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I’ve twice had the pleasure of backcountry canoe-tripping on North Tea Lake in Algonquin Provincial Park. The paddle getting into the lake is quite pleasant. You put in on Kawawaymog Lake for a 1km paddle across to the Amable du Fond River. The paddle on Amable du Font is the highlight for me. It’s a narrow waterway and you get to see a lot of animal and plant life up close. After that paddle, you come out onto North Tea which becomes a typical outback big lake paddling experience. It’s nice and peaceful if there’s no wind.
But any way, the wind. Both times I have been to North Tea the end of trip paddle out on Kawawaymog has been insane due to the wind. Apparently, it really picks up in the afternoon. The first time, which was about sixteen years ago, I was on a trip that Dana was guiding for a group of people and their dogs. The headwind was blowing so strong and the water was so choppy that we didn’t even try to paddle across. Rather we walked the canoes around the edge of the lake. A 1km paddle became about a 2.5km slog pulling loaded canoes.
This past summer we returned to North Tea and took another family with us who had one 3rd Grade age kid. We were a flotilla of 3 canoes and a kayak. There was a weather system blowing out with a lot of wind behind. The Amable du Font is very sheltered and it didn’t seem like there was any wind; and so, I was hoping that Kawawaymog would be tame. But no, Kawawaymog was churning up pretty good. Gordon Lightfoot could have probably got a nice shipwreck song out it. We decided to go ahead and try to paddle it. William and I were sharing a canoe. I was in the stern and he was in the bow. Dana and Alice were in the same situation. The other family, well, the mother was kayaking. She made it across in record time. The dad and daughter they made it across too because he was a mountain of muscle. But, Dana and I and the kids weren’t fairing so well and the kids were getting scared. It was a bunch of up and down and getting sideways and rocking. Dana and I were more or less having to solo loaded canoes in a big headwind with big waves with scared kids riding a roller coaster up in the bow. It was either head for shore or call in Gordon Lightfoot to write the memorial song. 300 meters in we headed for shore to slog it around edge.
Being out on a lake when the wind and the waves are against you is no laughing matter. It’s dangerous. I think of Jesus and the disciples here. In reality I’m not a very experienced canoer, so it doesn’t take much to get me convinced to opt for the safer route when the water gets choppy. But the disciples, at least half of them were career fisherman and they were concerned, to say the least, at the situation they were in. This was no ordinary windstorm. It was a mega-windstorm. The Greek word for great is mega.
Since we’re into the Greek, if you pay close attention to the way Mark words things in this story especially where Jesus commands the storm to be quiet and still, it becomes apparent that something mega-not-right was up with it, something had cosmically gone awry. Jesus didn’t just bark a command at the wind. He rebuked it. Rebuking was what Jesus did to the unclean spirits to cast them out and to anyone else who was working against him in his mission to bring in the Kingdom of God. So, he rebuked the Wind and the Sea and silenced them like he silenced the demons and drove them out of their victims leaving the person in calm. Silenced was also how he left the religious authorities who were out to kill him after a good dispute.
This mega-windstorm was a ”cosmic-matter” like Creation gone rogue against its Creator. The picture Mark is painting is that this was not just Jesus calming the storms of life, but rather God the Son incarnate putting down a Cosmic rebellion led by the primordial forces of Chaos. I know that probably just made you say “Hmm. What’s he talking about?” so let me ramble this one a little bit.
Let’s take a moment to remember the Creation story in Genesis 1. Genesis 1 tells of how God made this big Bubble called a firmament in the midst of Primordial Chaos. Remember everything was this formlessness, voidness, and darkness over waters and a wind or the breath of God was hovering ready to act. If you compare the Genesis 1 creation story to other stories like it from other ancient cultures in the Middle East from that time, it appears that God is making this bubble in the midst of Chaos to serve the purpose of what temples served in the ancient world. Temples were places for gods to come down from the heavens and repose, to rest and enjoy the goodness of their works. Creation is God’s place to come and repose and have joy.
Let’s remember how God did it. God created light, the light by which all can see and understand what God is up to. God separated the light from the darkness. Then God made the Bubble by separating the waters. Then he created sky and land and the sun, moon, and stars. Then God filled it with life. Then, God created humanity in their image to tend the Garden so to speak. Every temple back then had an image, an idol, of God in it that was believed to somehow embody the presence of the god the temple was meant to house. Finally, God called it all very good and then rested. He reposed and that doesn’t mean that he slept or went on vacation. It just means he sat down to enjoy the beauty of it all.
