Saved From Water: The Storm
Sermon
BIBLICAL PICTURES OF WATER
SEVEN SERMONS FOR LENT
Jesus performed many miracles during his ministry. These miracles didn't really prove that he was the Son of God, but they certainly did draw crowds. The disciples who have relayed these stories to us through the Gospels were part of those crowds, sometimes as reporters, sometimes as witnesses. The disciples, for instance, didn't really see the water become wine. That happened in an outer hallway. They must have heard the details from the servants or from Mary.
Other miracles they saw with their own eyes, like most of the healings and the raising of Lazarus from the dead and the time Jesus walked on water. In a few rare instances, the disciples actually participated in the miracles, like the feeding of the 5000 or the stilling of the storm. These were special miracles. In their own hands they held and distributed the miraculous bread and fish of the great feeding, and with their own hands they bailed the boats and manned the oars during the storm. To hold a miracle in your own hands can be a thrilling business.
If I could summon from the heavenly places one of the disciples to give us a first-hand account of the stilling of the storm, I guess I would ask for Peter. Peter ought to be a good story teller; he was never at a loss for words. Peter was also a man who loved challenge and excitement and adventure. Above all, Peter, more than any of the others, was a man of water.
I invite you, then, to use your imagination, to imagine we actually have here with us Saint Peter, the fisherman, the disciple, the bishop, the man of water, the man of the sea. Imagine him visiting us, talking to us, retelling once again the story of the storm. Listen to Peter's eyewitness account of a miracle:
(Peter's Monologue)
Thanks for inviting me. I love telling this story. I love storms, and water, and the sea. Do you know that I began going out in the boats with my father on my sixth birthday? The sea is my life. Fishing is my life - or at least it was. I fished until Jesus came along. He asked my brothers and me to become fishers of men; then we began to work for him. I still work for him. That's why I'm here.
Did you ever say to yourself, "If only I could talk to one of Jesus' disciples, then I'd get some answers". Well, here I am and now's your chance. Suppose you could ask one question, just one. What would it be? Think hard now.
Narrow it down to one. One question about Jesus. One probing question. I can feel it; I can hear it. The question most of you are asking is this: "What was Jesus really like?"
What he was like, at least what he seemed like to us disciples, was like the kind of friend you always wanted to be doing things for. We did do a lot of things for Jesus too, things he asked us to do - and a lot more that he didn't. We did our best to keep his life from getting cluttered up: the detail things, like getting food, arranging for land travel, boats, places to stay overnight in bad weather, things like that. When we did that, then he could concentrate on preaching and teaching and healing.
That's what he was doing that day by the seashore, the day of the storm. I remember that day very well. Jesus had been teaching a large crowd all day, and healing, too. It was evening and we were all dog tired and hungry. Jesus looked at me and pointed out over the Sea of Galilee and said, "Let's go across to the other side." He looked right at me when he said it. Then he turned to my brother Andrew. "Let's go across," he said. Andrew turned to me and whispered, "Now? He wants us to start across now?"
"Shush," I said, "He'll hear you."
"I don't care," he said. "It's going to be dark in an hour and there's no moon."
"I know that," I said, "but he wants to go."
Andrew said, "Where I want to go is to sleep. He says 'Let's go across the lake' just like there was nothing to it, just like the boat would sail itself across. We'll be up all night. I'm tired.
"I know you're tired," I said to him. "I'm tired, too. He must have a reason."
"Maybe his reason is that he wants us all to drown. Look at those clouds. We'll sail right into a storm. Just look."
Andrew was right. There was a storm scowling its way toward us from the north. I thought if we hurried we could beat it across - and certainly there would be plenty of wind for sailing. I got Andrew and we more or less whisked Jesus away from the crowd. We didn't give him time to pull off his cloak or anything. He just stepped into the boat and off we went. When we were out some distance, I tried to persuade him not to go across. I suggested we sleep in the boat offshore where the crowds wouldn't bother us. He just shook his head.
Then I suggested that by tacking out to the north a few miles, we could make our turn and come back to shore around the peninsula and put in there for the night. The crowd would think we had gone across and we could wait until morning - or at least until the storm had gone by. He just looked at me in that special way of his. He didn't say a word. "You really want to go across?" I asked. He nodded.
