The incident described in this text took place on the Sea of Galilee, variously known as the Sea of
Tiberius, or the Lake of Gennesaret. From this egg-shaped body of water, measuring about 8
miles across at its widest point and 13 miles in length, flowed the Jordan River as it wound its
way south to finally deposit itself in the Dead Sea. The lake is surrounded by high hills and is thus
subject to sudden tempests which develop excessive fury as they roar through the great trough in
which the lake lies. It was in such a tempest that the disciples and Jesus found themselves as they
made their way across the lake in an open fishing boat. The sea was probably calm when they
started out, but storms could genetate so quickly on Galilee that before they were halfway across,
the howling winds had created a gale of such intensity that they feared for their very lives.

All but one, that is. Jesus was lying asleep in the stern of the ship. Picture, if you will, this
dramatic scene: a storm of gale proportions rousing men of vigorous physical health, taxing their
utmost ability and strength; waves washing over the sides, drenching the bailing sailors, shouting
and confusion--and imagine: Jesus is calmly asleep. Men whose daily life was on the sea, expert
sailors who knew all about handling boats and who had been in many a violent storm on this lake,
appeal to a man who had never handled boats but had worked as a carpenter with his father in
Nazareth. Completely at the end of their own resources in which they had always had great pride
and confidence, they now cast themselves on Jesus as their only hope. They forgot that he had
never sailed a boat; they do not think of human but of divine ability in him. They put themselves
completely into the hands of Jesus. That seems like faith, all right. But is it really? If we look
into the nature of the disciples' "faith," we have to say that their terror, their resort to Jesus only in
their extremity, their fear of death in the waves--this is not faith, but littleness of faith. And this in
glaring contrast to the calmness of Jesus. For the peaceful sleep of Jesus is due to the total
absence of fear in his heart and to his absolute trust in his Father's care.

The problem of the faith of the disciples is precisely the problem of faith which we face. In the
sea of this thing we call life, we are perfectly sure of ourselves when everything is calm. And
that's the way we like it: calm, non-disturbing, orderly; when things fall neatly into place. The
expression "don't rock the boat" coincides rather well with the picture of this text. We don't want
the boat rocked--and for a good reason. When things are going well we talk ourselves into
thinking that they are going well because of our own ingenuity. We settle into a rather smug
sense of security. "God's in his heavens, all's right with the world." "Yes, God's in his heavens,
and let him stay there. I have everything pretty well in control down here." And, after all, God is
not too necessary in a world where science has conquered disease, that can get double production
out of a field, that can send people orbiting the earth and to the moon. To the person of the
Middle Ages, nature was a fearsome, awesome thing-- a thing to be dreaded in its magnitude and
potency. But we are well on the way to conquering nature; it has become our servant, and so we
do not need God. Thus, underlying the calm periods of life there is a sense of pride in humanity;
the pride of being able to handle the boat by themselves, expert sailors that they are.

Wham! Come the stormsl And the waves of adversity come crashing over the sides of the boat,
and the sea of life is no longer calm. These storms come basically under three aspects. They may
be, first of all, purely physical. A person's health may suffer. He or she may get the dreaded news
that he or she has incurable cancer. People may have to weather the storms of unemployment, of
moving families to new and strange places. Pick up your newspaper, surf the net, look at the
blogs- read all about it. People are suffering great economic losses. And over all of this is the
sure knowledge that we are getting older, that nothing can turn back the hands of time, that our
bodies grow weak and decay, that we are mortal, that we will die. The very nature we seek to
conquer in the end always conquers us.

