of course Jesus cared. They had seen him care for others. They had felt him care for them. It's just that at this moment, as they fought for their very lives and Jesus slept, it appeared that he didn't care. They got sucked into the illusion of the moment, forgetting the deeper truth of their experience. They accused Jesus with a question: "Teacher, don't you care?"
This is the question we often ask in the storms of life. We, too, get sucked into the illusion of the moment. "Where is God when we need him?" "God, are you asleep? Don't you care? Aren't you there?" That is the feeling which the apostles had when the storm threatened them as Jesus slept. That is the feeling which many have as they face the storms of life, cry out to God for help, and get no immediate answers. The ambiguity of the human situation is that at the worst times, it may seem that God is asleep. Suddenly, there is a crisis. Bad things often happen to good people.
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 four-hundred 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. Now 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 four-hundred pound alligator pulling in one direction and a one-hundred pound mother pulling in the other. The flippers which were distasteful to the alligator caused him to let go. The 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. Life seemed good to the Joneses. The family had moved to a new home. The children went swimming in a pond. Then wham, slam -- a monster appeared on the scene. How can this happen? How can life be so good one moment and so filled with horror the next? Yet it happens and we feel that we cannot handle it.
Sometimes tragedy strikes suddenly and we feel abandoned and unable to handle what life brings us. God is there, but we do not feel his presence at the time. Life is good, then suddenly, everything changes. Bad things happen to good people. Some years ago, a child was born to Darlene, a friend of mine who was in her middle forties. She had raised several children, and although she had had many problems with them, at least, she felt, they were finally on their own. Then Darlene found out that she was pregnant. That was a blow. It got worse. The child was born retarded. Darlene felt deserted, deeply disturbed, and depressed. She felt angry at someone, something. It felt like God did not care. That's how it is when the storms assail us. The mighty Lord seems to be asleep.
The Stormy Sea And The Mighty Lord
When we feel deserted, having no one really to blame, we sometimes blame God. Darlene knew in her heart that God had not deserted her, but at first her feelings overcame her knowledge. She felt that God had left her alone. She felt that God was either punishing her for something she had done, or that he was asleep and did not care about her. Many can identify with those feelings. Many have experienced unjust suffering. Bad things happen to good people. In Darlene's case, she rediscovered the power of the mighty Lord to deal with the problem. So did Job. Job was a good man, an upright man. You all know his story. Even those of you with little biblical training have heard of Job. He is the prototype for unjust suffering. A man of God, doing his duty faithfully, tending his farm, taking care of his family, praying and worshiping faithfully. And then, whop! He turned the corner, along came a mighty storm, and down he went. Then insult was added to injury. Job's crops failed, his health broke, and his children died. Job's wife turned on him with accusations, and his friends implied that he must have done something wrong to deserve all this punishment. With friends like that, who needs enemies? In the storms of life, we all enter into speculation and accusation, multiplying words without knowledge. Fear can take over the territory once firmly owned by faith.
Projection -- blaming others and/or blaming God -- can become the "empty talk" of the soul which feels deserted. "Am I being punished? Is God asleep?" Still Job maintained his faith, hoping that the storms would soon end and that peace and calm would be restored. Then the day came when Job, with no one else to blame, turned his resentment toward his Creator. Job dumped on God. God answered Job out of a whirlwind. "Out of the storm, the Lord spoke to Job." "Stand up now, like a man and answer the questions I ask you," said the Lord (Job 38:1, 3, TEV). One translation reads, "Brace yourself, and stand up like a man" (NEB). After all he has been through, now must Job fight God too? It appears so. For the recitation of the mighty acts of creation appear to be the Almighty putting Job in his place. "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?" "Job, have you ever in all your life commanded a day to dawn?" (Job 38:4, 5, 8, 12, TEV) It goes on and on for four chapters. By the end of it, you anticipate that the man who was burdened by his troubles and suffering will be buried by the tirade of questions from his Maker. Instead, this questioning is the reversal, the turning point. Job crossed over to the other side. Job gained a higher perspective. It was the breaking point for old Job. It was also the turning point. Job lost sight of God because of what was happening around him and to him. Job lost sight of God when his own questions set like concrete into doubts, and his doubts became cold cynicism. Job lost sight of God when he listened to his friends and his wife and his own questions. Job crossed over to the other side when God said to him in the storm, "Brace yourself and answer the questions I ask you." The questions did not bury Job. They raised him from the dead. The questions of God brought Job from the wrong side of the sea to the right side. The questions of God worked the great reversal by getting Job's attention centered on something good, something great, something so overwhelming, that Job lost his self-consciousness and became aware of the holy. Thus Job was restored to health. He experienced the reversal. What happened when God raised his questions with Job instead of just listening to the questions and accusations of Job? The reversal came. With it came healing and wholeness. That same reversal happened to the followers of Jesus when Jesus stood up and commanded the wind and waves to stop and raised these two questions with the apostles: "Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?"
