Our world has been shaped by one image. It may be the most powerful image to come out of the 20th century. If you were asked about the most important image of the 20th century, what would you pick? Here is my pick . . . [if you use screens].
The one picture that did the most to transform our perception of this world was that look-back at Earth from the tiny port-hole window in the first Apollo mission to the moon.
Dangling in the bleak blackness of space was this beautiful blue-ball planet — with swirling seas and a wispy atmosphere. The wonder and fragility of life on our singular planet was immediately made real to anyone and everyone.
The blue of our seas, and the so-blue of our skies, is a direct result of the miracle of life. A recent Discovery Channel program on continental development showed how nasty-looking our waters used to be. Ever come upon an old dumping site where abandoned cars and other junk had been left to a watery grave? The standing water is an unlovely toxic looking greenish brown. The iron oxides leaching into the water create this green muck. Before the wonder of tiny organisms practicing their magic of photosynthesis, all of our oceans looked like that brackish water. Rich in iron, the seas were ghastly green and blighted brown. It took the release of oxygen into the water to gradually transform the color and content of the ocean. And as the huge water masses changed to blue, so did their reflected image in our skies. God’s gift of life is what made us a blue planet.
We are still waterborne creatures, drawn to water both for its life-giving properties and because of its untamable power. When we want to “get away,” we do what Jesus did: we hang out at the water — a beach, a lake, a river (for him it was the Sea of Galilee). The closest Jesus came to picking a place to live was the freshwater lake, fifteen miles long and eight miles wide, known as Lake Tiberius, or as we know it, the “Sea of Galilee.” 650 below sea level, the beautiful green hills around Lake Tiberius peak at sea level. And on a clear day, you can see in the distance snow-capped Mount Hermon in Lebanon.
A sign on the wall of a small seaside cottage reads “A waterfront view isn’t a matter of life; it is much more important than that!”
But here’s the thing about water; and here’s the thing about your life too: water has to be on the move in order to sustain and propagate life. Standing still, water quickly stagnates, becomes brackish, and turns into a watery tomb, even for water creatures.
Ever have the pump or “bubbler” in your aquarium conk out? If you don’t get the water moving again quickly, your goldfish are goners! The churning action of the ocean waves, the rushing rapids in a river, the powerful currents that constantly mix and stir the depths of the seas: these are what keep our waters vital, vibrant, life-giving, life-sustaining. For healing to take place, the waters must be “troubled,” “stirred up,” “moving.” (Remember the pool of Bethesda?)
To accomplish all this movement the winds of the air partner with the watery surfaces of the sea and keep life going. Wind and water work and play together to make life possible.
For a bunch of fishermen, the disciples have always seemed to me to have a pretty poor relationship with the sea. Perhaps it was a lifetime of seeing first hand how those watery depths could both give and take life that inspired the disciples’ fears. In today’s gospel text the disciples are once again literally “all at sea.” Having been sent off by Jesus to cross the Sea of Galilee without him, the disciples ended up battlinghigh winds and whipped up waters for hours. What should have been a short crossing became a seeming endless night of bucking waves and blustering winds.
When Jesus at last makes his surprise appearance, it is in the “fourth watch of the night” — that is, in those dreary hours between three and six a.m. Every parent of a newborn knows those are the longest hours of the night. Every pastor knows the meaning of that call in the middle of the night. Hospitals routinely record the greatest numbers of deaths during those dark hours. It is as if all life ebbs low at that “fourth watch,” when the dawn of a new day still seems so far away. Most people are born at night, and are born into eternity at night.
Wind-beaten and wave-washed, the weary disciples at first fail to recognize Jesus. “A ghost!” they scream. Jesus reassures them with his familiar voice, “It’s just me.” While Jesus’ miraculous walk clearly demonstrates his mastery over the waters, he is apparently unconcerned about the storm he is strolling through. The wind still whips, the waves still crest, even as he approaches the boat.
