The disciples find themselves just like that. You know what it’s like – life is going along nice and steadily, and then suddenly you’re knocked for six when something quite out of the blue happens. It produces an elemental anxiety, that sense of deep helplessness and foreboding, that knot in the pit of your stomach, being at the mercy of events. From the creation narrative in Genesis ‘when darkness covered the face of the deep’ to the account of the Exodus – the heart of Jewish faith and understanding – when the waters of the Red Sea were miraculously parted, allowing the Israelites to escape and engulfing the pursing Egyptian army to the imagery in many of the Psalms the sea represents chaos: the crushing, irresistible forces of disorder loose in the world, tossing us around and threatening to overwhelm us. For them the sea and storms were symbolic of chaos, the wild forces of nature that only God could tame. The Jewish people were not a seafaring nation. Perhaps the boat could symbolise us or the church, moving away from our safe and familiar surroundings, daring to do something new or different or demanding.Īnd then this boat is tossed in the storm on the sea, an image that goes to the very heart of our faith, and to the doubts and fears that most, if not all, of us will have at times in our lives. ![]() They are going to a strange, alien place where they will be out of their depth. The disciples are with Jesus in a boat they’ve left their familiar surroundings and are going to the far side of the lake – Jesus’ first foray into Gentile land. Luke tells the story in just four short verses, but it speaks profoundly about faith and trust – or the lack of it.Īgain images abound. It appears in both Matthew’s and Mark’s gospels too. It’s a familiar story of Jesus stilling the storm. And for Christians in Jesus, literally the Word made flesh, we see that new covenant, that new promise of faithfulness, trust and love.Īnd so we turn to our gospel passage. The former Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, has remarked that the purest line of covenant says, ‘Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me’.Ĭovenant is the giving of a pledge, a promise, it’s giving you my word. ![]() It’s what allows us to face the future without fear, because we know we are not alone. Ĭovenant is that bond of love and trust between God and his creation. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness,Īnd you shall know the Lord. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and justice, love and compassion. No one put it more simply than the prophet Hosea, in words that Jews still say every weekday morning at the start of their prayers: That word ‘covenant’ is a key word in the Hebrew Bible, our Old Testament, where it occurs more than 250 times. There’s surely a conscious echo here of the rainbow that Noah saw after the waters subsided following the flood (Genesis 9: 8–17), a sign of God’s covenant love and faithfulness for his creation. In the words of Psalm 19, ‘The heavens are telling the glory of God and the firmament proclaims his handiwork’.įor me there’s one picture that speaks particularly powerfully when St John uses the imagery of a rainbow around the throne. ![]() The Victorian art critic and historian John Ruskin saw the whole earth as sacred: ‘Wherever we are moved by the beauty and power of nature, God has let down a ladder for us from heaven’. We can sense some of that glory of the Creator God around us, in all that is good or beautiful or noble – a creation imbued with love. Instead the words convey a sense of sheer awe and wonder, boundless light illuminating every corner and before which no one and nothing is hidden or concealed. We note that there is no personal picture or description of God. For St John is really using words to describe the indescribable the language is bound to fall short before the all-powerful Creator God in whom we live and move and have our being – the God who was, and is and is to come. There’s no need – and perhaps it might even be a mistake – to try to ascribe exact meanings to every specific detail of what’s mentioned, as if there were a secret key to decode it all in detail. There’s an abundance of signs and symbols which stretch our imagination. We have a torrent of them in the vision of St John the Divine in Revelation – trumpets, thrones, winged creatures and more. This Sunday both our epistle and gospel are inundated with images. A torrent of images to describe the indescribable Stephen Adam, 24 February 2019
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |