The Squall

I shiver and rub my arms. The wind is trailing her icy, satin skirt down the shoreline and over the surface of the lake when Jesus tells his brothers he’d like to go across it. She brushes her skirt against my skin as she dances past – whispers in my ear with the quiet, eerie moan of her voice. I look out at the lake; shaking my head – I’m not eager to get on that black moving water at all. Night is hovering too close, and with the wind it doesn’t feel friendly at all, nor peaceful like it usually does at the end of the day.

Jesus doesn’t seem concerned though – he climbs into one of the boats waiting nearby. After noting the exhaustion lining his features, Mary has already made up a cushion for him in the stern. With a smile of thanks and a soft, quiet exchange between the two of them, he squeezes her shoulder in affection and heads straight for it, the only sheltered spot, and lays down, asleep the minute his head touches the fabric. I follow him, pressing my back against the wood nearby, an unseen observer to the others like always, but not hidden from him.

I don’t look out at the water as the others put us out and steer us away from shore. As much as I love being on any kind of water, the power in it sometimes scares me and right now is one of those times. Maybe it’s because it’s dark and the colours of the water are so intense… so foreboding. The men are quiet, tired too, and everything feels just a little off.

I think, as I watch them work silently, keeping a wide berth around Jesus, that they’re struggling to accept all the bits of knowledge he’s sharing with them. Today was a long day of trying to grasp his slippery parables with their mysterious, challenging pictures. These past months have been a lot in general, and they’re all a bit inwardly defensive, unsure.

Lots of what they grew up with is ingrained from childhood, and Jesus says stuff that sounds like what they know – but somehow scrapes them raw, anyway, feeling new and foreign. They can’t quite put their finger on it. Everything they thought was certain isn’t as certain as they’d hoped. They aren’t quite sure what they think of him right now. I see them casting glances his way as they shove the boats out from shore. All his words about fields and seeds and the way he challenges the social system they grew up knowing makes him feel like a stranger. They’re used to questions of worth, but they’re also used to hard work and good behaviour being the cure. It’s almost as if he’s saying nothing they do can make themselves good enough. That the laws they follow won’t save them. What if they can’t be what he wants them to be? They aren’t quite sure where they stand in his parables, which seed they miss, whether their soil is hard or soft.

Fishing boats they’re familiar with, however, and they fall into work with relief. They’re together, and familiar with the tasks of getting out on the water; unafraid of the lake like I am. We travel for some time, without much talking. They’re all mulling over the events of the past weeks; the political conflict they’re suddenly a part of and not sure they like; the tension that’s building between Jesus and the teachers of the law. They know there will be consequences if it gets too intense. They’re uneasy with the way Jesus challenges the church leaders, though they admire him for it, and they aren’t sure how to take the teachings about this kingdom they are supposedly already a part of but don’t understand. It rubs against their accepted, memorized rules.

It’s a large lake and rowing isn’t easy when the wind is playing with you, so they buckle down and use their muscles, letting their minds empty. Physical work is great that way – makes you feel in control – lets your mind quiet.

We’re about half way across, in the middle of a pitchy black landscape, when the wind discards her satiny ribbons and puts on a sharper garment, one of cutting metallic armour that slices against my ears and cheeks. She stops her quiet moans and screams instead in fury, dipping her fingers into the water as she dashes across it, teasing it into a frenzy to match her energy.

The boat starts making stomach-hollowing dips and bobs. The waves push it back and forth between them – bullies playing tug of war. My eyes widen as water starts pouring over the front with every dip and crash landing. I clench my fists and look over to Jesus. He’s still asleep beside me and I force my limbs to relax when I see the peace on his face.

The men are working frantically now; shouting across the wind’s harsh screaming in order to hear each other. Some of them are bailing water while others are rowing hard, trying desperately to keep some kind of control in the thrashing storm. Fear tightens their faces and their grips on the oars. It rises in their voices as they realize once again how uncontrollable this thing called nature is, how little they can do to stop it from harming them. Terror glints in their eyes after what feels like hours of fighting to stay alive. They know, even as they wrestle the boat and the waves, that this is a life threatening storm, and there’s even a couple of them that can’t swim. Despair is starting to trickle in. A knowledge that they won’t make it if they don’t hit the shore soon.

I look beside me at Jesus, protected as he is from the worst of it under that wooden overhang, and he is still sleeping, so exhausted that the movement and chaos and the presence of fear isn’t waking him.

None of them have come for him yet.

They’re too busy fighting the storm on their own, paralyzed under the hypnotizing gaze of death staring back at them. Instead of looking to him, instead of even thinking of asking him for help, they’re frantically trying to figure out a way to survive the squeeze of the giant fist the wind and waves and night has become.