Wham! Come the storms! They come to batter us mentally, emotionally, psychologically. In an
age when automation is replacing human toil and people become more and rnore urbanized, they
tend to lose their identity in the mass. They become "depersonalized." We have become
strangers to each other. We have, to a great extent, lost a sense of community.
people go their own way, intent on "getting something done”-- whatever that "something" is-- and
p"y1ittt" attention to each other. And then one fine morning we wake up and ask ourselves some
very searching questions: What have I really done with my life? What have I really
accomplished? What has it all been worth? And the waves of anxiety begin to engulf us as we
realize that much of our life has been made up of shattered hopes and dreams, of dullness and
routine, of spun wheels that have gotten us nowhere. Does anyone want to say on his or her
deathbed, "Gee, I wish I would have spent more time at the office"? We realize that all too often
there a few people who really care about us. We have become statistics, consumers to use up the
goods of the marketplace; a set of muscles and brains to keep our fat world rolling.
But for some the worst storms are spiritual storms. These are the upheavals of the conscience,
when the waves of guilt threaten to drown us in a sea of despair. Who has never felt that a
particular sin was so great that it could not possibly be forgiven? Who has not felt the loneliness,
the darkness of God's absence? How many times haven't each of us felt the howling wind of
temptation, and been blown over by that wind? How often haven't we known that the devil has us
by the throat? How many times haven't each of us known when there was a particular time we
should have prayed-- and just couldn't! I recall having read words scratched on a barracks wall in
a Nazi concentration carnp: "Ich kann nicht mehr beten." Spiritual storms have swept over people
so fiercely at times that the threat of death and hell has been real indeed. We have known what it
is to be lost and alone, when God no longer seems to be our Father or we his children.

Right into the middle of these storms comes Jesus X with his power of grace. And that is when
faith must cry: "Lord, save us, we are perishing!" For we do not need to suppose that because we
meet with storms, X is not with us; or, that because X is with us, we shall not meet with storms.
We are often storm-tossed, but this does not mean that our Lord is absent. Do we suffer physical
storms? Then let's remember that Jesus X has suffered them with us. Do we suffer economic
loss? Let's rememberth at JesusX "had no place to lay his head." Do we suffer from the storm of
the fear of death? Then let us remember that Jesus X has gone before us into the dark valley.
The cross of Calvary teaches us that God was willing to suffer our death and to conquer it, so we
are now free from its dread-inspiring war. In utter reality, death to the believer is a "tempest in
a teapot."

And when the storms of mental anguish threaten to overwhelm us, again JesusX comes with his
power of grace. Depersonalized not of the person of faith, not the believer. No, in Jesus Christ
our lives have supreme value, because they are lives for which God gave his own life. Each task
the Xian now performs has meaning for eternity" because it is a task performed for God. The
Xian is not a statistic a, number, a consumer, set of muscles and brains. The believer is a child
of God" because JesusX has made it so.

And those spiritual storms? Their power, too, yields immediate obedience to the voice of X. For
in our sin, our broken relation to God, X Jesus went to the cross to merit forgiveness and heal the
brokenness. Have we felt temptation? X went through it, too-- a million times more severely.
Have we felt the darkness of God's absence? It was our Lord who cried, My God, my God, why
have you forsaken me?" Have we felt the threat of death and hell? Jesus was victorious over
these enemies defeating them in his death and glorious resurrection from the dead. So in
whatever storm we find ourselves we cling like drowning persons to that piece of wood-- that
cross-- and all that it means. For it means that God sees us in our distress that he "awakes from
his sleep," and with the power of grace he calms the fearful storms.

Such is the power of grace. But if we use it only in the storms, if it is only then that we say,
"Lord, save us; we are perishing" if we resort to Jesus only in our extremity and terror, then we
shall only be people of "little faith." But God wants us to have a big faith, a faith that holds on to
God in both the storms and the calms of life. The words of Jesus to the disciples", Why are you
afraid? Have you still no faith?" are a reminder to us to put every nook and cranny ? every corner?
every face to four lives into the hands of God. They are power fists and hands that stretched
wide on the cross to gather us into his kingdom. They are hands of grace, always beckoning us to
come home to our Father's house. They are the hands that still the storms and hover in
benediction over the calms.
Amen.