When we read the text, did it register to you how odd Peter’s words to Jesus are? He doesn’t ask to join Jesus. He asks Jesus to ask him to come out of the boat. Did you hear it? Peter is not being courageous or daring here. He is being obedient. It is in obedience, not daring or risk-taking, that Peter steps over the edge of the boat and out onto the water.
But if Peter expected Jesus to bring calm waters to his feet he was mistaken. The wind still roars in his ears; the waves still climb up to meet the winds; all is still turmoil. Panicked, Peter starts to sink. He is in motion all right. He is going down! Jesus hauls Peter back up and they both get back into the boat. Only then does the wind finally cease.
You want to be a disciple of Jesus? Then don’t expect to live a safety-first, risk-free life.
If we would be disciples of this wave-riding, water-striding Christ, we must be prepared to like a windblown life, waterborn life. Our God is not a status-quo God. Our God is a God of movement, of change, of motion. Remember: our God first created with the Spirit blowing over the face of the primeval, chaotic waters (Genesis 1:2). If we willingly step out of our status quos to follow Jesus, we had better anticipate getting wet. Christians are not called to be perfectly coiffed. If we are really living life in the Spirit, we should have wind-blown hair and be wet behind the ears.
The reason Peter lost his nerve, the reason Peter lost his buoyancy, was not because he feared the water, but because he feared the wind. As a fisherman Peter knew about water, the ebb and flow of tides, the charted pull of currents, the measurable height of waves. But the wind . . . that’s another story. The wind is patently unpredictable. The wind is an invisible force that gusts and swirls, blows and bullies in wholly unexpected ways.
Our focus on Peter stepping out of the boat has blinded us to what Peter stepped into: the wind creating the waves. Jesus invited Peter to step into the wind and waves if he truly wanted to join him. Jesus’ invitation was to step into a windblown, waterborne life that would be full of surprises — some good surprises (like walking on the water) and some bad surprises (like sinking into that water).
So where are you this morning? Walking or Sinking?
Are you open to living this windblown, waterborne life that Jesus promises us? I call this windblown, waterborne life the true Feng-Shui Life.
Why “feng shui?” I don’t know about you, but when I think of “feng shui” I think of some high-priced New Age interior decorator who is going to turn my creative chaos into uncluttered simplicity. And feng shui is a 4,000-year-old Chinese art form whereby you supposedly rearrange spaces to maximize happiness, good health, even riches. Today in Hong Kong, there are 10,000 feng shui teachers, and it’s hard to find a Hong Kong resident who isn’t a believer in feng shui, whether they can afford to practice it or not.
The real meaning of “feng shui” is wind-water. Feng-shui are the two Chinese characters for “wind” (feng) and “water” (shui). Feng Shui is literally the art of bringing together the wind and the water, the heavens and the earth, to partner in your life. And this is precisely what Jesus proposes to do for us if we follow him. To bring together heaven and earth, the airborne and the waterborne, the “feng” and the “shui,” to enable us to be fully human and whole. You have been born of Water (shui) and born of the Spirit (feng). If poet Carola Luther is right that “water is wind/colored in” (Walking the Animals [Carcanet, 2004]), . . . I repeat . .. “water is wind/colored in” (isn’t that beautiful? Repeat it again) . . . .what color crayon has the Spirit given you? What color is your feng shui life?
Here are three quick tests to measure how ready you are for living this windblown and waterborne, feng shui life:
1) Do you love surprises?
It is easy to say, “Oh, I love surprises!” But how many of us live a life open to the unexpected and the unfamiliar?
Surprise . . . !
Six more people are showing up for dinner tonight (and it is already six o’clock).
Surprise . . . !
Your workplace has “restructured” and your job no longer exists.
Surprise . . . !
Your elderly parents need to move in with you.
Surprise . . . .
So does your 26-year-old kid. (You do know that “26" is the new “18?”)
