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A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But [Jesus] 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?” And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” Mark 4: 37-41
There’s an idiom we use from time to time to describe acts of great courage. We speak of one as having shown ‘grace under pressure.’ What does grace under pressure look like? It’s the crew of Apollo 13 keeping their heads after an explosion cripples their spacecraft, Captain Sully landing US Airlines flight 1549 in the Hudson, and an elementary school teacher guiding her students away from an intruder with a weapon. Grace under pressure is a soldier carrying a wounded companion to safety, an officer giving CPR to a stranger, a firefighter manning the line, and a nurse stepping into a COVID ward.
What these acts of courage share in common is the capacity to maintain calm in the midst of crisis. In the story of Jesus calming the sea, we read, ‘Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm.’ But it strikes me that the sea isn’t the only thing that’s calm in this story. Everything happening here is centered in Jesus’ calming presence; his grace under pressure.
Our challenge is in connecting that fierce storm on the Sea of Galilee to the many tempests we face in life. Like those anxious disciples, our lives are tossed about by uncertainty. When we’re distanced by pandemic, standing beside the soft earth of a newly dug grave, apprehensive about how we’ll pay the mortgage, or fearful that democracy may not survive the next election; beneath the pain is the uncertainty of what’ll happen next. How will we get through this? Will we ever return to the life we once had?
This life is filled with unexpected gut punches that can knock us to our knees. Yet even in the midst of the worst this world can throw at us, we are invited to keep sight of God’s presence despite our very real anxieties and misgivings. Here’s where this story of Jesus calming the sea can assist us in our journey. Even though his disciples allow their fears to overcome them, Jesus still calms the sea. He loves them despite their lack of perfect faith. This is so important for us to bear in mind. We don’t have to have a perfect faith in order for God to love us. We can be so paralyzed by our doubts that we walk away from God intending to never return and God will still seek us out and love us.
So, let’s remember this. Faith often centers itself in trust, rather than in belief. True faith isn’t the blind following of a theology. It’s the humble acceptance that we are held in God’s trustworthy embrace. We trust that God will seek us out no matter how big a mess we’ve created. We trust that in our baptism we’ve been buried and resurrected with Christ. We trust in God’s creative imagination with each breath, thought and act.
God doesn’t abandon us to the waves when our faith is less than perfect. We’re not forgotten when storms threaten to overwhelm us or discarded when we feel ourselves being pulled under by our brokenness. God’s love doesn’t depend on our theology, our philanthropy, our politics, our gender expression, or our wokeness. We’re simply invited to trust that God loves us. End of story.
God remains with us no matter how far off course we are blown; stilling the winds, calming the waters, and reassuring our broken hearts. We are invited to trust that as distant as the far shore may appear when we can barely keep our head above the waves, we’ll soon enough find ourselves on dry land. The shore we’ll wash up onto may not look quite like we expect it to, something we’re learning in real time in this ongoing pandemic; but we trust that it’ll be terra firma, that God will be present there, and that something new will emerge from the debris. Trust, after all, is what having grace under pressure looks like.
Grace and Peace,
Pastor Tom Murray
Lutsen Evangelical
Lutheran Church
Each month a member of the Cook County Ministerium will offer Spiritual Reflections. This month’s contributor is Tom Murray of the Lutsen Lutheran Church and Baptism River Community Church of Finland.
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