Luke 8: 22-25
Be with us Lord, in the storms of life, in our times of reflection, in the light of your love; and show us the way to a faith that honours and glorifies you, now and always. Amen.
Last week, we touched a little bit on the very special place that is the Sea of Galilee, Lake Tiberias. We found Jesus on the hills above the lake, teaching and preaching the sermon on the Mount, in a moment suspended in time, safe from the ceaseless hustle and bustle of the port below. But the sermon is over, and Jesus is tired. He wants to move on, and asks the disciples to sail across, to the other side of the lake.
Now said like that, it doesn’t sound like a major expedition, but that would be forgetting how vast Lake Tiberias is. It’s not called the Sea of Galilee for nothing. Capernaum is on the north-west coast of the lake. Gerasa, where Jesus wants to go, is down in the south-east. Crossing all that distance in a flimsy little fishing boat takes skill in calm weather, but even more when there’s a storm, and the lake has a fierce temperament. That’s because it lies some 700 feet below sea level, and there’s a huge difference in temperature between the surface of the lake and the hills above. This difference causes violent storms, and the lake can be even more treacherous than the Mediterranean sea.
Did the disciples know that a storm was brewing that day? At least four of them were seasoned fishermen for whom the lake was both a source of livelihood and a place of danger. I would guess they knew.
Why did they agree to go across? Perhaps out of a sense of duty and obedience to the Master. Perhaps trusting in their own skills. Or perhaps out of a false sense of security, thinking that nothing can go wrong with the Teacher on board. And see, Jesus falls asleep as they sail, what can possibly go wrong? They put out, but soon, the breeze turns into a violent gale, and the waves are unmanageable.
There’s real, serious fear, in the disciples’ voices as their little boat takes water. ‘We’re perishing’, they cry out. There is terrible danger at sea.
In the Gospels according to Mark and Matthew, everyone and everything gets a rebuke, and Jesus questions the disciples asking them why they’re afraid. In this version of the story, Jesus rebukes the wind and the waves, not the disciples. But his query implies that if the disciples had an active faith, they would not have been paralyzed by fear. Perhaps they would have been able to steer the boat from the choppy waters.
But the disciples are just like us. They think rationally, analytically. They add up fierce winds, rain, and a boat that sinks, and they think: ‘we’re going to die’. How do we react to the storms of life? Being devil’s advocate here, I would ask is there any reason to keep faith when we are in the midst of emotional storms and adrift in a sea of disillusionment?
‘Where is your faith?’, asks Jesus.
But is it even possible for the disciples to comprehend what has just happened?
Last week, we saw Jesus as a new Moses, preaching like the prophet on a mountainside. Today, we witness Jesus performing a miracle that echoes the mighty acts of God in the Old Testament. But where in Exodus, the Lord turns the sea into dry land for Moses, in the Gospel, Jesus speaks to the wind and the waves himself.
How can the teacher, the companion on the road, have the same power and authority as God? How can it be conceivable for the disciples that their master and friend is the God that they know they can never see face to face? Even Moses never saw God face to face.
And even if, after several more miracles, Simon Peter exclaims ‘You are God’s Messiah’, the anointed is not God.
Yet here is Jesus, a man the disciples have walked with, talked with, and learned from, demonstrating divine power. How can this man be the same God who established the moon and the stars and breathed life into the nostrils of Adam, the first living being?
Being faced with God is difficult. It is hard to trust that God really is with us, among us. That’s probably because of the way the human mind works, often in opposition to the heart. That’s the difference between what’s called ‘left brain world’ and ‘right brain world’. With our left brain, we tend to think rationally – we put the mind first. With our right brain, we can give room to awe, wonder, and contemplation – we put the heart first.
Where is our faith? In the mind, or in the heart?
There’s a wonderful book about faith and prayer by Henri Nouwen called ‘The Way of the Heart’. And he says that faith in prayer is to ‘descend with the mind into the heart, and there, stand before the face of the Lord’.
Where is our faith? Our minds are often jumbled mixes of thoughts and anxieties, projections, fears, to-do lists and questions, all colliding together. But when mind and heart dwell together, we give room to God, we can practise the presence of God.
‘Who then is this, that he commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him?’ ask the disciples.
Their question in the calm after the storm expresses what Jesus intends for them to truly learn about his power and authority over all creation, about his divine nature. Finally, the rationality is gone, and there is space for awe and wonder in the presence of God.
There is no other way to access and to respond to Jesus’ power and authority but in faith, offering our hearts in love to God who loved us first. When we face the storms of life, do we focus on the chaos and fear, or do we place our trust in God, who has the power to calm the storm?
Having this passage from Luke’s Gospel today, so close to Lent, enables us to reflect deeply about our own faith as we prepare to follow Jesus all the way to the cross, the ultimate symbol of love.
By commanding the storms to subside and calming the waters, Jesus teaches us that we must trust his power and authority even in the midst of turmoil that may cause fear, anxiety, a sense of helplessness, lack of control, and abandonment. Like the disciples on the boat in the Sea of Galilee, what is at stake in our own lives is this: do we trust and rest in Jesus’ power and authority?
Let us pray.
Lord God, actively present in the moments of our lives at all times and places, make us attentive to your presence help us to listen to your voice within and among us give us the simple-mindedness and the total acceptance to obey your prompting, your direction, your leadings, and your guidance.
Amen
M L-R