No doubt about it, we in South Florida have been
lucky, really lucky. I gotta admit. I thought our luck had run out a few weeks
ago with Tropical Storm Erika, but once again we dodged the bullet. We’ve had ten years since Hurricane Wilma. And I’ll be happy if we have ten years
more.
I didn’t always think so. When I was younger, I thought such a storm would
be exciting. That began to change when I talked to my
buddy, Ted. His family decided to stick
Hurricane Hugo out when it hit South Carolina.
They figured they were far enough inland that it wouldn’t be too
bad. They had no idea. His family spent hours literally cowering in
the closet, praying that the storm winds wouldn’t sweep their house away. He said.
“Kennedy, it felt like the biggest freight train you could imagine
passing right by you for hours. We were
terrified.”
A few years later, I was studying Spanish in New
Mexico. One of my fellow students,
Rick, served with his wife in a little church in a place I’d never heard of
before, Homestead. As the week began,
we heard about this hurricane in the Caribbean called Andrew, but it really
wasn’t that bad. Then that changed, terrifyingly
rapidly. It became a storm of monstrous
intensity. I still remember the haunted
look on Rick’s face as he tried to reach his wife after the storm hit, when he
saw the pictures of the damage, when he tried desperately to find any way home
to help his family and his church. I decided.
This excitement I can do without.
Hurricanes are nothing to joke about, though we
do. It helps us to deflate the tension a
bit as we wait to see if it will hit us.
But while we may not have had a hurricane hit us doesn’t mean we haven’t
had storms. In our life, storms, so to
speak, hit all too often. A routine
visit to a doctor leads to a conversation that includes the word cancer. Our marriage hits a crisis, as conflict overwhelms
everything else. Our child gets in real trouble,
the kind that requires a lawyer. Our job
gets eliminated. I could go on. Life brings us all sorts of storms,
including ones that threaten to sink us.
How do we make it through them?
How do we stay calm in the midst of the wind and the waves? Instead of broken and weakened, how do we
come out better and stronger than before?
In this story, Jesus shows the way.
Let’s listen and hear what he has to say.
Storms will hit us.
That is not the question. The
question is, how do we survive them? How in the worst moments, do we hold onto
peace rather than get swept into panic? How
do we find ways not simply to make it through the storms, but to come out more
than we were before rather than less?
In this story, Jesus gives us the key.
The key lies in seeing that Jesus and the storms of our life have a lot
in common but with one crucial distinction, one that makes all the
difference.
But before we see that distinction, let’s look more
closely at this story. Some people like
to think of these stories as legends. It
seems so unbelievable. Could this really
have happened? Surely not, or if it
did, it was exaggerated.
But the story doesn’t let us go there. It makes it clear. We’re not talking a
legend here. We talking about something
that actually happened, that people remembered with startling clarity. How startling? In this brief little story, the writer Mark
includes all sorts of little details. He
tells us that Jesus went into the boat just as he was. What does that mean? To figure that out, we need to go back to
the beginning of the chapter, where Jesus rowed out from the shore to speak to
the crowd. Mark is telling us that
after he finished speaking, Jesus didn’t go back to shore. He just hopped from his speaking boat
directly to another boat to take him across. He just went as he was. Then Mark tells us that as the journey began
night was falling, and some other boats accompanied them out. Then he tells us that Jesus took a cushion
and laid down in the back of the boat.
Why does Mark include all these details?
Because, the one who told him the story, probably Peter, remembered
them. Nowhere in ancient literature do
we find a legend that reads like this.
No, the only thing that reads like this is history. This actually happened. And that’s important. Jesus did real acts of power in a real
world, our world. And have no doubt, Jesus
does an extraordinary act of power here.
The Sea of Galilee lies about 700 feet below sea
level, and about 30 miles away, Mount Carmel, reaches a height of 2000
feet. When the cool air of the
mountains hits the warm moist air of the Sea, huge storms erupt literally
within minutes. And because the Sea of
Galilee is relatively small, and shallow, these storms can whip up incredibly
high waves. Now Jesus’ disciples know
that. They’ve fished this water their
entire lives. But whatever storm
happened that day was way beyond the norm.
They honestly thought they were going to die.
A few years ago, I went night fishing with a friend in
the Keys. This man had fished for over
50 years, and he knew the water around him like the back of his hand. We caught a lot of fish, a lot. But then he saw a storm heading our
direction, and we began to go in. But
the storm moved more quickly than any of us thought. The rain began to hit us. The wind began to whip up. But I honestly didn’t think much of it. I’m
not much of a sailor. So I thought.
Heck, what’s a little storm? I noticed
that my friend, Martin seemed unusually intent on keeping the boat headed in,
and that our other companion, another fishing veteran was doing all he could to
help him. Only after we came close to
shore did I realize what was going on. The
waves around us had grown very high. And
Martin knew that if he let those waves and wind turn the boat off the vertical,
a wave would hit and capsize us. One
mistake and we would all die. And we
weren’t even really in the storm. We
were just trying to outrun it. It still
sobers me a bit when I think about it.
