I had the joy of preaching at a baptism this morning, the gospel reading was Luke's version of something I prepared a three minute homily on from Mark's gospel last summer. This sermon takes that and develops it more fully. The reading is Luke 8:22-25
Have you ever experienced a storm at sea? It really is something. If I take us back through the time vortex 18 years Mike and myself were sailing back from Hamburg in a force 8 gale. Now I say “sailing” and it sounds really rather quaint but we were in this great big ship which must have been worlds apart from what our disciples are experiencing in today’s gospel reading.
We’d been woken in the night due to the rather vigorous motion of the boat and throughout the morning it just got worse and worse. It was a horrible feeling of everything being beyond our control, but it never really felt unsafe, the worst thing we had to deal with was some extreme motion sickness, particularly the group of 6th form students who’d been enjoying the cocktail lounge the night before.
It never felt like we were in danger, it was a big sturdy ship and we trusted our crew to get us back to the harbour safely. Although I have to say that this is just who I remember the events, if I think back really hard I’m sure we must have encountered some of our fellow passengers who were really panicking and anxious, I’m saying I felt safe but I have no idea how anyone else interpreted the situation, how frightened or anxious they were.
The sea and water, as we all know, can be deadly. It’s a metaphor we see again and again in scripture, particularly in the psalms and it’s interesting to look at the Jewish people’s relationship with the sea as a chaos which can envelope us or a darkness to be overcome. Yet the imagery of water in both the Jewish and our own tradition is very different- our baptism service is full of imagery of water as a power to cleanse and renew us- but there’s also the image of water as life-giving and sustaining, and of rebirth as the newly baptised, as Lexi will be today, are reborn to life in Christ.
We see in the gospel reading today that Jesus’ companions are really panicking about the storm they’re encountering, whilst Jesus seems oblivious. Jesus may have known that everything would be ok but the disciples don’t, and there’s experienced fisherman amongst them, they know how serious this can be and unlike me in my state of the art steel cruise liner this is presumably a reasonably small wooden boat, filling with water and at serious risk of sinking. By the time they wake Jesus up blind panic has set in…
…And then with a few words from Jesus chaos reverts to calm, order is restored and those who’ve witnessed it are left asking “who then is this?” Jesus is rebuking the disciples too, which makes me feel really sorry for them. They know the water, they know they can be killed, but they don’t know, don’t really know, that this man can stop it with a word. Yes they’re amazed and yes they’re afraid. They’ve been confronted with the reality of who Jesus is and that is both wonderful and terrifying.
If we travel back to the beginning of the Old Testament and the beautiful creation poem we see order coming out of disorder, God creating a world with a natural, created order, with rules – scientific rules of physics, biology and chemistry, although in creation there’re reminders that it’s still an ongoing process. Sometimes this still evolving planet gives us glimpses that chaos isn’t that far away; earthquakes, volcanoes, storms; we have better understanding than our ancestors of why and when these things can occur, but nothing in these seemingly chaotic occurrences breaks the rules of the world God has created.
What does break the rules is Jesus. Any abstract ideas or beliefs, or any theories his followers had have now stopped being theoretical, they’re confronted with an overwhelming display of power that can’t be reasoned or rationalised.
This man who looks like them, has a background like theirs, has a family like theirs, just rebuked the wind and sea, and the wind and sea listened. I think that would cause the disciples to be afraid of Jesus, and even more than that- to fear what this means, to generate more questions, because as they try to fathom “who then is this” they also have to confront “who then am I?” and “what does this mean for my life?”
When any of us is confronted with the reality of who Jesus is, that he’s from God and is God, it has to change us. We can’t know and believe that and then be left unchanged; because if we believe Jesus is who he shows us he is, we have to believe in the things that he said and did, and if we believe in those things we have to start living them; and that’s not easy. It can involve a total deconstruction and reconstruction of our lives, motivations and principles.
We can often feel like the disciples in the storm, overwhelmed by chaos, waiting for God’s intervention. Sometimes it feels like everything is out of control around us, and we look to see where God can possibly be in any of it and hope that God will calm the storm. Sometimes this passage is called the gospel for the overwhelmed, but there’s also a message there that God’s presence and intervention can be unnerving, as can the times when it feels God is napping during our own storms and crises.
Right now, the world on many levels feels like it’s in a time of flux, a time of chaos, whether that's politically, environmentally or spiritually. It’s a time that we more than ever need to set ourselves apart as being a part of something different, of belonging to Jesus, living out the truths he’s demonstrated to us. More than ever we need to honour the truth of who Jesus is; by standing with the marginalised, stewarding creation, loving and welcoming radically and with our entire lives. So much is beyond our control, but this isn’t, and when we bring a child to be baptised into the faith of Christ, as Abby and Alicia have today, this is the faith we’re offering, which we offer Lexi today.
Jesus asks “Where is your faith?” after the disciples witness his power. When we’re waiting out our own storms sometimes faith is all we have, and the knowledge that the gospel stories don’t end with “my God, why have you forsaken me?” but with God overcoming the very worst that humanity could do, and the disciples finally knowing, really knowing “who then is this”, and as we must be when we come to that truth, forever being changed by it.