We rigged sail and started due east. There was plenty of wind. We were just sizzling along. If you've ever sailed you know what I mean. We had a foam trail going back as far as you could see.
About twenty minutes later, I looked back and Jesus was curled up in the stern, asleep.
What really got me that night were the other boats. We had two boats ourselves, but there were five other boats that sailed with us. They didn't have to go. Well, I suppose we didn't have to go either, but if you had been a frjend of Jesus and he had looked you in the eye and said, "Let's go across the lake," you would have gone across the lake; take my word tor it.
Those other boats didn't have to go. I guess they didn't want to lose him.. I don't knqw exactly how to say this. The thing is, you might say Jesus was the "action" that summer. He was making things happen around Galilee. He was fun to be with, exciting. It was spooky sometimes, with the healings and all, and you never knew what would happen next, but it was an exciting summer. I'll bet if there had been enough boats around, half the crowd would have sailed with us, storm or no storm, even at night. They were a strange, unpredictable crowd.
That crowd was sometimes a problem. Sometimes they were a downright pain. It was our job mostly, to keep the crowd under control. Let me tell you that was almost impossible, especially in those early months. How could you hold back sick people who thought they could be healed just by touching Jesus? Oh, they got pretty nasty, some of them. One man was so anxious to get near Jesus that he hit me across the knees with his crutch, and several so-called "ladies" kicked my shins in those crowds.
You couldn't predict Jesus either. Like that time you may have read about in your Bibles, the time with the kids. Early that afternoon he had said, "Could you get the crowd back a little? It's very confusing up here." Well, we tried, we reaiiy did. The trouble was the ones who wouldn't move that day were some young mothers carrying children. We were shouting at them and kind of pushing them back just when Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me." When you people read that story it makes us sound like a bunch of child molesters. Well, we weren't. We were just trying to keep things under control. I tell you, it was hard in those early months.
But I'm getting away from my story. You call it a miracle story, and that's what it was. Talk about water. We all saw too much water that night - walls of water, sheets of water in the wind, water sloshing into the boat. Then, all of a sudden, Jesus actually stopped that storm, that water, dead in its tracks. I've never seen anything like it.
Now there'll be a few of you who will consider some other theories, like maybe we sailed into the eye of the storm and that's why it got so calm. That could have happened, but it didn't. I considered that theory myself the next day. But I had been in the eye of a storm before, twice, and it wasn't the same. Andrew agreed with me. It wasn't the same.
We also considered it could have been one of those storms that come up fast and stop fast. I've been in dozens of them and so have most of you. It might have been one of those, but how then did Jesus know the exact moment to wake up and command the storm to stop? And anyway, even those fast-stopping storms do die down. This one didn't die down at all, it just stopped. "Snap!" Just like that. I've never seen anything like it.
The only real explanation - and I thought about it a long time - was that Jesus actually had control of the weather on that day. He didn't always; or maybe it didn't always matter. I remember how we got rained out something terrible on another day when he was teaching and preaching. The rain poured down and the whole crowd got drenched. Jesus could have stopped that one too, I guess, but I don't think it really mattered to him that much. Nobody was in any danger.
Do you know what he did? He just stood there smiling, sopping wet, hair matted down, water running down his cheeks, and he made up this story about rain being like forgiveness. It was a beautiful story about a boy who had lied to his mother. It's not in your Bible - and do you know why it's not? Because Matthew and Luke and all those other so-called evangelists were running up the hillside to hide under a tree, that's why. I was the only one who stayed out in the rain to listen. I love rain. I love water.
I used to tell that story sometimes in sermons. Great story. I could tell it to you here but you'd just get in trouble. You'd be off to town tomorrow morning and tell your friends you talked to the real Saint Peter yesterday and he told you a new parable of Jesus. For that they'd probably put you on the water wagon.
Anyway, the storm thing was a miracle. I think we were all so glad not to be swamped and drowned that we actually didn't think much about it until we got to shore the next day. I know I didn't. It says in Mark's book that we all said, "Who is this that the wind and sea obey him?"
