Series: The Voyage of Life What does it mean to be in the boat with Jesus? Part II: Stormy Weather C. Gray Norsworthy Johns Creek Presbyterian Church April 17, 2016 One day Jesus said to his disciples, Let us go over to the other side of the lake. So they got into a boat and set out. As they sailed, he fell asleep. A squall came down on the lake, so that the boat was being swamped, and they were in great danger. The disciples went and woke him, saying, Master, Master, we re going to drown! He got up and rebuked the wind and the raging waters; the storm subsided, and all was calm. Where is your faith? he asked his disciples. In fear and amazement they asked one another, Who is this? He commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him. -- Luke 8:22-25, NIV What does it mean to be in the boat with Jesus? That is what we began talking about last week. This series of messages is focusing on The Voyage of Life this journey that we are all taking. We set the stage last week by looking at a series of four paintings by the American landscape artist Thomas Cole. Cole s paintings show his interpretation of the four stages of life as he sees it. These include childhood, youth, manhood, and old age. Each picture shows an actual boat with a man in it moving down the river through these stages of life. To remind us what that looks like, I want to show you a brief video created by the composer William Low featuring Cole s paintings and his own music. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ml8cx5wpsyg) While Cole paints the voyage of life in the four stages that show periods of life, we are looking at four stories from the Bible that shows us stages of our spiritual lives. And like each of Cole s paintings, each story we are going to talk about has a boat in it. Last week we began with the story of Jesus taking the disciples out in a boat into the deeper water to go fishing, in spite of the fact they had caught nothing the night before. But this time they catch so many fish that their boat is about to sink. Jesus then invites them to follow him and learn to fish for men and women. We said that God also calls each one of us -- first to follow Jesus, and secondly, to fulfill the calling in life each one of us was uniquely created to fill. Today s story about Jesus and a boat takes place on the same lake, but this time Jesus invites the disciples to go with him in a boat to the other side of the lake. While they are heading across the lake, Jesus falls asleep. A sudden storm comes up, which is not uncommon. I have actually been there twice, and I have seen that lake as smooth as glass and choppy enough to see whitecaps. As in our previous story, the boat begins to sink but this time it is not because it is full of fish, but water coming over the sides. The disciples are afraid so they wake Jesus up, telling him they may soon drown. And Jesus gets up, rebukes the storm, and it all goes calm. He looks at the disciples and asks them where their faith is. And with a different kind of fear than simply being afraid of drowning in the storm more of a sense of amazement and awe the disciples ask each 1
other, Who is this? He commands even the winds and water, and they obey him. (Luke8:25, NIV) Now first of all, we may have a hard time getting past the idea that Jesus or anyone could be asleep during a storm in a boat. But, sometimes we do sleep through storms, don t we? A few weeks ago the news talked about some serious storms that were supposed to move through our area and wake us up in the night. Well, I didn t wake up. The next day I said something to my wife about the storm never coming through, to which she told me that the storm sure woke her up. But, I just slept right through it. And last Sunday afternoon I came home and started watching the Masters. Jordan Spieth seemed to have the lead well in hand. It was actually getting kind of boring, so I dozed off there on the couch with Jordan five strokes ahead. When I woke up he was two strokes behind. What happened? Later Spieth would describe those few holes as thirty minutes of his life he hoped he would never have to live through again. It was a storm of a different kind, and I just slept through the whole thing! So, why was Jesus asleep in the storm? Was he bored? Maybe he was just really tired he was fully human and fully divine. Maybe the crowds had just worn him out. But, I think Jesus could sleep in the boat, even in the middle of the storm, because he had no fear and no anxiety. The winds and the water were in chaos, but remember that Jesus was there at creation when they were first formed. He was the Word of God made flesh that John talks about in his gospel, who moved over the formless void -- the word that said Let there be... So perhaps Jesus could rest or even sleep knowing that this storm, as terrifying as it may seem to the disciples, would not destroy what God had planned. And