David Adam, the Celtic writer, describes the reversal like this: Think about these words of Julian of Norwich: "He did not say, 'You shall not be tempest-tossed, you shall not be weary, you shall not be discomforted.' But He said, 'You shall not be overcome.' "1 In other words, life is like a storm. Christians like everyone else go through the storms of life. The promise of God is not that storms will be removed, but that we shall survive the storms which come. We shall overcome the turbulent storms of life by the power of the Mighty Lord. That's what happened on the Sea of Galilee. That's what happens to believers. David Adam goes on: Once we believe in Jesus, we do not escape the storms and troubles of life. In fact, in some strange sense more storms than ever seem to come our way. Perhaps we should expect this. If there is any power of evil in the world, we should expect it to oppose anything or anyone that is trying to do what is right and good. However, all of us will meet with storms; there will be times when the tide ebbs on us and we know our human frailty. For all of us will come the experience that we are "perishing," no matter how far we try to run from it or hide. But for all this God loves and God cares. And there is more. He has sent His Son that we should not perish. In this frail craft that we call life he is present, just waiting to be awakened. Let us learn to call upon him.
Our lives are often like a little boat on a great and stormy sea.2 The apostles in the little boat on the storm-tossed sea woke Jesus from his sleep with their question, "Don't you care?" It was a perfectly natural question. Against an illusion of such magnitude, the Lord raised to his full height, turned from the disciples to the furious storm, and commanded the wind and the waves to be still. The elements obeyed Jesus, seeing in him the very fury of God. Jesus then turned toward his friends, with the questions, "Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?" Notice, Jesus is now asking the questions. As in the case of Job, this is the turning point, the reversal. When the disciples asked the question, "Don't you care?" they had lost sight of who was in control. That's how it is in the storms of life. We too lose sight of who is in control.
In Hebrew tradition, the one who asks the questions is the one in control. That's why Jesus often answered questions with questions. That's the meaning of the questions in verse 40: "Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?" God is back in control. It only seemed that in the storm God was asleep. The ultimate question is: "Who stands in the middle?" In Hebrew thinking whoever asks the questions stands in the middle. When the storms of life assail us, we turn to God. At least, we think we turn to God -- but often this turning is no turning at all, for we are still in the center asking the questions. "God, why did this happen to me? Are you punishing me? Are you there? Have you deserted me? Don't you care? Aren't you there? Are you asleep?" Saint Paul the apostle, as he writes to his friends in Corinth who have found faith but are in danger of going back to former ways of thinking, says, "From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view" (2 Corinthians 5:16, RSV). As mere mortals we view things "from the human point of view" -- that is, the side that we humans by our own power seem incapable of leaving. We are in the center, asking the questions, feeling that we are uncared for, asking, "What are we doing here?" That question comes at the apparent breaking point. But the breaking point may be the turning point, because we may come to see things not just from the human point of view, but from a higher perspective. There is another side. It is the side with God in the center, raising the questions: "What do you mean, 'Don't I care?' Look at my creation. Look at my Son, your Savior. Look at me and what I've done. Why are you afraid? Where is your faith?"
Therefore, let us cross to the other side and pray the prayer of Saint Augustine: Blessed are all your saints, O God and King, who have traveled over the tempestuous sea of this life and have made the harbor of peace and felicity. Watch over us who are still on this dangerous voyage. Frail is our vessel, and the ocean wide; but as in your mercy you have set our course, so pilot the vessel of our life towards the everlasting shore of peace, and bring us at last to the quiet haven of our heart's desire; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
1. David Adam, Tides and Seasons (London: Triangle, SPCK, 1995), p. 99.
2. Ibid., p. 42.