Sunday Worship 1 March | The Boat in the Storm

Matthew 8:23-34

Then he got into the boat and his disciples followed him. Suddenly a furious storm came up on the lake, so that the waves swept over the boat. But Jesus was sleeping. The disciples went and woke him, saying, “Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!” He replied, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm. The men were amazed and asked, “What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!”

When he arrived at the other side in the region of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men coming from the tombs met him. They were so violent that no one could pass that way. “What do you want with us, Son of God?” they shouted. “Have you come here to torture us before the appointed time?” Some distance from them a large herd of pigs was feeding. The demons begged Jesus, “If you drive us out, send us into the herd of pigs.” He said to them, “Go!” So they came out and went into the pigs, and the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and died in the water. Those tending the pigs ran off, went into the town and reported all this, including what had happened to the demon-possessed men. Then the whole town went out to meet Jesus. And when they saw him, they pleaded with him to leave their region.

Since Christmas we have been following the story of Jesus from the cradle to the cross, mostly through the gospel of Matthew. We have followed him into exile and to the temple. We have watched him be baptised in the river and face temptation in the wilderness. We have heard him call his first disciples and begin to teach the secret of how to live well. This morning we are going to think a little about his practical ministry, and I have chosen this passage because it shows us each of the two kinds of miracles he performed – healing miracles and miracles that show power over natural elements. Of course those are quite broad categories, and what I am saying only makes sense if we include the exorcisms as healings, which I would argue they are, as they return a person to wholeness and reunite them with their community, the two distinguishing features of healings in the gospels.

I’m not sure I’ve ever preached on any of the stories in which Jesus casts out demons, so I think it’s worth pausing to ask what we are supposed to make of them. In all truth, I’m not quite sure what I think of demon possession. I believe that God created the world and was made incarnate in it and moves through it, so obviously I am open to there being supernatural causes for the things we see and experience, and I do believe that there are forces for evil as well as forces for good, but I have heard demonic influence blamed for everything from cancer to an interest in Dungeons and Dragons, and that has made my uneasy about turning to it too readily as an explanation.

I am not ruling out the possibility that what is described is exactly what happened, but many of the possessions described in scripture sound very much like forms of mental illness or seizures, and I wonder if perhaps what we are seeing is Jesus and the gospel writers using the language and understanding that was available to them at the time, in order to describe something we would speak of quite differently today. I want to be clear though that if there is a link between possession and sickness, I believe it only runs in one direction. What scripture speaks of as possession may well be sickness, but that doesn’t mean they are the same thing, and it doesn’t mean that what we experience as sickness is possession. We might speak of people battling demons of addiction and so on, but that is metaphorical language, and I think that taking it too literally can spiritualise things in a way that adds fear and distracts unhelpfully from what is really happening.

Stepping back to look at the whole passage now, I think it is interesting that these stories come together, as in both there is a sense of Jesus bringing calm into violence. In the first, there is the violence of the storm, and in the second there is the violence of the men among the tombs. And when I say that Jesus brings calm, I don’t just mean that the end result is calm, I mean that there is a calmness to his demeanour throughout. The disciples count four experienced fishermen among their number but this storm has badly frightened them, and yet despite having been roughly woken from a nap by these frantic men, Jesus gently chides them and the wind. We are told the men among the tombs are so violent that no one can pass that way, and yet Jesus does not retreat or panic as they approach him, saying only a single word in response.

We know from the way he wept at Lazarus’ tomb and cried out in agony in the Garden of Gethsemane that Jesus felt things deeply, but still there is a confidence and a serenity to the way he moved through the world that I long for. Those of you who have known me for some time may have noticed that I am not a naturally confident or serene person, but still I have hope because I think that those qualities come from being deeply grounded in God. Now obviously that was much easier for Jesus, what with him actually being God and all, but I do find that the more I ground myself in God, the more confident and serene I become, the more I can be calm in the midst of violence and chaos. But what does being grounded in God look like? The Book of Belonging which I read from a couple of weeks ago has a refrain running through it which declares that we belong and we are beloved and we are delightful, and I think to a large extent that being grounded is knowing in our very core that those things are true, so I want to speak those words over you this morning, and I want you to keep speaking them over yourselves. You belong, you are beloved, you are delightful.

The fourth gospel describes miracles as signs and wonders, things that amaze us and point us to some greater truth. So what is that these miracles point us to? For me they point straight to a difficult question about why disease and disaster still exist if God can so easily resolve them. There have been many attempts to answer this question. Cessationists will argue that miracles ended with the apostolic age, but I have seen too many wonderful things to believe that is true. The answer that has made most sense to me is that everything in this world is so interconnected that God could not wholly rid it of disease or disaster without controlling every atom, which would make it impossible for us to be free creatures. As Miri told us at Christmas, God made the world because God is love and wanted a whole world to love, and love requires freedom and all the risk that entails.

So if God can’t miracle away all the bad things, why do we see any miracles at all? Isn’t that just tormenting us? Well this is where we come back to the idea of signs, and what they are meant to point us to. I think these miracles point us to a vision of what God wants for us, and what God is preparing for us in eternity, which I suspect may work by a different set of rules. But that doesn’t mean this vision is just a nice thing for us to look forward to. We can take it as a sign of the kind of world we can be part of building right now. Clearly not everyone is ready for that world, and not everyone is willing to work for it. The townsfolk at the end of our passage seem more concerned about getting rid of Jesus, presumably so he can’t destroy any more of their livestock, than asking him to hang around and show them more amazing things. But that doesn’t have to stop us. God wants us to be protected, so we do what we can to protect people. God wants us to be whole and connected, so we do what we can to make people whole and connected. And we can start by telling them they belong and they are beloved and they are delightful.