How do you deal with a storm? A storm can knock out electricity and leave you in the dark. It can blow your balcony furniture down the block. It can send torrential rain so you can’t see where you’re driving. Storms can be times of terror. St. Mark’s gospel describes how the disciples of Jesus reached a point of desperation. The wind and the waves were more than they could cope with. They felt powerless, out of control. They didn’t know how to escape from the fury of the storm. Of course it is not only the weather that can make us feel storm-tossed. For the past sixteen months we have been in a storm entitled Sars-CoV-2, better known as the coronavirus. Not wind and waves but the same kind of powerlessness and loss of control threaten us while we seek to cope with something which has the potential to harm or even kill us. Covid was/is a disastrous storm. Then again, storms are not only natural events but human events as well. Maybe the storm is a family crisis. Our closest and most intimate relationships feel endangered and distressed by forces that threaten to overwhelm us. Maybe the storm is a personal tragedy. Some memory or grief has left us battered and buffeted, hanging on by a thread. Maybe the storm is financial or health-related or a matter of the heart. Like birthdays, the storms just keep on coming. Where do we find a shelter from the storm?
The description of the storm in the gospel text this Sunday poses three questions. Answering those questions provide the answer, or at least an answer, on how to deal with a storm. The first question is posed by the disciples to Jesus: “Teacher, do you not care?” We’ve probably all asked that question at one time or another. Do you not care that 600,000 deaths and counting have occurred from the virus in the US? Do you not care that 400 years of slavery and Jim Crow and racism and inequality are not enough to promote a change of heart in our country? Do you not care that the rich keep getting richer and the poor become poorer? Do you not care that our families are hurting? As the first reading from the Book of Job demonstrates God does not try to answer those kinds of questions directly. Instead God asks Job (and us) to back up and see a wider view. God says, Yes, suffering exists. But look at the sea, vast and wide, powerful and mysterious. Do you trust that the God who made the sea knows what to do about suffering? Yes, being good is difficult. But look at the sky with blazing sun and passionate moon and twinkling stars. Do you trust that the God who made the panoply of heaven knows how to care for the good? Yes, death stalks human existence. But look at the seasons of the year where the spring time of new life blossoms and grows in the summer of enjoyment only to wither in the fall of aging and the death of winter. And then start the cycle all over again! Do you trust that the God who set the times and durations of the seasons knows how to tend to human life as well? Do we believe that God is smart enough transform whatever storms are raging around us into a golden sky with the sweet, silver song of a lark?
That leads to the second question posed in the Gospel: this one from Jesus to the disciples. “Do you not yet have faith?” As the story demonstrates, faith does not consist of being able to recite the creed or give catechism answers. Faith means trusting that the rope won’t break. Faith means believing in the “I do” of your spouse on your wedding day. Faith means living in this world with all of our hopes fixed on the next, as St. Paul would put it. We make acts of faith every day – the brakes will hold, the elevator will go to the top, the bus driver knows what she’s doing. When we’re in a storm, faith means having confidence that this too shall pass, that storms don’t get the last word, that the sun will come out tomorrow. Jesus spent three years trying to get his disciples, trying to get us, to have faith that God loves us, that God is always with us, that God’s will for us is life, life to the full. No storm can take that way.
The third question was posed by the disciples to each other: “Who then is this?” The answer as St. Mark tells the story: “who is this?” — the one beside you in the boat. Jesus wants us to understand that the storms out there are no threat. Through any of the storms this world can dish out, I am alongside you in the boat. But the storm inside, the storm of doubt, the storm of fear, the storm of worry, the storm of anxiety, those are the storms that can harm you. They harm you because they blind you to the fact that I am with you in all things. They harm you by causing you to miss the miracle of God’s constant care in it all and through it all. Who is this? It’s Jesus who invites us to share in the power and the glory of God at our baptism. It’s Jesus who challenges us to grow, to develop, to become better, to discover, to progress. It’s Jesus who trusts completely in the plan of his Heavenly Father that all manner of things will be well even as he picks up his cross. It’s Jesus who loves us so much that he wants to share eternal life with us. It’s Jesus who at the resurrection became our elder brother, the first born of a new creation. When the storms of life are raging, who is it that stands by me? You’ll never walk alone. It is Jesus who stands by me.