All of those “surprises” are likely to feng shui your life in new directions.
And that is the second thing about a windblown-waterborne, feng shui life
2) Are you going in directions you do not wish to go?
You may not even want to go in the direction feng shui is taking you. The disciples found themselves blown and borne about so much that they were still in deep waters hours after they had set out for the opposite shore. In fact, right now examine your life: can you name one area of your life where you are going in a direction you do not wish to go?
If you can’t, then tell me again: who is in charge of your life? You? Or God?
If you are living a feng shui life, you WILL sometimes find yourself heading in directions you had no intention of going.
*This is how a retired corporate executive finds herself helping an inner city grocery store get set up and established, instead of playing a relaxing round of golf.
*This is how a shy, reclusive librarian finds himself founding a hospitality center for recent immigrants.
*This is how a life-long teacher finds himself a student of horticulture and running a community greenhouse.
The Greek word for “moved” (phero) means “to be driven along as a wind.” Are you being “moved” by the Spirit, or by the culture and by your peers? Are you just headed where others are headed, where you want to be headed? Are you being “moved” by the Zeitgeist, the spirit of the times? Or is it the Spirit of Jesus that “moves” you and “bears you along?”
The winds of the Spirit, and the flow of the water of Life, take us to unexpected, unlooked for new places. We may flounder and even fall, but God will never fail us. There is no place the wind can blow us, or the waves can wash us, that is beyond the saving grasp that Jesus always offers. The classical world believed that all winds originated in caves. Can you trust the winds of your life to have originated in the caves, the cave where Christ was born and the cave where Christ was risen?
Which brings to the third test of whether or not you are living the feng shui life.
3) Do you believe that the winds of misfortune always bring some seeds of opportunity?
There was a young eagle flying in the upper reaches of the heavens. It was going faster and faster, testing its wings. It came home and said to its mother, “You know, what would it be like, how much faster could I go, if there were not wind and air to slow me down.”
The wise elder eagle said, “But those are the very things that enable you to fly in the first place. Get rid of them and you fall to the ground.”
Disciples of Jesus are the true feng shui masters, God’s true geomancers. God wants you to live your life at airspeed, not groundspeed. A lot of people have wonderful groundspeed, but can’t get off the ground. They are earthbound, happily “grounded” and afraid of getting “winded.”
We all fear flying, don’t we? In fact, many of us get motion sickness. Ask the disciples in our text this morning: being blown by God is scary stuff. The feng shui life is not for the feeble-minded or faint-hearted.
But I challenge you this week: at the first sign of a little draft of wind, don’t shut the door. Open your life to feeling God's gentle breeze, whether on a warm day or even embracing it on a cool one. See if that gentle gush of air might not turn into a Might Rushing Wind that can feng shui your life into the shape and design for which God has created you: the image of Christ being formed in you.
Animations, Illustrations, Illuminations, Ruminations, Applications
“O, wind of the Spirit
Fill the sails of my Soul
Send us on Lord
Let your wind blow.”
–Russ Rosen/Sandy Rosen/Mike Oshiro
In his autobiography, John Stuart Mill told the story of his father, a man who was intellectually ambitious for his son and who put him on a crash course of knowledge. With no respect for religious faith, however, he refused anything religious to enter his son’s educational journey.
From the perspective of his reaching manhood, Mill confessed that he emerged into adulthood with a mind crammed with information, but a soul that was starved. In Mill’s words, “I was left at the commencement of my voyage with a well-equipped ship but no sail.”
If you have time in your sermon, you might want to include a fourth test of whether you are living the feng shui life: Are you able to bring together opposites into conversation and harmony (of course, the biggest opposite is our being both “saint” and “sinner” at the same time).
Air and water are fluids with very different properties. The one is a mixture of gases, at all natural temperatures on earth. The other occurring in all three phases (solid, liquid, gas) and with the strange trick of possessing a lower density when solid than when flowing freely as a liquid.