"A Storm Arose"

Sermon by

Reverend Nancy Bouchard

November 9, 2008

For several summers and occasionally off season, I was a stern person with a lobster fisherman from Friendship, Maine. I would drive down from Bangor on Friday afternoon after a full week of work, and Ronald and I would begin our preparation for Saturday’s work. We loaded repaired traps (the old wooden style), and other miscellaneous equipment onto the boat and then we worked until dark at my least favorite activity, shoveling the bait, (dead fish cuttings of cod, hake, or red fish) out of big steel barrels into 5 gallon buckets.

On Saturday morning at 4a.m. we headed out to the periphery of Mohegan Island, a 1 hour trip. We left in the dark and quite often in very thick fog. There were mornings when sitting at the back of the boat I couldn’t see Ronald or anything else just a few feet in front of me.

During my short career as a stern person I had occasion to witness the calm rhythmic slap of gentle waves and the warm air of the Muscongus Bay turn to raging swells with powerful turbulence and gusting winds that tossed us about.

I have known the fear of the storm and so it is I relate with the fisherman of this morning’s story who started across the Sea of Galilee and suddenly found their voyage nearly turned into a death narrative.

Jesus calming the storm is one of several “miracle” stories in the New Testament. The passage has been analyzed in biblical commentaries which offer vast symbolic interpretations. In the more traditional Christian interpretation the boat represents the church and the waves and wind are the conflict and demonic powers that threaten to undermine the power of faith. Some theologians have suggested the storm represents the struggle in early Christianity between Jews and Gentiles.

Scholars have also paralleled the story to that of Jonah being swallowed by the whale, both messengers of God asleep, as crisis evolves but in this story Jesus has ultimate control over nature.

Commentators have also interpreted the storm to represents secular influences threatening the belief of the faithful, the waves are the unexpected temptations placing doubt about the message and identity of Jesus and the power of faith.

I resonate the story in which the “the storm” symbolizes human suffering, disease, fear, hate, and the sense of abandonment. I also experience the awe when stillness, the simple act of quietness settles the storm enough to allow one to see the possibility of inner peace.

As in the sudden appearance of the dark cloud, life changes can happen so quickly, the ripples of daily routine can become a raging tempest out of control, a tornado destroying all that is in its path. In the midst of it all we struggle to hold on, we negotiate, we pray, we command, we try and quickly readjust and retain our sense of control, and wonder “does anyone care if we drown”?

It can be health issues, money problems, family problems, trouble at work, the list is endless and some days the waves and the winds are overwhelming and we forget or simply find it difficult to seek solace in whatever the place is we call faith... be it contemplative meditation, reaching out to others, reading poetry, painting, listing to music, praying or simply sitting quietly and breathing.

On one particular day, as we headed to our usual location where we pulled up traps, Ronald realized we were lost. He was checking the compass and looking at the map when I saw the color drain from his face and suddenly the bottom of the boat was scraping against the ground. I would have never guessed that in this vast ocean of water, its depths measured by me in terms of the great lengths of rope attached to the traps, that there would be such a shallow area. The boat stopped so abruptly everything crashed around us and the engine cut out.

I can almost hear my heart pounding as I relive this story “Don’t Move! Ronald shouted as the boat started to lean into the water. I didn’t fully comprehend what had happened “We’ve gone aground” he said, not really to me but loud enough for me to hear.

The thought seemed to come out of nowhere

“Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?”

Frozen in fear I managed to glance around. Everywhere I looked al I could see was water. No land, no boats, no one to rescue us, no one to calm the storm. Everything seemed to just stop and there was no sense of calm or quiet. I could hear Ronald mumbling and I could see he was shaken. He stood still for an eternity and then I heard him take a deep breath and he quickly turned the engine on and off. Later he would tell me this was to check and see if the motor was deep into the sand. He waited a bit, and now he was looking more contemplative then panicked. There was a second deep breath and this one was the breath of stillness. In perfect synchronicity the wind picked up a little, the waves leaned us slightly upward, Ronald started the engine and slowly we returned back into the deep waters.

The parallel of the gospel story and my experience is in my mind quite often but more particularly this week as our nation, in fact the world, breaths in deeply in the midst of the storm. It may not be with complete calm but there is a wave of hope and a new stillness. We have turned towards the deep waters, moving slowly, wanting to see if there can be an awakening, wanting to know if we can resume our journey towards a compassionate wholeness of humanity.

This week we have seen the wisdom in the words of Martin Luther King Jr. “…it is not where one stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where one stands in times of challenge and controversy”

And now we turn to each other to ask…

Are we committed to entering into the sea of transformation, creating a process of governance that calls us to responsibility as individuals, as communities, and globally? Can this be a change that is interdependent; a change that will sustain through many future generations; a change the calms the storm of conflict among the many peoples of our world; a change that empowers our new president in the aspirations he shared with us as the world witnessed an historic moment.

“I will build new partnerships to defeat the threats of the 21st century: terrorism and nuclear proliferation, poverty and genocide, climate change and disease.

And I will restore our moral standing so that America is once again that last, best hope for all who are called to the cause of freedom, who long for lives of peace, and who yearn for a better future.”

As we share in this yearning may we celebrate the hard work of the future, may we invite all peoples to seek and find the quiet, the place of peace.

And as we leave this place of solace may we find the quiet within that gives us the courage to face the storms of the coming week, those anticipated and those yet unseen.

Blessed Be, Shalom, Om Namah Shivia, Amen