A Meditation for Friday after the Second Sunday in Lent | David, Bishop of Menevia, Wales, c. 544
By The Rev. Jacob Schlossberg, ‘22
We are all familiar with the story of Jesus calming the storm. Not only is it in all three synoptic gospels, it is also a go-to story for children and story book Bibles. The story easily engenders empathy. Children know the fears of the disciples: the veil of darkness, the surprise of lightning, the crack of thunder. Telling this story to my kids, they can easily join in the story, pantomiming the rock of the boat, mimicking the booming thunder, the howling wind, and through it all, the snores of our Lord. All the noise and the chaos of the storm and the waves crescendos until Jesus sits up and barks at the storm, “Stop!” It is a story with wonderful drama and wonderful physicality. And it concludes with us engaging with the disciples’ wonder: “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” In retelling the story with my children, it is easy to engage with this question and remind them that it is in fact the one who made the wind and the sea who now commands them to knock it off.
The questions that are harder to engage with my preschool children are Jesus'. “Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?” It is hard to engage these questions because the fear is so natural. The children physically know the fear of thunderstorms. My particularly cautious children like to have their feet on solid ground, so the thought of a violently rocking boat that might capsize is enough to prompt anxious questions for the next week. It’s not hard to imagine them shouting at Jesus, “Don’t you know why we were afraid? How could we not be afraid?” After all, I know that if I were on a boat in similar circumstances, I would probably be in the fetal position in the hull of the boat.
Jesus clearly couples their fear with a lack of faith. After all, he has been healing the sick and the crippled and he has been casting out demons. He has been teaching to multitudes in parables and then giving the explanations to the disciples. He has been undoing the effects of the Fall, of the chaos and disorder that it brought into the world, and the disciples have been witness to all of these miracles. This is the context of Jesus’s question: “Have you still no faith?” He is asking them, “Where have you been? Whose deeds have you been witnessing?” But he might have also been asking, “Haven’t you read Psalm 69?”
The psalm is complex and wide-ranging, being thirty-eight verses long. But its varied motif is framed by those first two verses. It is the cry of someone completely overwhelmed by woes, terrors, and enemies on every side. The accumulation of woes has convinced the speaker that they cannot find God in the midst of the darkness; they have become enemies of God. This is clear from the word “deep” in the verse. This particular Hebrew word is first used in Scripture in Exodus, to describe the demise of Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea, and nearly every subsequent use is either a direct reference to Pharaoh’s destruction, a clear allusion, or a likely allusion. For the psalmist to use this form of the word deep is to demonstrate not just the metaphor of drowning at sea, but drowning in divine conflict, drowning as an enemy of God.
“Where are you, God? I thought you were my friend, but if you were ever there, you have abandoned me,” the psalmist cries. “I have done everything I could to be faithful, and here I am surrounded by my enemies. Show me mercy, oh Lord! Though I am apparently lower than your enemies, I trust that you will save me from a watery grave.”
It can feel like the priestly calling is a calling to be a swiss army knife. The demands are myriad and varied. Sometimes it feels like on my most Swiss-army-knife day, the job requires something more than I have in my arsenal–I have a small screwdriver, and this job requires a power drill. Other times the small swiss army knife blade would be sufficient, but I don’t even have that–all I have is a baseball bat. I don’t have the tools to be all things to all people on my own; I need someone else to show up.
When I stop to think about it, it is here that I feel like the disciples in the boat. I am flailing about, bailing water in the storm, and only as a last resort turning to the Lord to say, “Yo, dude, I am doing this for you. Are you going to show up, or not? Are you going to lend a hand?”
And the one who made the wind and the waves, the one who is the cornerstone of the Church and the great High Priest looks at me. And he says, “Haven’t you read Psalm 69? Isn’t it about me? Even if you go down with the ship, down to the depths. Even there I am, even there I am with you.”
The Rev. Jacob Schlossberg is a graduate of Nashotah House. Fr. Jake serves as priest and chaplain at an Episcopal school in Louisiana. The readings for the preceding devotional may be located here from Forward Movement.