Nobody said that in our boat. We might have been thinking it, but nobody said that or anything else for a long time. We were all too busy bailing. In our boat, when we had thrown out the last bucketful and were standing up to stretch our backs, Andrew wiped the sweat and rain off his face, flicked his fingers dry, then looked at Jesus and said, "Thanks." Jesus gave him the nicest smile. Then we all laughed. You know how you can laugh after you have been terrified? We all laughed like that - except for Jesus. He just chuckled at us and shook his head.
We saw a lot of miracles in those years. I've heard people say if they had really seen some of Jesus' miracles they would have an easier time with their faith. I don't think so. Sure the miracles were exciting; sure they drew crowds and they sometimes made us whisper and hush for a while afterwards, and they certainly made Jesus more of a mystery to us, but they didn't help my faith that much.
And remember this: the miracles didn't help Judas at all. He saw most of them - but he still sold out.
What really made me believe in Jesus was not that he could heal a blind man or feed 5000 people or quiet a storm in the middle of the sea. What made me love him and work for him and die for him was that he stilled the storm in my mind and in my heart.
Do you remember reading about what I did on Holy Thursday night, how I betrayed him? I don't even like to think about it, much less repeat what I said. It still hurts. I swore quite a bit, too, and I don't like to repeat that. Especially with all the little kids you have here. But I did it. Three straight times I did it, just like he had predicted. I swore and cussed and said I didn't know Jesus - never heard of him.
Do you know how he paid me back for that? He forgave me. That's why I believe in him, not because he could handle blindness or leprosy or storms. I believe in him because he forgave me.
That's why you should believe, too. He's also forgiven you and you should never forget it. Believe in miracles if you like, but never forget the real miracle is Jesus loves you and forgives you, just like he loved and forgave me. He can still storms in your heart; he can quiet the troubled waters in the depths of your soul. That's the real miracle.
I have to go back now. I'm looking forward to seeing all of you up there. It's not really up there - but it's there. I don't guard the pearly gates either. There aren't any pearly gates. Actually, there aren't any gates at all. But it's nice there. You'll like it. You'll meet lots of your friends again, and your family. We stay busy and it's fun. When your time comes, some of us will be there to meet you and help you across. There aren't any dangerous storms over on our side. Not in you. Not around you either.
I'll look for you. We could go fishing if you like.
O Savior, whose almighty word
The winds and waves submissive heard,
Who walked upon the foaming deep,
And calm amid the storm didst sleep:
O hear us when we cry to thee
For those in peril on the sea.
(William Whiting, 1825-1878)
Other miracles they saw with their own eyes, like most of the healings and the raising of Lazarus from the dead and the time Jesus walked on water. In a few rare instances, the disciples actually participated in the miracles, like the feeding of the 5000 or the stilling of the storm. These were special miracles. In their own hands they held and distributed the miraculous bread and fish of the great feeding, and with their own hands they bailed the boats and manned the oars during the storm. To hold a miracle in your own hands can be a thrilling business.
If I could summon from the heavenly places one of the disciples to give us a first-hand account of the stilling of the storm, I guess I would ask for Peter. Peter ought to be a good story teller; he was never at a loss for words. Peter was also a man who loved challenge and excitement and adventure. Above all, Peter, more than any of the others, was a man of water.
I invite you, then, to use your imagination, to imagine we actually have here with us Saint Peter, the fisherman, the disciple, the bishop, the man of water, the man of the sea. Imagine him visiting us, talking to us, retelling once again the story of the storm. Listen to Peter's eyewitness account of a miracle:
(Peter's Monologue)
Thanks for inviting me. I love telling this story. I love storms, and water, and the sea. Do you know that I began going out in the boats with my father on my sixth birthday? The sea is my life. Fishing is my life - or at least it was. I fished until Jesus came along. He asked my brothers and me to become fishers of men; then we began to work for him. I still work for him. That's why I'm here.
Did you ever say to yourself, "If only I could talk to one of Jesus' disciples, then I'd get some answers". Well, here I am and now's your chance. Suppose you could ask one question, just one. What would it be? Think hard now.
Narrow it down to one. One question about Jesus. One probing question. I can feel it; I can hear it. The question most of you are asking is this: "What was Jesus really like?"
