Trinity 2
June 20, 2006

The Voice of the Storm
by Anne Le Bas

Jesus was tired. Anyone would have been. The crowds had hemmed him in all
day; so many that he had had to teach them from a boat, floating just off
shore on the Sea of Galilee. He had told them about sowers, sowing their
seeds in the field. He had told them about lamps hidden under baskets, and
mustard seeds that grew into great trees. He had tried to explain the
kingdom of God, and to be honest not one in a hundred of them seemed to
have a clue what he was going on about – not even among the disciples was
there any real understanding.

So at the end of the day he was exhausted. “That’s it,” he said to them,”
let’s head off to the other side of the lake.” And they, good friends that
they were, saw that here, at last was something they could do for him.
They might not have known what he was on about with all these stories he
had been telling all day, but they knew about boats. They could take him
safely across the water.

“Lay down and have a rest, Jesus, - put your feet up, close your eyes – we
can look after you now instead of you looking after us.”  “They took him
with them in the boat – just as he was” – that is what the Gospel tells us.
And Jesus sank down onto the cushion in the stern of the boat, and fell
asleep.

The disciples got on with doing what most of them did best. The Sea of
Galilee was a second home to a lot of these men. It was where they made
their living, where they had grown up.

You can imagine the first part of the journey. The sun sinking towards the
horizon, the water lapping against the boat, the ripple of the wind on the
sails. An idyllic scene.

But then, all of a sudden, everything changed, as it does in that area. A
storm blew up. The waves, which had been gently rocking the boat suddenly
threatened to overwhelm it. The water was coming in faster than the
disciples could bale it out.

But Jesus slept on.

Eventually the disciples couldn’t stand it any more. They woke him in a
panic. “Teacher,” they shout above the roar of the wind. “Teacher” – notice
that. It’s not “Jesus” but “Teacher” – he’s the one who is supposed to know
what’s what. They have put him back up there on the pedestal – they are
expecting something from him.

“Don’t you care that we are perishing?” they shout.

And Jesus, we are told,  wakes up, rebukes the wind, and says to the
sea “Peace, be still”

And the storm dies down and there is dead calm.

It’s a dramatic and puzzling story – one of several in which Jesus shows
his command over the elements. These are stories which grab our
imagination. We all know what storms are like – storms on the sea or storms
on the land. We know what it feels like when a peaceful landscape or
seascape is turned into a frightening and dangerous place by the wind. I
imagine many of us have vivid memories of the storm of 1987, when so much
havoc was wrought. We can remember the powerlessness we felt in the face of
something so much stronger than ourselves. There was nothing we could do
except wait it out, and hope all would be well.

But this story isn’t just about those sort of storms – they only come now
and then, after all. I think its real power is in what it says about the
other sorts of storms we face. The storms of illness, unemployment,
relationship breakdown, the death of someone we love. Many of us, at some
point, will have had that terrifying feeling of being out of our depth, in
danger of being swamped, overwhelmed by the demands of our lives and the
emotions we feel.

Sometimes we’ll have woken up in the morning and thought, “How on earth
will I get through this day, this week, with all I have to get done, with
all I must face?” Little things will feel impossible – the straws that
break the camel’s back, and we’ll be terrified that we won’t be able to
cope.

That’s what the disciples were feeling as the storm raged around them. They
hadn’t sunk – yet – but they could see that they were going to, and there
was nothing they could do about it. No wonder they were panicking.
But what does their experience have to tell us that will help when we face
our own storms?

Mark’s gospel – though it is short – is very carefully put together, and he
makes every word count. So, to understand it you often have to look in
close detail at what he writes. And the detail we need to pay attention to
here is the words Jesus says to the storm as he wakes up from his
sleep. “Peace, be still” is the translation we heard today. But in the
Greek that’s not quite what it says.

The Greek is “Siopa, pefimoso”. Siopa is an onomatopoeic word – that means
it sounds like it the thing it means. “Siopa” – if you listen you can hear
that it simply means “shh – be quiet”. And pefimoso comes from the
word “muzzle”. It means “to shut the mouth”. So what Jesus actually says
to the storm is “Shh– shut up”. He tells the storm to stop shouting. And
that is the key. It isn’t just the storm that is the problem, it’s what the
storm is saying to these disciples – the message it is giving them – what
they are understanding through it, that is making them panic.

As the storm rages outside them, another sort of storm rages within,
shouting to them that they are useless, failures – even at sailing. They
should have been able to cope with this storm. They are fishermen – this is
what they do. They had been so confident when they set out. “Put your head
down Jesus, we’re the experts here.  We may not know much about theology,
but sailing is our thing.” But they couldn’t even get this short journey
right. The storm is telling them that they can’t cope, that they are about
to die, and, worst of all, that they are alone. When they wake Jesus up,
what is their cry? Not  “help us!” but  “Don’t you care…?” That is their
worst fear – not that they are drowning, but that they have been abandoned.

We probably all know what storm voices sound like. When things go wrong,
what do we think to ourselves, what are the messages that shout loudest in
us? Often it is things like “I must have done something very wrong to
deserve this,” or “ What a fool I am, I should have seen this coming.”
or “I’m useless – I always thought I was, but now I know it”, and, like
these disciples, the storm voices often tell us that no one cares, that we
are all on our own.

These messages of blame, powerlessness, hopelessness, abandonment sap our
courage, confidence and resolve – the very resources we need in times of
trouble. And soon we find we are being pulled under by despair and panic.
They are usually voices we have learnt to hear from childhood, the voices
of family and society, and they are very deep rooted.

The fears that assail these disciples have equally deep roots – but Jesus
knows that they need to be dealt with. “Why are you afraid?” he says to
them, when the storm is over. Not, “why WERE you afraid?” Thinking you are
drowning is bound to be frightening, but now, in the calm after the storm
Jesus knows that the deep down fears that came out in their desperate
cry, “don’t you care?” are still there waiting to surface again when
trouble next strikes. It’s not just the wind and the waves on the sea of
Galilee, but the storm voices in their souls that need addressing, because
there will be plenty of storms coming in the future for these disciples.
Not storms like this one, but storms that will be equally terrifying.  They
will soon face the storm of Jesus’ death, when all their hopes and plans
seem to have come to nothing. And later many of them will face the storms
of their own persecution and death too. The memory of this moment, when
even the wind and waves gave way before Christ’s voice will be vital to
them.

St. Paul knew a great deal about the storms of life too – he faced
persecution and danger almost daily. He tells the Corinthians about it in
our second reading today – afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings,
imprisonments. But in the midst of these desperate situations he has found
peace. He has learnt to hear the voice of God which tells him that even if
he is dying “see – we are alive!” that, though he has nothing, yet really
he possesses everything he could possibly need.

There's no shortcut to this sort of assurance. You get it by going through
the storms, not by avoiding them. You get it by finding the courage to
shout at God when you need to, when it feels as if he is asleep - "don't
you care?” Only then can you find that he does.

Perhaps today you have come to church frightened that some storm in your
life is about to pull you under. Perhaps that’s something you’ve known in
the past. The messages of those storms shout loudly at us, but the voice of
God, when we have learned to hear it is strong and firm cutting through the
clamour with the truth of his love just as faithfully now as it did on the
sea of Galilee. “Peace – be still” he says to us – you are held in the
everlasting arms of the creator of the wind and sea, the one whom they will
never defeat.
Amen.

(Comments to Anne at annelebas@DSL.PIPEX.COM.)