There Will Be No More Sea

Today, according to the Anglican Lectionary, it is’ sea Sunday', and the suggested Bible readings for the day all have to do with God's creation of the sea and power over its dangers. So I thought I'd offer a little meditation on a watery theme.

Here's a reading from the gospel of Mark (4: 1, 35-41):

Again he began to teach beside the sea. Such a very large crowd gathered around him that he got into a boat on the sea and sat there, while the whole crowd was beside the sea on the land. 

On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. 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?” 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?" 

A couple of chapters later, Mark's gospel records Jesus walking on the water towards his disciples as they struggled against a strong wind. He gets in the boat and the wind ceases.

These stories are more than just miracle stories to prove that Jesus is a remarkable guy. They draw from a huge background of imagery in Israel's religious history...imagery to do with God's creation of the sea and God's mastery over the fearful power of the sea. These snippets from Mark's gospel are meant to identify Jesus with God, to testify that Jesus has the same authority over the waters as their Creator.

In Israel's creation stories, the whole earth dwells in a cosmic sea, and is covered by water. God's creative act is to draw up the sea into a sky, or firmament, that holds back the sea above, and to draw together the waters on the face of the earth into oceans and lakes, establishing the earth as dry land. According to these stories, the place where we dwell is a small patch of ground and air surrounded above and below and around with water.

As if this weren't a fragile enough existence on the physical plane, the sea is not just water, but is a symbol throughout the whole Bible, of chaos, danger and instability. It is to be feared. In ancient Israel's perception, the sea is constantly pushing against the boundaries that God put in place. And it is the home of monsters...it is the dwelling place of the dragon serpent, the Leviathan, also known as Rahab.

Israel's creation myth is similar to other near Eastern creation stories but it has crucial differences. In the other myths, there is a primeval battle between a god and the chaos sea monster, a battle which the god wins but where chaos remains as an ongoing threat. In Israel's story, God creates not only the sea itself, but also creates the monster, placing it in the sea. God wounds and subdues the monster, and promises that it will ultimately be defeated. So Israel's God is not in an ongoing struggle with the sea and its monsters. Israel's God is the creator of the sea and its monsters.

However, this doesn't mean that the sea is a happy place. It continues to symbolise frightening things - the Bible writers invoke imagery of the sea when Israel is threatened by war and other powers. And there is the sense that God could and might allow chaos to re-emerge out of the sea. It's no accident, I think, that a lot of this imagery of the sea and its monsters is in Job and the Psalms - both First Testament books that speak from within the tragedy and suffering that can afflict a human life and a human community.

The question of suffering is a difficult one for people who believe in a benevolent Creator God. There are two basic ways of seeing God's role in suffering. First, is to see God and the powers of darkness as two forces engaged in a constant battle, where sometimes God wins and sometimes evil wins, even though we trust (hope?) that God will have a final victory. People who use the language of spiritual warfare are drawing on this way of thinking. The other approach is to see God as somehow beyond that opposition of good and evil, as a God who actually creates, allows and absorbs suffering, as the ultimate author of all things including pain and chaos. The sea imagery in the Bible supports this second view.

In the book of Job, we have a story of a man who loses everything. Against the advice of his friends, he bravely refuses to accept the idea that he must have brought his suffering on himself. Instead, he stands up to God, and demands an answer. When God speaks from the whirlwind, it is to say things like this: 'Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?...Who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb? - [where were you] when I...prescribed bounds for [the sea]... and said,’ Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stopped'? 

...'Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook, or press down its tongue with a cord...will it make a covenant with you to be taken as your servant forever?'

It's not an answer to the questions that Job is asking. But it is a kind of answer...one that says’ yes, you have been subject to forces and energies you do not understand and could not have withstood. But I am not at the mercy of those forces, nor am I part of them. I am beyond them. I made them. I am not within creation. I am not something that exists as other things exist. Your mind cannot even begin to comprehend me.'

That is, the chaos dragon is God's creature, but that doesn't mean that it will always behave in ways that humans, also God's creatures, can predict, accept or understand.

