How could Jesus sleep so soundly in the midst of this morning’s raging storm? Isn’t it amazing? I think it’s really quite humorous. Raging winds, waves crashing over the boat, so that literally it “was being-filled-to-the-brim.” Jesus has got to be soaking wet, yet he sleeps on peacefully. Of course. After days of going on foot from village to village, preaching and healing crowds of people, the Man must have been completely exhausted. Fortunately, some thoughtful apostle had tossed a pillow into the boat along with the nets, like my mom used to do- throw an old pillow in the back seat of the car for a nap on a long trip. In any event, Jesus is sopping wet; his cushion is soaked. And he just keeps sleeping.
More amazingly, as the apostles wake him in their panic, Jesus is completely unruffled. I imagine him sitting up, wiping his wet face with his broad hand, then pulling both hands over his head and the dripping ringlets of his dark hair. Calmly blinking his eyes, he rises, tells the nervous fishermen not to be afraid, and then commands the wind and waves to pipe down. He scolds the wind for its bluster and tells the waves, “Quiet now. Shhhh. That’s enough.” Majestically, with quiet authority, he commands the wind and sea as he did when exorcising demons: “Peace! Be still.” I bet he didn’t have to yell. Demons, diseases, wind and sea- they all obey. They know they’re done for..
Immediately there is stillness and peace. An epiphany- revealing the beauty of Jesus’ divinity, of his Otherness. So nobly expressing his authority over the winds and the waters of the deep. Jesus is truly Adonai of the Psalms, the Lord of all creation: “Greater than the roar of mighty waters, more glorious than the surging of the sea, the Lord glorious on high.” His voice “resounding on the waters, on the immensity of waters. The voice of the Lord full of splendor.”
Now if the sea was the place of the disciples’ life and their livelihood, it was also believed to be the abode of demons and chaos, and so a place of terror and perhaps of terrifying memories- friends and companions who had drowned, never returning home after a fishing trip because of a sudden storm. Probably none of them could swim; the sea was not a place for holidays. The sea was the place for hard, even dangerous work, often done in the dark of night. The stormy sea represents all that is wobbly and undefined, all that is strange, frightening and uncontrollable, unpredictable; all that is dark and chaotic in their lives, in our lives, in our world; all the danger and precarity, the falling-apart of things, of situations, the chaos which is far too familiar. The good news? God in Christ has come to immerse himself in the whole soggy mess with us, to conquer all those demonic forces that threaten and would impede God’s desire for the world. Jesus confronts them all- in his healings, his exorcisms, this morning as he calms the sea, and on the cross, in his final confrontation, when he will detoxify the evil and chaos we could never ever have tackled on our own.
Jesus is always with us- in the same boat. And truly we could say that water is his medium while here on earth. It’s where his life begins floating in the womb of Mary, later on he receives baptism in the Jordan River to express his solidarity with us, then he will make clear water a rich red wine to save a wedding feast, he will calmly walk across water, today he quiets its rambunctiousness, and finally when his heart is gashed open on the cross and blood and water rush out from his pierced heart, then and there he himself will become a fountain of Lifegiving Water to cleanse and heal and console us forever.
My dear sisters and brothers, there are far too many storms in our hearts, in our world. And if Jesus seems to us to be sleeping, all the better, for then we are forced to be desperate and beg him incessantly. Our awareness of the falling-apartness of things is always a hard grace offered to us. All we can do is keep waking Him, “Don’t you care that we’re drowning in this mess?” This desperation is grace. Let him rebuke us for our lack of faith if he wants to. Whenever will we have enough faith anyway? And the needier we are, the more impossible situations may seem, the greater our opportunity.
Jesus has come to heal our “damaged and distorted world,” to restore it to the integrity God dreams for it, so that the beauty of God’s reign may be become more and more palpable. He is the Fountain of Life-giving Water, that is our only Hope. Let us go to him.