Well back to Mark’s Gospel and Jesus and his disciples on the Sea. There are some similarities with Genesis 1. It was evening which meant darkness was beginning to set in over the Sea. Remember in Genesis how darkness was over the waters. They are on this boat along with some other boats and it’s kind of like they are in the Bubble. Sitting in a boat looking up and around gives a sense of sitting in a bubble. There are birds in the air, fish in the sea. Jesus (God) has just had a very successful, very good, first round of Kingdom of God spreading ministry there in his stomping grounds in Galilee. He’s been preaching, healing, and casting out demons, and confronting the religious authorities. People were flocking to him and seem to be getting the idea that he just might be the Promised Messiah. He is there with his disciples, his key followers who will shortly bear his image, so to speak, when he sends them out on Kingdom of God mission trips in his name to preach, heal, and cast out demons just as he did. With everything having been so good, Jesus decides to repose on a cushion in the back of the boat. Being fully human, his reposing involves a solid nap.
Well, the wind begins to blow. If you remember from Genesis 1:2 that “a wind from God swept over the face of the waters” which was a reference to the Holy Spirit. In Hebrew the word for wind can also mean breath or spirit; so also in Greek. The image there is of the wind of the breath of God breathing across the waters in the midst of the darkness preparing to speak the Word of Creation. Please call to mind how Scripture says that Jesus is the Word of God in, through, and by whom God created and creates and recreates everything. There’s a wonderful Trinitarian image of God at work in the Genesis 1 account of Creation. Back to Mark and this wind that comes blowing across the Sea stirring up those perilous waves; this wind is remeniscent of the time before Creation when the wind of the breath of God swept across the waters, but this wind is obviously not God breathing on the waters to bring forth the Creation. This wind is doing the opposite. It’s seeking to destroy Jesus and the disciples.
Just a note about the waters here. In Greek the word for lake and sea are the same and you need to know when to call something a lake and when to call it “The Sea”. Jewish apocalyptic writers the image of “The Sea” to mean those pre-Creation waters of Chaos that contained hidden dangers like sea monsters and other nasties that sometimes flooded into God’s very good Bubble. “The Sea” is the unknown. It’s the “left field” from which stuff comes that turns our lives into complete upheaval. It’s the political upheaval of invading imperial forces that completely upend your way of life such as what the Romans were doing in Israel at the time.
Well, I hope you are grasping that this moment that Jesus is sharing with his disciples out on a windy sea is more than just a windstorm at sea. It’s more than just a story that we can look back on in devotional nostalgic hindsight piously say “Jesus calms the storms of life”. Yes, Jesus calms the storms of life. But, the way Mark is telling this story it is on the level of the forces that exist outside the Bubble of God’s very good Creation attempting to destroy what God is doing in the power of the Holy Spirit in, through, and as Jesus (God the Son become human) to save his Creation which has been invaded by the oppressive forces of Sin, Evil, and Death. The Wind and the Sea are threatening to altogether collapse God’s very good Bubble of repose. We could and should presume that if Jesus is unable to do anything about this mega-windstorm of Chaos, then all is lost.
So, the boat is swamping and in desperation the disciples went to the sleeping, apparently unconcerned Jesus to say, “The feathers have hit the fan, Jesus. Don’t you care?” We do that in the midst of the storms of life. But for the disciples, this was a mega-moment for the Creation. Perishing was probably an understatement for what was happening. Maybe they grasped the magnitude. Maybe they didn’t. Nevertheless, they were staring at the senselessness of God’s very good Bubble being collapsed back in on itself as if to become a blackhole or something.
As I said before this was more than just a story we can look back on and say “Jesus calms the storms of life.” He does calm life’s storms, but this is the grandaddy of all storms. In Mark’s understanding of reality this mega-windstorm on the Sea (of Galilee) comes from and is orchestrated by the same force that brings tsunamis, hurricanes, pandemics, holocausts, diseases, oppressive empires, poverty, all those inexplicable not-good-at-all forms of Chaos that break into God’s very good Bubble just to wreak senseless havoc as the Roman Empire was doing in Jesus’ day.
As noted, Jesus raised up (a resurrection hint) and rebuked the Wind and the Sea as if they were demons or religious authority types who just need to shut up. The mega-windstorm turns to mega-calm. The Wind ceases. The Sea goes placid. It’s a great calm, not even a ripple. Where the disciples, these seasoned fishermen, were just a little bit more than concerned, now after the calming they have become afeared with a mega-fear. I’m not sure it is an accurate translation to say as the NRSV says here that “they were filled with a great awe.” Jesus had just done something that only the Creator Lord God Almighty could do. Jesus turned the mega-windstorm into mega-calm and they are mega-fraid. Seriously, who are they in the boat with and what is really going on with him?