God s plans were not for Jesus and the disciples to die in that storm. So, Jesus was not afraid. Now at first the disciples were afraid of the storm, feeling helpless and out of control. But, when Jesus calms the storm, the disciples fear is changed. It was transformed from being afraid of something, to the kind of fear that is often described as awe or reverence. The first kind of fear is the kind to which Jesus speaks the words, Fear not, and don t be afraid! But, the second kind of fear is what I think we all need in our lives. It is the kind the Psalms talk about when it says, The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom. (Psalm 11:10a, NIV) My sense is that today we are losing this second kind of healthy fear. More and more when I hear people talk about God, especially out of the church, it is often in some joking manner. They seem to be saying that if God even exists, God is certainly not to be taken seriously. Or sometimes within the church, people talk about God, but God seems to be like their best buddy. And God s main job is just to make us feel good about ourselves, or help us out of a jam when we get into trouble. But with that approach, who needs reverence and awe for God? Yet, if we miss out on this, I think we miss out on something very basic to who God is. Remember that when the disciples see what Jesus does with the storm, they ask the question: Who is this? I think our tendency is to try and make God into our image or what we want God to be. Freud said as much when he thought that all religion was simply wish fulfillment. Freud believed we all have an unconscious need to have a perfect loving father to fulfill all the needs in our lives, so we create a great father in the sky to do that. The problem with Freud's viewpoint is that no one 2
would ever create on their own the God of the Old and New Testaments. That God, while good, is just too unpredictable. God is not like an idol whom you can try to control by making the right kinds of sacrifices. And God is not like the Greek gods who seemed to be far from perfect and enjoyed messing with people on earth, or as Shakespeare put it in King Lear, As flies to wanton boys are we to th gods, They kill us for their sport. (King Lear, Act 4, scene 1, 36 37) God is not what anyone of us would have or could have created. But God, while beyond our control, is still loving and just. C.S. Lewis reminds us of this in the Narnia stories. Lewis creates the character of Aslan, the lion Christ-figure. One character asks if Aslan is safe. Another character responds that Aslan is not safe, but he is good. God is not safe, but God is good -- and that should inspire a sense of reverent fear in us. That is not because we are afraid of God getting us, but because we find ourselves in the presence of the divine like the disciples did when Jesus calmed the storm. When we face storms in life, we may find ourselves asking questions like the disciples did. This same story of Jesus calming the storm is told in the gospels of Matthew and Mark. If you bring together all the questions the disciples asked from each of these accounts, they ask: Do you not care if we perish? Who is this? and What sort of man is this? And Jesus also has his own list of questions for them: Where is your faith? Why are you so afraid? Have you no faith? I think there is something about being in the middle of the storm in life that raises questions. Maybe you are going through some kind of storm today, or have gone through one recently. You find yourself asking, Why is this happening to me? Where is God in all of this? and How do I get through this? A crisis such as a storm, real or symbolic, raises these kinds of questions. So, how do we survive the storm? I believe it all goes back to being in the boat with Jesus. Because we are in the boat with Jesus, as we make the voyage of life, we will be okay. Now, most of us would probably like to avoid the storms of life altogether. Last week we looked at the paintings of Thomas Cole, but today I want to show you how Rembrandt paints this story. (http://www.soulshepherding.org/2013/03/with-jesus-in-the-storm-on-the-sea-of-galilee-ameditation-on-rembrandts-painting/) This painting is probably closest to Cole s painting called Manhood that shows the man beneath stormy skies, heading down the river of life, about to head over what looks like a waterfall. Rembrandt shows the disciples in the boat being battered by huge waves. Jesus is in the back and most of the disciples are either looking at him, the storm, or getting sick over the side of the boat. If you count the people in the boat, there should be thirteen Jesus and the twelve disciples. But in this painting there are fourteen. Most people think that Rembrandt has painted himself into this painting as he did in others, and that he is the man standing there in blue, holding on to the rope the only one looking at us. Maybe he is asking us if we will choose to get in the boat with Jesus. Now if it were up to some of us, my guess is that we would prefer a boat that is nice, where it is calm out on the lake with Jesus. Or, maybe that is a little too basic for us, so we would want something more like this a cruise ship. And then we could thank God for letting us get on the cruise ship with Jesus. 3
