WATER - STILL OR OTHERWISE

 

Fifth Sunday in Lent

March 29, 2009

Jonah 1-2 (selected)

Isaiah 43:1-3a, 4a, 19

Mark 4:35-41

 

A few weeks ago we set out on a journey, a pilgrimage, if you like, through the days of Lent.  We have walked away from the familiar into new territory. We have grown tired and weary and we have rested to renew our spirits and bodies and to remember that we are led by the God who loves us.  We have gone through dark valleys and felt ourselves vulnerable.  And, at each step of the journey, we have been reminded that we are held and loved and led by One who will not let us fall, who will lead us to green pastures.

 

And today we find ourselves in the desert still, drawing near to the end of our journey, and, like the people of Israel wandering in the wilderness so long ago, we have grown thirsty and we look at the rock and wonder if there will ever be any water coming from it to quench our thirst.  And we wonder where are the still waters that we were promised.  And we wonder where is the cool water to wash our weary bodies and refresh our tired spirits once again.  And we cry to God, “Do you not care that we perish from thirst?”

 

But, at the same time, we remember, be careful what you pray for, you might just get it.  Because water can come in such a surge that it can demolish everything in its path, drown every living thing that gets in its way, eradicate all beauty and all dreams.  Water can turn a party into a wake, can change a celebration into a sorrow.  Can make an escape into a trap and a pleasant sail into a tragedy.

 

Jonah just wants to escape from God and God’s command to go and warn Nineveh about their doom.  And Jonah wonders why the sinful people of Nineveh should be given fair warning?  Why should he have to be the one to risk his life by giving them a heads-up?  God will probably change and preserve the people of Nineveh if they repent—it’s happened before.  And Jonah will look like a fool, at the very least, or maybe be put to death.  So Jonah runs away and boards a ship bound to a far place—to Tarshish.  But there’s a storm.  The ship and the lives on it are in grave danger.  And Jonah is asleep.  The others wake him—“We’re perishing!  Do something!  Talk to your God!”  And Jonah says “Throw me overboard and all will be well.”  They do and it is.

 

But Jonah doesn’t drown.  He is swallowed by a huge fish.  And then he prays and calls out to God.  “You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me…The waters closed in over me; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped around my head.”  “Don’t you care that I am drowning, Lord?” 

 

And Jonah answers the question himself, “yet you brought up my life from the Pit, O Lord my God.  As my life was ebbing away, I remembered the Lord; and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple…Deliverance belongs to the Lord!”  Then the Lord spoke to the fish, and it spewed Jonah out upon the dry land.  Release from the trap that was really a life-boat.

 

It had been a long day of ministry - healing, teaching, responding to personal needs.  So Jesus wanted the disciples to get away from the crowds.  Many of us know that feeling of wanting to get away from it all—that even a short break might be a good idea.  Given the circumstances of Jesus and his disciples, the only real way they could manage a break was to take a boat across LakeGalilee.  By North American standards Galilee is not a big lake - calling it a sea is a genuine stretch!  But because of the prevailing geography, wicked storms can spring up in very short order.

 

And this was probably not a big boat.  Most likely it was a row boat with a mast that could be used for a sail in fine weather.  So, here they are, rowing across the lake and a storm comes up.  Those of you who sail will know what it’s like to be on a big lake in a small boat when a sudden storm comes up.  Survival can be somewhat in question!  An abrupt, wicked shift in wind can snap the boom around and knock a person out of the boat.  Thus, it probably doesn’t take a lot of imagination to know how the disciples are feeling. Waves are breaking over the bow.  They are rowing to beat all get out. Some of them are bailing for all they're worth.  Still, the boat is foundering.  And Jesus, apparently, like Jonah, is sleeping through it all. "Jesus, do you not care that we are perishing?"

 

The cry of faithful people from the beginning of people.  “God, don’t you care that we are thirsty, that we are drowning?”

 

Where is God when we are thirsty?   Not so much for actual water—we in Toronto, in most of the northern hemisphere, don’t have a problem with finding enough clean water to drink—even though we often think it has to come in bottles.  No, our thirst is more for spiritual, emotional, heart, water.  We sometimes feel ourselves so dried up—our friends or family don’t understand us; our days have become putting one weary step after another; our dreams and hopes seem to have disappeared, lost somewhere in the plodding from task to task; we seem to be going nowhere; inspiration and enthusiasm are a dim memory.  And we choke in the dust that seems to be the only air we have.  “Oh God, we are so thirsty!  Where is some water we can drink?” 

 

And where is God when we are drowning?  When there is too much water.  I expect in each spring’s flooding, the people losing homes are asking that.  I expect in each breaking through thin ice and dam’s breaking and battling the tidal waves of a tsunami, people are asking that.  Every day the waves of the world roll over on someone who, just yesterday, was sitting on top.  Every day someone's placid voyage across a calm sea is disrupted by an unexpected storm: grim medical news, a financial reversal, the collapse of a relationship, the death of a dream.

 

You know the storms that wash over us.  And it sometimes seems to us that God is asleep and uncaring.  We know that the psalm writer tells us that God neither slumbers nor sleeps, but occasionally it feels like God takes forty winks. Every hair on our head may be numbered, but sometimes it feels like God has been preoccupied with a particularly bushy-haired person and our concerns have fallen through.  God doesn’t even seem to be sending us a big fish to rescue us from the waves.  “God, do you not care that we are perishing?”

 

“But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you.  I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you.  When you walk through fire, you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.  For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Saviour.  You are precious in my sight, and honoured, and I love you.  I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?  I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”

 

Of all the beautiful poetry in all three books of Isaiah, these words are the most wondrous because they address how life is, not how we wish it would be.  It doesn’t say that we will never pass through rough waters, that we will never thirst.  That is no one’s reality.  At least no one who tells the truth about their life.  As Westley says in the movie, The Princess Bride, “Life is pain.  Anyone who tells you differently is selling something.”  We live in a broken world and we are broken by it.  But we can be mended.

 

When Jesus wakes from sleep in the tossing boat, he calms the waves and then he says to the disciples, “Why are you afraid?  Have you still no faith?”  As always with Jesus, the word “faith” is understood as “trust.”  “Have I been with you so long and still you don’t trust that I am telling the truth about God whose care for you is stronger than any storm you might have to go through.”  And he might have added, “Whose protection is stronger than any thirst you might know?”

 

For us here today, and others who follow Christ and worship the Holy One he spoke of, that God we know as Love, the mending comes through the One who is with us when we “pass through the waters.”  The One who protects us from being consumed when the heat of the desert parches our lips and extinguishes our hope.  The One who makes a “way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”

 

We are starting now down the road that leads to the remembrance of darkest and most hopeful day of the Christian’s year, the road that leads through fire and flood to new life.  We will be thirsty, we will be afraid, we will be nearly swamped as we walk with Jesus through the triumphant entry into Jerusalem, the betrayal by crowd, and worse, friends he has saved from drowning.  And, on a distant day, in the early morning, we will look on an empty tomb and know hope we never thought was possible.

 

And, through each inch of that journey, of all our journeys, we can remember, “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you.  I have called you by name, you are mine… You are precious in my sight, and honoured, and I love you.”