Jesus in the Storm
A sermon based on Luke 8:22-25 and preached at Queen Street Baptist Church.
Introduction
Have you ever been in a scary situation in which things seemed out of control? While I can think of some pretty serious situations in my life, there is a recent example that jumps to my mind.
Last week was Labour Day and as a child, it was our tradition to go the Labour Day carnival in Merritton. This tradition holds so many good memories for me. As long as I lived away from St. Catharines, I have wanted to bring my children down to the carnival but it never seemed to work. Now living back in St. Catharines, I finally was able to introduce my children to something that has meant a lot to me. It was a lot of fun. Except for one thing.
One of the rides required that you go in pairs. Justus and Emma sat together but Faith wanted to go on as well. As a good dad, I agreed to sit with Faith. This ride, which my children called a “ferris wheel,” did not look so bad. But it was not a ferris wheel. Instead of just going around and around at a nice gentle pace, this thing spun fast and the compartments we were in spun as well, turning us upside down on a regular basis. I don’t like to be upside down, especially high up in the air. This was not what Faith was expecting either and she begged me through tears to get the guy to stop the ride. To be honest, if I thought I could have gotten the message out, I would have done it. Interestingly, in our passage Jesus asks the question, “Where is your faith?” I knew exactly where my Faith was. My Faith was sitting beside me freaking out as much as I was!
Of course we all go through times much more serious than a scary carnival ride. But I will confess that ride reminded me of the emotions that go along with being trapped in an comfortable situation with no way out.
I’m sure that there are many people here who have been in or are in some sort of storm. It may be physical circumstances, including health or financial distress. It could be emotional circumstances, such as mental illness or broken relationships. It could be numerous things coming together to create the perfect storm.
Where is Jesus? Where is he? Do you sense his presence? Do you believe that he cares about what you are going through?
We are going to wrestle with those questions as we look at the experience of the disciples in the boat during the storm.
The Disciples in the Storm
The story of the disciples in the storm is found in a very specific place in Luke’s Gospel. We have just come through a number of passages where Jesus has been teaching in parables. As amazing as Jesus’ teaching is, the passage after the event on the water is Jesus taking on the man filled with a legion of demons. Jesus’ ministry is about to hit all new levels. Jesus takes them there physically by crossing the water, but he takes them there spiritually as well as he tests their faith and reveals his power.
The lake in which they are crossing is described elsewhere as the sea of Galilee. The storm that is described as taking place is not unusual for that body of water. People knew about these storms and they knew enough to try and avoid them.
We can sense the fear that the disciples were experiencing during this dangerous storm. And remember that at least four of them were experienced fishermen and they were still scared. Perhaps it was their knowledge that made them more frightened, possibly having lost friends in similar storms.
There is something that we miss in our modern reading of this story. We like the water. We either enjoy or wish we could enjoy a summer cottage on the water. Going sailing or taking a cruise sounds like a pleasant time.
But in the ancient world, water held a sense of horror for people. It was a place of mystery that was just waiting for you to fall in, never to be seen again. Even when people would go on boats, they would try to hug the coast as close as possible.
When we look at Genesis 1 and the creation of the world, we see that state of chaos was a planet covered in water. God brings order to chaos by separating the land from the water. Water was dangerous in a literal way with the danger of drowning, but water represented to the ancients the power of chaos and an image of everything that they feared.
And Jesus slept. He slept as sound as a baby. It reminds me of our son Logan, who as a baby we brought to smash up derby. We stood right by the fence, being pelted by chunks of dried mud, even hitting the stroller Logan was in. And he never even stirred. That was Jesus. Asleep without a care in the world, while his disciples feared for their lives.
Finally, they could take it no more and they had to wake Jesus out of is peaceful slumber. Notice what they said to Jesus. They did not wake him with a request for help. Rather they woke him with with a statement of their feared demise. There is a difference between desperation and despair. Desperation is when things are so bad, you will take any help. Despair is when things are so bad, you are convinced that there is no help. The disciples were filled with despair.