What he was like, at least what he seemed like to us disciples, was like the kind of friend you always wanted to be doing things for. We did do a lot of things for Jesus too, things he asked us to do - and a lot more that he didn't. We did our best to keep his life from getting cluttered up: the detail things, like getting food, arranging for land travel, boats, places to stay overnight in bad weather, things like that. When we did that, then he could concentrate on preaching and teaching and healing.
That's what he was doing that day by the seashore, the day of the storm. I remember that day very well. Jesus had been teaching a large crowd all day, and healing, too. It was evening and we were all dog tired and hungry. Jesus looked at me and pointed out over the Sea of Galilee and said, "Let's go across to the other side." He looked right at me when he said it. Then he turned to my brother Andrew. "Let's go across," he said. Andrew turned to me and whispered, "Now? He wants us to start across now?"
"Shush," I said, "He'll hear you."
"I don't care," he said. "It's going to be dark in an hour and there's no moon."
"I know that," I said, "but he wants to go."
Andrew said, "Where I want to go is to sleep. He says 'Let's go across the lake' just like there was nothing to it, just like the boat would sail itself across. We'll be up all night. I'm tired.
"I know you're tired," I said to him. "I'm tired, too. He must have a reason."
"Maybe his reason is that he wants us all to drown. Look at those clouds. We'll sail right into a storm. Just look."
Andrew was right. There was a storm scowling its way toward us from the north. I thought if we hurried we could beat it across - and certainly there would be plenty of wind for sailing. I got Andrew and we more or less whisked Jesus away from the crowd. We didn't give him time to pull off his cloak or anything. He just stepped into the boat and off we went. When we were out some distance, I tried to persuade him not to go across. I suggested we sleep in the boat offshore where the crowds wouldn't bother us. He just shook his head.
Then I suggested that by tacking out to the north a few miles, we could make our turn and come back to shore around the peninsula and put in there for the night. The crowd would think we had gone across and we could wait until morning - or at least until the storm had gone by. He just looked at me in that special way of his. He didn't say a word. "You really want to go across?" I asked. He nodded.
We rigged sail and started due east. There was plenty of wind. We were just sizzling along. If you've ever sailed you know what I mean. We had a foam trail going back as far as you could see.
About twenty minutes later, I looked back and Jesus was curled up in the stern, asleep.
What really got me that night were the other boats. We had two boats ourselves, but there were five other boats that sailed with us. They didn't have to go. Well, I suppose we didn't have to go either, but if you had been a frjend of Jesus and he had looked you in the eye and said, "Let's go across the lake," you would have gone across the lake; take my word tor it.
Those other boats didn't have to go. I guess they didn't want to lose him.. I don't knqw exactly how to say this. The thing is, you might say Jesus was the "action" that summer. He was making things happen around Galilee. He was fun to be with, exciting. It was spooky sometimes, with the healings and all, and you never knew what would happen next, but it was an exciting summer. I'll bet if there had been enough boats around, half the crowd would have sailed with us, storm or no storm, even at night. They were a strange, unpredictable crowd.
That crowd was sometimes a problem. Sometimes they were a downright pain. It was our job mostly, to keep the crowd under control. Let me tell you that was almost impossible, especially in those early months. How could you hold back sick people who thought they could be healed just by touching Jesus? Oh, they got pretty nasty, some of them. One man was so anxious to get near Jesus that he hit me across the knees with his crutch, and several so-called "ladies" kicked my shins in those crowds.
You couldn't predict Jesus either. Like that time you may have read about in your Bibles, the time with the kids. Early that afternoon he had said, "Could you get the crowd back a little? It's very confusing up here." Well, we tried, we reaiiy did. The trouble was the ones who wouldn't move that day were some young mothers carrying children. We were shouting at them and kind of pushing them back just when Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me." When you people read that story it makes us sound like a bunch of child molesters. Well, we weren't. We were just trying to keep things under control. I tell you, it was hard in those early months.
But I'm getting away from my story. You call it a miracle story, and that's what it was. Talk about water. We all saw too much water that night - walls of water, sheets of water in the wind, water sloshing into the boat. Then, all of a sudden, Jesus actually stopped that storm, that water, dead in its tracks. I've never seen anything like it.
Now there'll be a few of you who will consider some other theories, like maybe we sailed into the eye of the storm and that's why it got so calm. That could have happened, but it didn't. I considered that theory myself the next day. But I had been in the eye of a storm before, twice, and it wasn't the same. Andrew agreed with me. It wasn't the same.
