By Revd Paul J. Le Sueur

Panic Stations

All was peaceful on Lake Galilee some years ago when I led a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
As we walked along its shores we remembered how often it featured in the Gospels.
It was on the shores of Lake Galilee where Jesus recruited Andrew and Peter, and James and John at the beginning of his ministry.
It was there that he breakfasted with his disciples after the Resurrection,
and in between … healing miracles and teachings which amazed many, and opened the eyes of some to a new vision of the Kingdom of God.

But this was different. ‘There was a furious squall.’
How often, all through the centuries, beautiful ships have sunk, crews and passengers have drowned and valuable cargoes have been lost.
When I was a little boy, over seventy-five years ago, we were at war, and were reliant for food on ships coming from America.
And those ships were in constant peril of being sunk by enemy U-boats.
They were desperate times and it was no wonder that a favourite hymn in church and in school assembly was:

Eternal Father, strong to save,
whose arm doth bind the restless wave.

I particularly loved belting out the chorus,

O hear us when we cry to thee
for those in peril on the sea.

It was not only a hymn, but also a prayer.

We sang and prayed it then for our sailors.
And today?
Do we have the compassion to pray it today for all those refugees and asylum seekers
crossing the seas in frail, overladen craft in search of sanctuary?
The chorus is uncompromising; it is ‘For ALL in peril on the sea.’ ‘All’ means all: whether naïve or desperate or old hands.

Even experienced fishermen like Peter and Andrew, James and John did not expect a storm of this magnitude,
or they would not have acceded to Jesus’ request.

Let us imagine the scene. A five-letter word sums up the mood: panic.
Some frantically bailing out as the water came in over the gunwales.
Perhaps some were swearing, some praying. Others protesting that they should never have come and all of them panicking.
And when they saw that Jesus was sleeping, some felt angry.
You can sense that anger in their words, and imagine how Jesus felt when the first words he heard on being woken were:

‘Don’t you care that we are drowning?’ ‘Don’t you care?’

We’ll leave it there for the moment.

In the Old Testament book of Jonah there is a story which has remarkable parallels with today’s Gospel.
Jonah was running away from the mission God had given him. He got on board a ship at Joppa, sailing for Tarshish.
As in the Gospel story a great storm arose and the ship looked like sinking. As in the Gospel story the main character was asleep.
As in the Gospel story there was panic. As in the Gospel story there was anger and, indeed, blame directed at the main character,
and as in the Gospel story the storm was quelled by the main character:
in the Gospel by the command of Jesus, and in the Jonah story by Jonah agreeing to himself being thrown overboard,
a pretty drastic solution by the sound of it.

Here is something strange. I wonder if you have ever noticed it?

Although Israel has a long coastline and places that would make good harbours,
other stories about ships and voyages and shipwrecks are noticeably absent from the Old Testament.
Apart from fishermen, the Jews were not a seafaring people; they left that to their Phoenician neighbours to the north.
In fact, the sea came to symbolise for them the dark power of evil,
threatening to destroy God’s good creation, God’s people, and God’s purposes.

But Christians have and had a commission from Jesus to spread the Gospel throughout the world,
and for the most part the only practical mode of transport was by ship, and that was the main way St Paul traversed the Roman Empire.
In our Epistle this morning we heard Paul recounting some of the trials and tribulations he had had to go through as he preached the gospel.
He doesn’t mention shipwrecks there, but if we fast-forward a few chapters to 2 Corinthians 11: 25
he is again recounting the personal cost of missionary work, and in a long list he says,
‘Three times I have been shipwrecked, and for twenty-four hours I was adrift on the open sea.’ Wow!
And only one of those times gets a mention in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 27), and that is pretty horrific.
At one point it says, ‘For days on end there was no sign of either sun or stars, a great storm was raging,
and our last hopes of coming through alive began to fade.’

Three crises. three cases of panic, and three cases when all came through safely in the end.

Now I don’t suppose it is too likely that any of us here have personally experienced a traumatic crisis on board a ship,
though I was once on a cruise when a small fire broke out in the engine room. It was, however, very swiftly put out. That doesn’t count.

But I wonder? I wonder if you can recall an event or a time in your life when you experienced panic.
A time perhaps when you felt yourself trapped in a situation and couldn’t see a sensible way forward
and you were afraid everything would end badly. Think about it; discuss it with someone.
How was it resolved? Did your faith help you or not? What lesson was there to be learnt? How has it changed you?

Most of us will have had some experience where we felt trapped and panicked or were tempted to panic.
Yet here you are today. Here we are today. God in his great mercy has brought us through,
and hopefully we are stronger for it, and our faith has grown.
The disciples of Jesus on that boat may have panicked, but later on, when they became apostles,
they faced great crises, even martyrdom with amazing fortitude.

One further thought. The Jews may have regarded the seas as governed by evil forces, but as Christians we do not have to do the same.
Everything in creation is part of God’s Creation. The power of oceans must be respected,
but as part of nature also recognised as a source of blessing.
Remember the disciples’ angry question: ‘Lord, don’t you care that we are drowning?’

Let our response be, in the words of that old hymn/prayer.

Wide, wide as the ocean,
high as the heavens above:
deep, deep as the deepest sea
is my Saviour’s love.

I, though so unworthy,
still am a child of his care,
for his word teaches me that
his love reaches me everywhere.

Amen