CALMING of the WAVES

I must warn you I've been advised to tell some jokes and I don't know any.

But, I have brought you five or six genuine responses given to preachers at the church door by well meaning members of different congregations.

Good sermon vicar, you kept me on the verge of consciousness.

Did you know there are 240 panes of glass in the east window?

Has anyone told you what a good preacher you are? No? Think about it.

Would you say that interpretation was more pre than post millenial, and can we meet to discuss it?

Sorry I got a bit lost, who rose from the dead?

And my favourite... well it was quite a difficult passage, thanks for trying.

And public speaking can be very trying. Some years ago, at the start of a career in broadcast journalism, I went to try to interview the visiting Chinese first secretary to Hong Kong.

I was rushed and eager and trying to prove myself, and he looked so calm and happy when I arrived at the community centre that I just quickly took his arm and hurriedly went straight onto the airwaves microphone in hand to introduce him. Then I found out that he spoke only fluent Mandarin, live, and to the population of Middlesbrough, England.

But he tried his best for me by switching to pigeon English and repeating the phrase: "Hong Kong, capitalist, China communist", several times whilst looking, and sounding quite delighted with himself, and quite unlike the producer sounded, who I could hear shouting through my headphones. But when you are really trying, your mind is rushing, and I couldn't slow down, I was always rushing.

I would be meeting people I had never spoken to before, in places I had never been to before, and I never had enough time to arrange these meetings myself. For every mission assigned to me the answer to the question "When do you want this?" was 'yesterday', and the answer to "How do I get there" was: Find out on the way." Storms rose in the mind, I couldn't remember names, and I fussed over small details. This type of on the hoof last minute seat of the pants work may all be familiar to some of you too.

And it is really hard sometimes for us in our lives to know the difference between relying on ourselves and relying on God, and to know if there is a difference.

But there is a story in exodus in the Bible, where Moses asks God his name, so that Moses can tell the people who has sent him. God answers by saying to Moses: "I AM who I AM. Tell the people of Israel, I AM has sent you."

And this I AM exists in each and everyone of us, because he is the uncreated Creator who does not depend on anything, or anyone. It is no coincidence that Psalm 46 tells us to: "Be still, and know that I AM"
God, when you are still, does become clearer.

When we are each just overriding God like surging waves leaving the ocean, we each use our freewill to get lost in a big mess. After a lifetime of searching for meaning, the relentlessly questioning philosopher in the Biblical book of Ecclesiastes tells us: "All I have learned is this: God made us very simple, and we have made ourselves very complicated."

In Luke's gospel, the disciples were sailing on Galillee, when a terrific storm came up suddenly on the lake. Water poured in, and disciples were about to capsize. They had to wake Jesus: "Master, Master, we're going to drown!" Getting to his feet, he told the wind, "Silence!" And the lake became smooth as glass. Then he said to his disciples, "Why can't you trust me?" They were in absolute awe, staggered and stammering, "Who is this, anyway?"

This is I AM, the inner Christ, in the middle of a raging storm. But how are we to understand this in our own lives? In my life I remember reading the story to my son, out of a huge old children's Bible I had not opened in a very long time. In it there was a picture of Jesus wearing a blue robe, standing on the bough of the boat, holding out his hand below overcast skies. After I had read the story, my son asked me if it was true. And I had just been going through a very turbulent storm of emotions in my own life, trying to navigate in the dark for some time, and things were finally calming down and lightening up. So was the story true?

I told my son that not everyone believed the story was true, but that I did. Truth can be a really hard thing to pin down, and we don't own it. Whenever I have problems with miracles in the Bible, I remember that if the I AM can create a universe, then the I AM can also still the storms which we will meet in that universe. So for me this story is not so much about believing in the idea of miracles as it is about trusting in the miracle behind all of this stormy universe, and beyond all this change in the universe.

The Greek translation of the Bible understands God as the fulness of Being. It says all creatures receive all that they are and have from him; but he alone is his very being, and he is of himself everything that he is. He is that I AM. I AM is in you and in your neighbours. I AM is in me. I AM is also beyond the winds and the stormy sea. I AM will lead us beside the still waters.

When our will is God's will, we do not need calm conditions, because it is the trust which will make everything clear and still.
An old man, not the tall wiry looking Chinese first secretary to Hong Kong this time but a big slow Burmese man, once told me that there are four types of people in this world. There are those who are moving from darkness to light, those who are moving from darkness to more darkness, those who are moving from light to darkness, and those who are moving from light to more light.

We are all different but in the little boat of our own life experience, if we are always moving in one of these four directions, waves rise and fall and the boat can fill with water. It creaks and rolls. Spray and wind lashes and all can look lost as we try to own the truth. But in the same story, Jesus is just lying asleep in the boat. He trusts, and he asks each of us where our trust is when things are difficult. We sail into storms, and we sail out of them, providing we can show trust. And when we do trust, we won't sink.

Finally, in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells us: "I AM with you always, even unto the end of the world."

- I am in that I AM.