However, that's Job. That's the theology of the Hebrew Bible. For followers of Jesus, there is more to the story. I began with a reading from the gospel of Mark, about Jesus sleeping quietly in a boat as his terrified friends battle the storm and the waves. When they wake him, Jesus stills the sea, and says to his disciples, in effect - do you still not know who I am? This Jesus has no fear of the sea, its storms and its monsters. This Jesus is able to rebuke chaos, as evidenced in his healing of the demon possessed, restoring tormented people to their rightful minds. These signs of Jesus are meant to tell us, not just that he's a bit fabulous, but that he is one with the Creator of all, including the Creator of the sea and its chaos monster Leviathan.

So, while God the Creator is incomprehensible, beyond, and somehow also mysteriously inclusive of all that occurs, good or bad, there is another way of experiencing God that is a way of companionship and healing. This is the way of Jesus who calmed the storm and walked on the turbulent waters. Jesus‘ stories, and his actions, tell us that God is good, and that God wills peace and restoration for the earth and its people.

While our society is not primitive in terms of its understanding of the sea and the earth, I believe that many humans still live in fear. Most of us are not afraid of the sea itself - unless we're out in a small boat in a storm - but we are still subject to the things the sea represents.

While normally beaches are places of God-connection and peace for me, I have never felt such a sense of godlessness as I did one night walking alone along a West Coast beach with the waves crashing on the shore. The darkness, and the waves, felt implacable, without any underlying benevolence or Presence.

The’ sea‘ for some of us represents actual dange—winds and waves that can drown. It can also represent events that come into our lives to harm...unexpectedly, randomly, chaotically...things such as accidents, illness, crime, natural disasters, redundancy and so on. The sea can also symbolise our inner turbulence and instability - our wounds, our rage, our pain, our fear and doubt. And, with this talk of monsters and dragons, and hidden depths, the sea is also a symbol of our unconscious, that vast realm of mind that we have no access to, but that can erupt into our conscious reality without warning, undermining or derailing our settled lives.

What is it that you most fear? How does that fear cause you to behave? What have been the consequences of that fear in your life?

Jesus, by entering into human life, experienced what it meant to be at the mercy of the’ sea', in all these interpretations of what the’ sea‘ can be. But he also learned how to sleep in a boat that was being tossed about by a storm. And to walk on water. That is, Jesus modelled for us a life without fear...unafraid of physical death, and unafraid of mental and emotional turbulence. And, he modelled a life that relieved the fear and the pain of other people, by healing the sick and the deranged, and calming the storms.

Finally, Jesus was made subject to all the worst forces of chaos. In God's answer to Job from the whirlwind, God asks: 'Have you... walked in the recesses of the deep? Have the gates of death been revealed to you, or have you seen the gates of deep darkness?' In Jesus, God's answer to this question is’ I have'. The sea monster seized Jesus and carried him to hell in the jaws of death. In all our fear, and in all our difficulty, wherever we go in mind or body, Jesus has already been there. And returned.

Hear these words, from the book of Revelation, a vision of life restored with God: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven, and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.” And the sea was no more. “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them...he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more.” In this vision of newness and restoration, there is no more sea...the energies of chaos that cause human suffering and death are done away with. This is our hope.

Jesus, as God dwelling with us, is the forerunner of a human life that both embraces and transcends the sea and its monsters. His life is ours to live, because the Spirit that anointed him is also with us. And while we might have to wait for a future time to have this experience fully realised, it is ours to taste in this life.

So take comfort, if you are drowning, swamped or feeling overcome by the dragon. While God's mystery means that we will never fully understand with our minds where God is in our pain, God's closeness to us in Jesus means that we are not alone in our suffering, nor do we have to be defeated by it. And, whatever our fear, there is a way through it, there is a way beyond it. We can learn not to be acted on, or to be at the mercy of, our fears, as we open ourselves to the transformation that comes in following Christ.

We are going to sing a hymn now, that touches on these themes. I invite you, if you are in the midst of struggle, to make this hymn your prayer. Or, maybe you could sing it with another in mind, as a prayer for peace and comfort for them.

Be Still My Soul (tune, Finlandia)