Sleeping Through the Storm

10/17/05 

But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, "Peace! Be still!" Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, "Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?" Mark 4:38-40 NRSV

We take up the ideas and books we get from the Jesus Connection Seminar and take them back home. People gather in groups to react. Feelings and opinions run high and things we never knew to be rocky reefs of danger are exposed in the gathering turbulence in the congregation. We humans do not take change lightly. Talk about consensus-building and sabbatical-taking, just in themselves, pose threats. The old order resists ruination. The forces of "the way things have always been" are intact and awake.

All of this is good. However, it feels like a storm. It feels like strong winds blowing and tall waves mounting and heavy clouds building. A couple of angry phone calls and a letter questioning your motives and the whole morning is shot. A couple of instances in which brave leaders in some small group declaring that they're ready to drink new wine but then shrinking back into some dim corner when the wine is poured out makes us lose heart. It's one thing to preach about the need to change that which is non-core because it gets in the way of being Christian, because those things become anchors on our little boat of the church, anchors which threaten to pull us down in some heavy sea.

That's when we pull out the Gospel and read Mark 4. That's when we take heart from Jesus who had the faith to sleep on a boat being tossed by buffeting winds as it mounts up the crests and plunges down the hydraulic holes of a restless sea. There is a relationship between dead calm and great faith.

When we engage the task of transformation we do so at peril. The old does not give way willingly. It's in all of us. But having the faith, yes, faith, not courage, not wisdom, not skill at tiller and sail - faith to trust God who is master of all storms is required of us who lead in the process. When our faith fuels the peace we can be still. And we can be unafraid. It is enough.

David Digby

First Christian Church,Ames, Iowa