This storm that hit these disciples was far larger
than the one we were trying to outrun.
And this boat didn’t have any engine.
It had nothing really. And it
had already taken on so much water that it would be a miracle if it didn’t
sink. And in that moment, the disciples,
clearly panicking, wake Jesus up, who incredibly is sleeping through all of
this.
What Jesus does next blows them away, and it should
blow you away too. Jesus gets up, and yells. “Be quiet and stay quiet.” It’s like he’s talking to a kid whose noise
is driving him nuts. And the storm stops
like that. The winds cease. The waves disappear. The sea becomes like glass in a moment. Do you see it? Jesus doesn’t do any sort of magic
incantation. He doesn’t pull out a
wand. Jesus doesn’t even call on some
higher power. He is the higher
power. In just a few words, he stops
the storm, like that.
In the ancient world, water symbolized the power of
uncontrollable chaos, and for good reason.
No one can control a storm on the sea.
Such storms are pretty much the most uncontrollable thing in all of creation,
even today. Yet Jesus controls it with
a snap of his finger. As scared as they
were in the middle of the storm, the disciples are even more scared after. They’re thinking. Who is this guy? It is pretty cool, and all.
But here’s the question. Why did Jesus wait so long? Why did he let his friends almost die before
doing anything? Here’s the deal. Jesus is a lot like the storm. You can’t control him either. And the story makes clear. Jesus lets his friends go through
storms. In fact, he can even be sleeping
in the middle of them. Why? Who
knows? If Jesus had this sort of infinite
power, then even if Jesus explained his reasons, we probably wouldn’t get
it. Here’s the painful reality. Jesus will let you go through some pretty
hard stuff, and this side of heaven, you will likely never know why. Like the storm, you cannot control
Jesus.
But here’s the difference. The
storm doesn’t care about you. Jesus
does. Jesus loves you. That’s why after the storm, Jesus doesn’t
say. “Sorry, guys, I’m really a deep
sleeper. Sheesh that was a close
one. Thanks for waking me up.” No, he says.
“What is wrong with you? Why were
you so afraid? Don’t you get it?” But they don’t get it. They don’t get it at all. And you can understand. How can they know, really know that, that
they can trust Jesus no matter what?
Still, what alternative do you and I have? If the storm has the last word, then when
the wind and waves rise, we’re pretty much alone. Our existence is some weird quirk of
nature. And no matter how we fight,
eventually a storm will get us, even if it’s the slow moving storm called old
age.
But if Jesus loves us,
if Jesus ultimately controls every storm, then no matter how high the waves
get, we can have peace. When the wind
roars around us, we can be calm. Because
we know that no matter the storm, ultimately we will be ok. We can live these
words of Emily Bronté’s.
But how does that happen? How can we live, really live with this
assurance? We can look back at the
story that Mark echoes here. Mark echoes
here a very similar story of another storm, even uses some of the same words to
give us a clue. What is that storm? It’s the one in the book of Jonah. That
storm too threatened the lives of those in the midst of it. And in that story also, Jonah is
asleep. And they wake him up to plead
that he do something. And after the
storm ceases miraculously, they are also more terrified than they were in the
middle of it. But in that storm, there
is one crucial difference. To stop that
storm, Jonah tells the sailors, you need to throw me into it. For you to live, I must die. For you to survive, I must perish.
And Mark remembers this story. He remembers too Jesus’ story. He remembers how Jesus compared himself to
Jonah, saying that “one greater than Jonah is here.” And he lifts up the profound parallel. How can you know that Jesus loves you, really
loves you. Because Jesus became Jonah
for you. Jesus willingly threw himself
into the ultimate storm to save you. He
died so you might live. He perished so
you might survive. He jumped into the only
storm that can really destroy you, the one that separates you from the God who
created you. He took on that storm,
and unlike, Jonah he did die. But in
his death, he destroyed that storm. He
began a revolution that destroys every storm; that destroys death itself.
When you are in the middle of the storm, don’t
mistake the circumstances of your situation for the truth of your
situation. And the truth of your
situation is Jesus sleeping calmly in the back of the boat The truth of the situation is Jesus who with
a few words controls the uncontrollable.
The truth of the situation is that Jesus loves you so much that he threw
himself into the ultimate storm of evil and death to save you. And if you know that truth, if you let its reality
grasp you, then no matter the storm, Jesus will fill you with a peace that
passes understanding. You will know that no matter what happens, you
will always be ok. No storm will ever,
ever have the last word. Jesus has
that. And Jesus loves you. Jesus loves you more passionately, more
completely than you could ever comprehend.
Are you facing a storm? Do you see one on the horizon? Then know the truth of your situation. Let that truth know you, hold you; assure
you, that no matter what happens you will be ok. How can you trust that? Because Jesus guaranteed that assurance with
his very life.
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