We also considered it could have been one of those storms that come up fast and stop fast. I've been in dozens of them and so have most of you. It might have been one of those, but how then did Jesus know the exact moment to wake up and command the storm to stop? And anyway, even those fast-stopping storms do die down. This one didn't die down at all, it just stopped. "Snap!" Just like that. I've never seen anything like it.
The only real explanation - and I thought about it a long time - was that Jesus actually had control of the weather on that day. He didn't always; or maybe it didn't always matter. I remember how we got rained out something terrible on another day when he was teaching and preaching. The rain poured down and the whole crowd got drenched. Jesus could have stopped that one too, I guess, but I don't think it really mattered to him that much. Nobody was in any danger.
Do you know what he did? He just stood there smiling, sopping wet, hair matted down, water running down his cheeks, and he made up this story about rain being like forgiveness. It was a beautiful story about a boy who had lied to his mother. It's not in your Bible - and do you know why it's not? Because Matthew and Luke and all those other so-called evangelists were running up the hillside to hide under a tree, that's why. I was the only one who stayed out in the rain to listen. I love rain. I love water.
I used to tell that story sometimes in sermons. Great story. I could tell it to you here but you'd just get in trouble. You'd be off to town tomorrow morning and tell your friends you talked to the real Saint Peter yesterday and he told you a new parable of Jesus. For that they'd probably put you on the water wagon.
Anyway, the storm thing was a miracle. I think we were all so glad not to be swamped and drowned that we actually didn't think much about it until we got to shore the next day. I know I didn't. It says in Mark's book that we all said, "Who is this that the wind and sea obey him?"
Nobody said that in our boat. We might have been thinking it, but nobody said that or anything else for a long time. We were all too busy bailing. In our boat, when we had thrown out the last bucketful and were standing up to stretch our backs, Andrew wiped the sweat and rain off his face, flicked his fingers dry, then looked at Jesus and said, "Thanks." Jesus gave him the nicest smile. Then we all laughed. You know how you can laugh after you have been terrified? We all laughed like that - except for Jesus. He just chuckled at us and shook his head.
We saw a lot of miracles in those years. I've heard people say if they had really seen some of Jesus' miracles they would have an easier time with their faith. I don't think so. Sure the miracles were exciting; sure they drew crowds and they sometimes made us whisper and hush for a while afterwards, and they certainly made Jesus more of a mystery to us, but they didn't help my faith that much.
And remember this: the miracles didn't help Judas at all. He saw most of them - but he still sold out.
What really made me believe in Jesus was not that he could heal a blind man or feed 5000 people or quiet a storm in the middle of the sea. What made me love him and work for him and die for him was that he stilled the storm in my mind and in my heart.
Do you remember reading about what I did on Holy Thursday night, how I betrayed him? I don't even like to think about it, much less repeat what I said. It still hurts. I swore quite a bit, too, and I don't like to repeat that. Especially with all the little kids you have here. But I did it. Three straight times I did it, just like he had predicted. I swore and cussed and said I didn't know Jesus - never heard of him.
Do you know how he paid me back for that? He forgave me. That's why I believe in him, not because he could handle blindness or leprosy or storms. I believe in him because he forgave me.
That's why you should believe, too. He's also forgiven you and you should never forget it. Believe in miracles if you like, but never forget the real miracle is Jesus loves you and forgives you, just like he loved and forgave me. He can still storms in your heart; he can quiet the troubled waters in the depths of your soul. That's the real miracle.
I have to go back now. I'm looking forward to seeing all of you up there. It's not really up there - but it's there. I don't guard the pearly gates either. There aren't any pearly gates. Actually, there aren't any gates at all. But it's nice there. You'll like it. You'll meet lots of your friends again, and your family. We stay busy and it's fun. When your time comes, some of us will be there to meet you and help you across. There aren't any dangerous storms over on our side. Not in you. Not around you either.
I'll look for you. We could go fishing if you like.
O Savior, whose almighty word
The winds and waves submissive heard,
Who walked upon the foaming deep,
And calm amid the storm didst sleep:
O hear us when we cry to thee
For those in peril on the sea.
(William Whiting, 1825-1878)