This is why Jesus responds with a question about their faith. It was normal for them to be afraid, but they should have seen enough to know that Jesus was not going to let them perish in a storm.
Without them requesting the specific help, Jesus rebuked the storm and it stopped. The disciples had seen miracles before. Jesus had healed a number of people. But this was different. There had always been holy men who claimed to be able to heal but no one could do what Jesus just did. The Old Testament prophet Elijah prayed that there would be no rain and then prayed later that the rain would come but he never stopped a storm in the middle of it. Also, Elijah prayed to God for those miracles. Jesus simply rebuked the storm, acting with divine authority himself. This was a major turning point in their understanding of who Jesus was.
Us and the Storm
Unless you are farmer, it is unlikely that your greatest stress in life is the weather. We can check the weather network and schedule ourselves away from the storm. But there are other storms in life that are not so easy to avoid.
There are storms that come our way. The storms may be about health or finances or relationships or just feeling overwhelmed. It may be based on traumas from the past, current situations that you are trying to escape from or fears of the future. But there are storms.
I speak of this, not as a student of the Bible, but as someone who has had my share of storms. When our children were first diagnosed with autism, it was tough. But not as tough as things would get as they got older. There were numerous times that Logan escaped and the police needed to be called in to find him. Some of those times we thought that we had lost him forever. Our daughter went through a time of only sleeping a few hours a night. I went a year getting up between 1 and 3 am for the day. It wore on my mind and body and I didn’t know how long I could continue. I don’t mean to complain about my children. I love them deeply and I wouldn’t trade them for the world. But there were many times that autism brought intense storms into our life.
You do not need autism to create a storm. If you have children, I’m sure that you have your share of storms. If you don’t have children, you have endured storms in other areas of life. Life is hard.
But where is Jesus? Is he sleeping? It sometimes seems that way. I have had plenty of times where I was wondering if Jesus was seeing what was happening. In the Old Testament, the prophet Elijah had a contest with the prophets of a pagan god named Baal. In that contest, when Baal did not seem to respond, Elijah mocked them by asking if Baal was asleep and needed to be awakened. What about our God? Is he awake. In Psalm 121, we read:
He will not let your foot slip—
he who watches over you will not slumber;
indeed, he who watches over Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep. (Psalm 121:3-4)
So God is not asleep during our storm. But that does not mean that he acts right away or that he acts in the way we hope for.
The same question that Jesus asked of his disciples can be asked of us. Where is our faith? Faith is not about a lack of fear. I talked about being in that carnival ride that I didn’t enjoy. I experienced fear, but I also had faith that the equipment was safe and that the ride would end with none of my family injured.
What the story of the storm teaches us is that we serve a powerful and active Jesus. He is not just the Jesus who blesses children, he is the Jesus who can rebuke storms.
That does not mean that he will do for us whatever we ask. But it does mean that he is willing and capable to intervene in our lives.
I talked about our children with autism and the storms that surrounded certain events. When I look back to the most dramatic answers to prayer I have experienced, they were in these areas. We received almost the exact amount of money we needed to build a fence to keep our son safe in our yard at a time when we had no money. We received a phone call telling us that a group home and funding was available for our daughter just hours after meeting with a group that told us that there was no group homes or funding available for our daughter.
Sometimes Jesus rebukes the storm. Sometimes Jesus just prevents everyone from falling out of the boat until we get to the shore. The point is Jesus is there.
Conclusion
It would be nice to be able to check the weather for our life and see everything as being calm and sunny. The fact is that storms will come our ways. Some will be minor storms that just cause some stress. Some will be major storms that shake us to the core of our being and of our faith.
It may seem as if Jesus is sleeping but we need to remember that he is at least in the boat with us. We serve a might Jesus, a rebuker of storms. Jesus is able and willing to get us through each and every storm that comes our way.
It is okay to be scared but don’t give into despair. The storm will not last forever.