Well, who are we in the boat with? Paul in Colossians 1:15-20 puts it like this: “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.”
We are in the boat with the one through and by whom all things were created and hold together. Jesus is the one who holds our lives in his hands; the one who died to bring reconciliation into God’s very good Bubble that is constantly being assaulted by Chaos. Paul says at Romans 8:28 that all things work together for the good of those who love him. There are times in our lives when it seems that all Hell is breaking lose on us and it seems like it’s a personal attack by the universe or something. Well, it just might be, but Jesus is in our boats and he will calm the storms.
Jesus then asked the disciples why they were being cowardly. Our translation says “afraid” but the word is really the word for cowardly rather than afraid. This word was the word they used in the early church to describe those who left the fold when persecution arose, when the fear and death-wielding powers of Roman empire, Roman emperor worship, and the worship of false gods and even false understandings of the one true God being enforced with violence by the religious authorities caused the followers of Jesus to abandon hope and faith in him.
Faith is the boat we are in. If you remember, last week I defined faith as something more than just belief or trust. It is active participation in the sphere of realtiy in which the Triune God of grace is making manifest according to his promises what God is doing in, through, and as Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit to save his very good Creation from Sin, Evil, and Death. In the boat of faith is where we find God personally present and evidently at work. The boat will get attacked because of that. But Jesus brings mega-calm to the mega-storm. The continued existence of the Creation depends on that. It is only natural that we be afraid, that there be times when we don’t believe or lack trust. But it is important we stay in the boat and not get cowardly.
For the past 60 years people have been jumping ship left and right for something called “spiritual but not religious”. We just had a census here in Canada. If one of the categories of religious affiliation on it was “done”, done with the church, the number of those who checked it would be as high as those who checked “none”. The magazine Christianity Today did a recent poll with ministers in the midst of this pandemic and discovered that there is a concerningly high number of ministers who say they will leave the ministry as soon as they can once they sense the pandemic is abated. That’s like the disciples jumping out of the boat once Jesus calmed the storm. That’s bizarre, but I don’t judge. Congregations need to really appreciate that their ministers may not be able to go forward with vim and vigour once this is all over. It was hard enough being a minister in a world where the church has dwindled off to nothing and everything you’ve striven to do to turn it around did not have the desired effect. In the world, people hate the church (sometimes for good reason) and for all they know Jesus looks like a Pope who won’t make apologies or a slick-haired, Bible-thumping Evangelical who is anti-everything that might actually be scientifically valid and compassionate. Now, in the midst of all that disillusionment, imagine being forced to take your societally irrelevant talents and gifts that weren’t working to turn the church around in the first place into isolation into a dark cave where you find yourself having to do something you never imagined you’d have to do nor got trained in how to do it (lead congregations through a pandemic) all the while knowing that all that stuff that you used to do that was supposed to reinvigorate the church and save the world still needs to be done, but you can’t do it and add to that you have absolutely no idea whether what you’re doing in the cave is really making a difference in the grand scheme of things because all you’ve got to go by is a dwindling number of weekly views of your worship video on YouTube. That’s a small taste of what it’s like to be minister right now, I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a nurse. They’re also vowing to leave their callings behind in droves as well.
There is a mega-storm afoot and it’s bigger than just the storms of life and its more than just a matter of “Will your anchor hold in the storms of life”. Yes, WE each are going through our life-storms and I hope you know that Jesus is there with you in the boat. But there is yet a bigger, major global upheaval of “the way things are” that is happening at present. Decisions made or not made now with regards to the climate and to issues of economic justice will have consequences like no other time in history. There is a mega-windstorm happening, and we are the ones who are in the boat with Jesus. He is going to calm the storm. He is going to mega-calm it. Otherwise, God’s very good Bubble becomes a blackhole or something. Something “Very Good” can come out of all this and I hope that faithful Christians will lead the way.
Jesus asked his disciples after he calmed the storm. “Why are you cowardly?” He also asks, “Do you still have no faith?” The disciples answered those question saying, “Who is this that even the Wind and the Sea obey him?” I can’t answer those questions for you. I can only answer for myself. I answer saying that I’ve had a glimpse of Who it is that I am in the boat with, the One whom even the Wind and the Sea obey. Yes, times are hard. The boat is swamping. Yet, every day I remind myself that I am in the boat called faith and I am somehow participating in that sphere of what God is doing in his unimaginably great love to save his very good creation from Sin, Evil, and Death in, through, and as Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. Every day I have to come back to the reality that I am a beloved child of God. I won’t be jumping ship. God works all things to the good for those who love him. That’s my answer. What’s yours? Amen.
