York Minster

Stilling the Storm. Mark 4. 35-41

Date: 21st June 2009
Preacher: The Reverend Canon Jeremy Fletcher

In York it is not very often that you come across an entire ship’s company standing to attention and ready to parade. But two weeks ago the sailors of HMS York were all just outside the West Front, with everything polished and caps gleaming brightly, about to exercise the freedom of the City. It was a stirring sight, and a surprising one if you didn’t know it was happening – especially for our German stonemason Nico and his new wife Anja, also German, as the west doors were opened for them at the end of their wedding and the band started playing Rule Britannia.

One of the great privileges of being Precentor here is that you get to know a variety of different organisations. Among the armed services the Navy was the last one for me to meet. I much enjoyed working with HMS York as they planned their rededication and freedom parade, especially when I received an email with a picture showing me what they were up to in the fortnight before they came here – it was the test launch of a Sea Dart missile. For all the jolly parading and ceremonial that picture made it clear that this was a vessel designed to be in the thick of a battle, made for action. 

There is not much of the sea here, but we were able to show some of the crew the memorial in the North Transept to Rear Admiral Cradock, who led his small fleet into battle against an overwhelming force of the enemy, knowing that they would certainly lose. This was off Chile in the First World War, and Cradock got his wish of dying in battle, perishing at the hands of the German Admiral Graf Spee. That might have been fine for Cradock, but it was less so for his crew members, as 1600 of them perished off Corinel. It is a naval battle I think of when reading the story of the stilling of the storm: the desperation to cling on to life, the utter panic and confusion when wind and waves and violence combine. The painting of this which was displayed here in Lent took as its inspiration the film The Cruel Sea.

All the gospel accounts of this incident make sure that we know that there was panic on this small boat, that they thought they were going to die. These were people of the sea: many of the disciples earned their living in boats, and those I know who do the same have an enormous respect for these elements of wind and water. The Breton fisherman’s prayer for help is because ‘the sea is so wide and my boat is so small’. I don’t think the disciples wake Jesus up because it’s a bit choppy. They wake him up because their lives are about to end. Mark has this wonderful incidental detail about Jesus being asleep on a cushion. I can imagine Peter, who is reputed to have know Mark the Evangelist, remembering that detail. Sometimes in moments of extreme panic a little thing sticks in the mind. When I crashed a car once and ended upside down in a ditch, I clearly remember that the Shipping Forecast had just got to “Smiths Knoll Automatic”. Years after the incident Peter still remembers the cushion.

And Jesus saves them. He is calm about himself – he’s asleep after all, totally secure in the knowledge of the love and the purposes of his Father. For their sake though he tells wind and wave - which as the second person of the Trinity he had called into being at the beginning of all things – to be still. Their question has been “do you not care that we are perishing?”, and he shows that his care for them is total and more powerful than they could ever imagine. If they were frightened before, then when the sea is calm and they realise why they are even more stunned and awed. They thought they knew him, and now they realise they know very little. “Who is this? Even the wind and waves listen to him and do what he says”.

I spent quite a lot of yesterday afternoon climbing about the timbers of a ship. At least that’s what they looked like – they were designed by ship builders, and perhaps some of them came from ships originally. They were in the roof space of Beverley Minster, and if you have not been on a roof tour there you have missed a treat. Turn the church over and you have the hull of a ship, built to withstand the battering of waves and the shattering of the wind, just as Beverley’s double scissor beams withstand the storms from which there us no other shelter. The earliest readers and hearers of this story understood that the boat could be seen as the church, the waves and wind seen as the persecutions and attacks they were undergoing, the crew could be seen as the faithful followers of Christ. This is called a Nave – navis – a ship, after all.

What we are promised here is not plain sailing, a luxurious cruise across a millpond like Atlantic. There will be storms. Why should Christians be immune from the things which assail all humans? For us as individuals there will be illnesses to face, devastations out of the blue, things which don’t go quite right, relationships which crack and bring pain. For the church there will be challenges at every turn: a Bishop this week said the Episcopal life was like white water rafting with unknown rocks at every turn. In the world there are upheavals and we know them only too well as we feel the effects of economic devastation and look at political turmoil and religious violence each night on our screens.

This is not plain sailing, and all too often we can turn on God and yell with real anger “don’t you care that we are drowning?” And Christ, who is with us in our little boat, and over us as the one who has made all things, points us to his presence with us, and to the ultimate sign of his care. For when the storm of death, the storm of hatred and destruction swirls around him on the Cross, he knows he could call down legions of angels, knows he could smooth it all out. But he has shown he can still such storms. The fact that he does not smooth it all out, the fact that the floods run over him, means that his was no mistake. His Being engulfed by the waters of his own death is the answer to the disciples cry: “Lord, save us”, to our cry “do you not care?” Christ’s care for us is such that he takes the greatest storm into himself, and removes its sting from us.

Thanks be to God that there is no storm, no overwhelming, that can separate us from that love. And should our prayer not now be that we make this place a place of welcome and safety and support and rescue for the perishing? All too often our actions as Christians are about throwing each other out of the boat. But we have been saved. This navis, this boat, will not perish, perish because Christ has perished for us and has been raised. Our cry should be "Here we are! Here is Christ! Hold our hand, as we hold his, and all will be well.”