Author Skye Jethani has recently written a book called How Churches Became Cruise Ships: A Survival Guide for Seasick Christians. He talks about how ocean liners were originally called that because they took people across the ocean from point A to point B -- usually in a straight line. But when airliners came along you could get there much faster, so ocean liners had to find a new thing. Ocean liners became cruise ships. This usually meant that you left out of one port, went out and cruised around for a while, entertained the folks on board and then came back to the same port. No longer did ocean liners get people to where they needed to go. They simply entertained them and brought them back to the same place. Jethani asks whether churches have become a version of today's cruise ships instead of getting people to where they need to go to heaven, to be mature disciples of Christ, or to be transformers of the world we simply get folks on board, entertain them for a while, and return them back to where they started -- but basically unchanged. But, we were not called to get on a cruise ship with Jesus. We are called to get in the boat with Jesus, to head out in to deep water where there will be some storms. We do this knowing that because we are in the boat with Jesus, we will get through somehow. In the end it will be okay whether that is in this life or the next. Like Psalm 23 reminds us, Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. (Psalm 23:4) The question is whether we are willing to get in the boat with Jesus and trust him. It reminds me of the story I know I have shared with some of you before about The Great Charles Blondin, a famous French tightrope walker. Blondin's greatest fame came in 1859 when he attempted to become the first person to cross the rushing and roaring waters of Niagara Falls on a tightrope. With a balancing pole, Charles Blondin walked across the long tightrope in only five minutes. He went on to walk across the falls several times, each time with a different theatrical flair. Later crossings were made in a sack; on stilts; on a bicycle, in the dark with sparks flaring from his pole tips; with his hands and feet manacled; and sitting down halfway to cook an omelet! On one such occasion a large crowd gathered as word went out that Blondin was going to attempt yet another incredible feat. A buzz of excitement ran along both sides of the river bank. The crowd Oooohed! and Aaaaahed! as Blondin carefully walked across one dangerous step after another -- blindfolded and pushing a wheelbarrow. Upon reaching the other side, the crowd's applause was louder than the roar of the falls! Blondin suddenly stopped and addressed his audience: Do you believe I can carry a person across in this wheelbarrow? The crowd enthusiastically shouted, Yes, yes, yes. You are the greatest tightrope walker in the world. You can do anything! Okay, said Blondin, Get in the wheelbarrow, we re going across! Only one person in the whole crowd was willing to get in the wheelbarrow and go across. It worked perfectly, and what a story that person had to tell. The thought of crossing the Niagara in a wheelbarrow is pretty frightening, but how many of us are willing to get in the boat with Jesus and head out into deep water, knowing that there will be storms out there? Or, do we just choose to play it safe on shore, or at least we wait for Jesus to get a cruise ship? 4
If we want to avoid all storms, pain, and suffering -- then following Christ is not the way to go. I think some of us mistakenly think that if we become a Christian, all will be safe, peaceful, and happy with Jesus but the Bible is filled with words about taking up one s cross to follow Jesus. (Matthew 16:24) Paul even talks about having joy because we are suffering with Jesus. (Romans 5:3-5) Christianity is not an escape from the pain of life. It may even lead us directly into that pain. But, in that pain we also can find meaning. And we are given the promise that we will never be alone and we will make it through if not in this life, then in the next. But, storms not only reveal our faith, they may even grow our faith over time. I have found that when I survive a storm, I usually emerge stronger in some way. I want to close with a quote from the author Louisa May Alcott who said this: I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship. And friends, we learn how to sail our ship by getting in the boat with Jesus even in stormy weather! In the strong name of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. 5