Jesus might know his way around words and people – but they’re the fishermen, they’re the physical muscle. The grunt labor to keep him safe.

It isn’t until the whole bottom of the boat is covered in water – until waves are crashing over the hull in constant looming walls of strength that Andrew shakes Jesus’s shoulder, roaring into Jesus’s face, tendrils of hair sticking to his face and getting into his wild eyes, “How can you sleep through this, Teacher?! We’re drowning!” He screams above the wind.

Jesus blinks awake, startled, his eyes holding Andrew’s for a second before they travel over the group frantically trying to keep the boat from sinking under. In one lithe move he’s up and standing at the edge, leaning into the wind, looking straight into the black screaming wind and water.

“Enough.” He says, his voice quiet, calm, authority ringing in every syllable, “Be still.”

Sudden, disorienting quiet falls over us. The wind swishes gracefully away, back to her ribbons, sheepish and soft again after her tantrum. The waves laps at the boat with the small patting hands of apology. The clouds slowly pull back, letting the moon glimmer through.

Jesus looks out at what his dad made. At the land he’s so fond of, at the dark mountain silhouettes and the rolling shoreline, at the wind and the beautiful, powerful water. Not an ounce of fear crossed his face during the storm. He exhales in a sigh, as if the sight of the night gives him peace, turns, and then holds still. His gaze falls on the group of silent men staring back at him like he’s a stranger, like they would back away if they could, a mixture of fear and awe in their faces.

If none of the things he’s done so far have gotten through to them that he’s more than just human, this just did. No one tells the earth what to do. Healing people, sure, ok, but commanding the land? Never.

He rarely rolls up his sleeves and shows his muscles this way – he isn’t the kind of man to show off or to dominate. They’ve already gotten used to the fact that he wields a different kind of power than what humanity would recognize. He doesn’t feel the need to prove his might through violence or force, neither does he ever wish to subjugate.

Right now the men aren’t sure what just happened and they’re all frozen, hardly able to hold his gaze. Do they bow? Do they kneel? I watch him as the men struggle to grasp his power displayed. He doesn’t like the fear on their faces – the drawing away.

“Where is your faith?” He asks them – his voice carrying throughout the boat now that the wind is gone. Whenever I hear this question it stops me in my tracks. Dredging up old wounds of religious self hate. The need to try harder. Is that what he’s saying? Is that what he’s trying to get them to look at? Did he expect them to calm the storm themselves? Is he getting them in trouble for panicking?

I stare at him, unsure. I think about the fear in the boat. I don’t think that’s what he wants. And I can see too, that the men, though they’re close friends, don’t quite see his heart yet. They’ve gotten glimpses of his mission, his promise, sure, but they haven’t caught hold of the length and breadth of his love. They didn’t turn to him until the last moment, until there was no other option left. They could have woken him at any point to help and they didn’t until they were sure they were swamped and sinking. They still see themselves as unworthy – they still need to prove their worth.

He looks at me, and I see the question in them – the asking.

Do I see him? In the storm and in the scream of fear? Will I turn to him, reach for him, let him tuck me inside the shelter of his heart and purpose and plan rather than fight it alone? Or will I wait until I’ve exhausted my last ounce of strength – only call for him out of desperation?

I don’t want him to be in this boat alone, feeling unseen, being misunderstood. My whole heart yearns to answer. To slip to his side and wrap my arms around him and comfort him. To assure him that I will always see him. The words are on the tip of my tongue, pushing against my lips, eager to spill out. But I shift on my feet, my mouth closed tight. It would be easy to promise him, so easy. But only yesterday, facing a much smaller kind of emotional storm I did the same as the men here. I didn’t look at him til after it was over.

He keeps looking at me, and I know he sees my every single thought, the trail they make of wind and waves and storms that scare me, that make me grapple for control. He rifles through them, searching for where my heart lies hidden. He always finds it – my heart. So when he has it in his palms, he grins at me, cocking his brow.

That’s when I can see it. Once my heart is safe and tucked in – that’s when my eyes can look past the moment of his human strain and tiredness. There, underneath, is the vastness of his patience. It steals my breath. There is the eternity of his determination; his will that never quits. And there too, glimmering in his eyes, is the unmatched willingness of his heart to share himself with me. One small piece at a time. The uncapped authority to still any storm that comes my way, even if it’s only at the last minute that I ask for him. He doesn’t mind the slowness of my learning to lean on him, to let him in – he’s an endless, depthless, ocean of more.

Taken from Mark 4:36-41