I just reworked a favorite sermon. Let me know what you think …
I was scared.
Even I was scared. I’ve fished this lake since I was eight and swum in it since I was four. I know it. I respect its power. But I’ve not been scared by it. I’ve been in storms, some pretty wild storms. But I’ve not been scared. I know what the boat can do and I know what I can do.
But this time it was different. Too many people in the boat and some of them never in weather like this. They were panicking and I was scared. We couldn’t make any headway. We couldn’t manage the boat. The wind was too much. The waves were too much. The water was coming in, fast, too fast, faster than we could push it out. We used the oars to steady the boat, to quarter the waves, but it was too much. We couldn’t hold the angle, we couldn’t stabilize the boat, we couldn’t keep the water out. And the more water we took, the worse it got.
We were going nowhere but down. We were going down and Jesus with us.
I should have seen it coming. The lake can kick up rugged weather with little warning, but I should have seen it coming. We were so eager to get away, to get away from all the people, to get away all from the clamor, just to get away. Even Jesus seemed anxious to go.
It was late. We’d been there all day at the water’s edge. We thought we’d have enough light to make the crossing. We wanted to go, Jesus wanted to go, and we’ve grown used to doing what Jesus wanted. But I know this lake. I should have seen it coming. I should have known better. I should have said something.
So there we were in the boat in the storm and I was scared. There was little to do. My body, hands and arms, were busy — pulling an oar, grabbing a gunwale, heaving a bucketful — but my mind was strangely still, watching, just watching. Watching the awesome power of wind and waves. Watching our futile gestures in response. Watching my friends. How real they were to me in that moment! How real the wind and waves were to me in that moment! How real death was to me in that moment …
I felt death draw close. I tasted my breath and it tasted good. I would die, but I would taste death, too.
I looked at my friends and they looked at me and without words we shared the awful exhilaration of that moment, poised at the threshold between life and death. I looked toward Jesus, and there he was asleep on the stern seat! I screamed at him.
It’s not that I didn’t understand his exhaustion. We were exhausted, too. But we were boatmen and it was time for us to do our job. Jesus had been doing his job all day. Jesus had been doing his job for many days. It was crazy — hordes of people, crowding to listen, pushing close to see, forcing us to the water’s edge and beyond. Jesus in the boat speaking in puzzles. People eager to listen even when they couldn’t understand. People waiting to see what he would do, waiting to see if the rumors were true, waiting to see something, because maybe there was something.
It was exciting to be near Jesus, to be among the company of his followers, to play a part in this remarkable movement was so stirring the countryside. But, at the same time, I wanted to be rid of the crowds, to have some time alone with this compelling man I had left home for. I was glad we were going away. I was glad we were going away with Jesus. I looked forward to those intimate conversations when Jesus would patiently answer our questions and open our minds and hearts to worlds we had not conceived before. But now the storm and Jesus sleeping.
I screamed at him. “Don’t you care?”
He had seemed to care so much, not just about his mission, but about us. But now, what difference does it make? We were going down with a holy man asleep in the stern. What difference does it make who’s asleep in the stern?
All that heady talk suddenly seemed beside the point, ethereal, unreal. The storm was real. The storm was everything that was real.
They say that calamity makes a pray-er out of you, but I say they say wrong. I had no time to pray, no space for the luxury of spiritual conversation. It was time not to think, but to struggle. It was time to live or die. Fear has a marvelous way of clearing away all the fluff. Death has a marvelous way of focussing the mind. You want power. Feel the wave. You want truth. Drink the wind.
I shook him, I screamed in his face, and he awoke. He sat up on the stern seat and he spoke. At least I think he spoke. It was hard to distinguish words from wind. He didn’t shout. He didn’t plead. He simply spoke. Not to us. Not, it seemed, to God. It seemed that he spoke to the wind itself.
And then it was calm …………
And then it was calm. Not the stale, ominous calm when the storm collects itself just before unleashing its fury. Not the heavy, burdensome calm when air hangs limp and stifling. Not the dead calm when it seems as if, for a moment, life itself is holding its breath. No, it was a calm of water moving, almost imperceptibly, but surely moving, gently lifting and receding, of air still, yet alive, breathing, filling, enlivening, refreshing. It didn’t happen suddenly. It didn’t happen slowly. It just happened. We were in the storm and then it was calm.
The water in the boat sloshed gently back and forth as we bailed. I wanted to look at him, but I didn’t dare. I wanted to hear him speak, but I didn’t know what to ask.
The lake was still, but my heart was not. The squall was passed, but something else now scared me even more than the storm. I had looked beyond life’s edges, I had been to the other side of the storm, and Jesus was there. Jesus took me there. And I didn’t know what I would find there …