Rev. Jordan Griesbeck: About three years passed, there happened to me an event such as never happened to mortal man or at least such as no man ever survived to tell of. And the six hours of deadly terror which I then endured had broken me up body and soul. You supposed me a very old man, but I'm not. It took less than a single day to change these hairs from a jetty black to white, to weaken my limbs and to unstring my nerves. These are the opening words of Edgar Allan Poe's short story, Descent Into the Maelstrom.
When if if you've read it, you'll know that a fisherman from Norway recounts the story of how three summers before, he went out on a routine fishing expedition with his two brothers. For the first five hours, the sea was calm and between them, the brothers caught a boat full of cod. And when evening came, a storm blew in and the violent wind shredded the sails and and and the storm began to guide the boat towards the jaws of an infamous maelstrom or whirlpool which haunted those waters in Norway. And so for six hours, the boat is caught spinning around and around in a funnel in the maelstrom slowly descending into the heart of the sea. And something like that is what happens to the disciples this morning.
Over the course of twelve hours, they slowly descend into the maelstrom and into the abyss and there's an abyss that all of you know. It is the abyss of fear. Because you can't sugarcoat how terrifying this passage really is. I mean, the storm is so violent that Matthew actually personifies it. He tells us the storm batters the disciples boat and that the wind is against them.
The storm is a person, a hostile force, an enemy. And when it hits, we hear it drives the disciples far from land. Meaning, they're far from safety, from security, from a sense of control, far from anything they can look to or stand on to orient them or ground them. And the storm is relentless. And it starts in the evening, but Matthew tells us it's still going on in the early morning, which means the disciples are stuck in the storm for somewhere for ten to twelve hours.
And that's not to mention the fact that the disciples are alone. Earlier in Matthew and the other storm on the Sea Of Galilee, Jesus was with them in the boat sleeping. But this morning it says that Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side while he went up a mountain by himself to pray. And so not only is Jesus not with them, but he has purposely sent them into the storm by themselves. Last night, the Indiana Jones movies Ford is famously afraid of what?
Snakes. And then in the third one, it came on, and and the joke is that then Sean Connery, his father, is scared of what? Rats. Of the two, I'm actually more scared of rats to be honest with you. But the reality is, I mean, there are as many fears as there are human beings.
I mean, if I pulled this room, all of you carry deep within you your own unique fears and yet fear always works in the same way. Whether it's darkness, heights, snakes, never, never marrying, never being able to have children, never being successful enough for your mother or father or spouse, whatever success and enough mean. I mean, feeling like a failure, feeling like a disappointment, doubting whether you'll ever change, whether you'll ever get unstuck or unaddicted, receiving some diagnosis, getting dementia, getting Alzheimer's, losing yourself, losing her, losing him, losing them. These are all things that have happened to you and they are the things that keep us up at night. I mean so often these fears, they do come to us at night.
They come to us on vacation. They come to us when all was calm and they torture us. I mean, they batter us. They grab hold of the boat and they drive us far from land, out into places where we have no control, disoriented, with nothing to relieve us. I mean, and so often when fear starts, it doesn't let up.
It lasts not just for the night, but for months and years and even decades. But what's worse is not the content of our fears, the fact that we feel so alone in them. Mean, because that is always the voice of fear. It is just you. You are here.
God is there. You are in the sea the middle of the sea. Jesus is up on a mountain somewhere. There's no one to help. There's no one who understands and so we spiral and spiral down.
But what we see this morning in the great surprise and gospel of our passage is that the abyss of fear is actually the place where God plunges us into an even deeper abyss and that is the abyss of faith. We see this with Peter. Morning comes and notice the storm has not stopped. The wind is still blowing and a figure begins walking towards the boat which the disciples assume is a ghost because of course it cannot be Jesus. I mean, abandoned them.
He's on the mountain. But then they hear the voice, take courage. It is I. Don't be afraid. And of all the disciples, it is only Peter who has faith.
And is his faith little like Jesus says? Yes. But it is enough. Because of all the disciples, it seems only Peter recognizes the sound of Jesus' voice. And only Peter seems to have an imagination for God and the storm being in the same place.
And so only Peter calls out to Jesus and says, Lord, if it is you, tell me to come to you on the waters. And when Christ says, come, only Peter comes. Only Peter is foolish enough to leave the boat and risk drowning in the heart of the sea if only it means falling into the hands of his master. And that's exactly what happens in the Edgar Allan Poe story. There are three brothers stuck in the maelstrom, stuck in the boat for six hours and only one of them, the narrator survives.
Survives. Because only he realizes something. As the boat spins around and around for hours, he notices two things. First of all, he notices that the heavier the object is, the faster it sinks. But the lighter the object is, the slower it descends in the funnel.
But also of all the objects, ones that are cylindrical or circular spin and descend the slowest. And so he looks at his brother and he begs them, brother, come and and stop grabbing onto the foothold, the handhold of the ship and cast yourself onto one of the ship's barrels. But his brother will not do it. He remains in the safety of the ship and drowns. But the narrator casts himself onto a barrel.
He descends into the very mouth of the maelstrom and spins around, but slowly, more slowly than anything else. So that eventually after six hours, the whirlpool abates and the narrator survives. And that is what the Christian faith so often feels like. It is like throwing ourselves into the abyss. It's leaving the boat, leaving behind those things which seem so much sturdier and weightier and impressive.
Wealth, recognition, the ability to control our own life, school, job, institution, house, and instead throwing ourselves in the arms of this poor and unimpressive Jesus of Nazareth. Who from the outside looks like the smallest of things and born in a manger, raised in Nazareth, but who in fact is the only one who cannot sink. And he cannot sink because he has already sunk, because he has in fact already thrown himself into the maelstrom. And over the course of thirty six hours, Good Friday, Holy Saturday slowly descended down, down, down into the whirlwind of cross, tomb, and even hell and vanquished them. And so as we close, what about us?
Well, this morning, we are the disciples in the boat. The church, as you know, is always a boat. Churches always look like boats, and we are the disciples in the boat with Jesus after the storm. And with them, we have done two things. First, we have endured the abyss of fear.
Not that fear, all of our fears have subsided this morning, but God has safely led us through many of them. And through those fears, we have learned that God lives in the one place we assume he could never live, which is in the maelstrom. I mean, so often we believe that God comes to us and that he will only come to us when our fears finally stop, when we can finally stop it. But Christ this morning calls to the disciples while the storm is still raging. And what that means for us is that whenever you're afraid and whatever you are afraid of, you can be sure that it is then that moment and no other that there is a figure walking towards you and calling your name and it is not a ghost.
And if you will stare at your fear long enough and if you will follow the thread of your fears back far enough, you will see the face of God and you will see that behind all of your fears is a desire to be with God. And second, with Peter, we too this morning have risked the abyss of faith. We've left the boat and all that is supposedly safer and we have decided that the only thing that will preserve us in life and in death, the only thing that will save us from the whirlpool of sin and death and Satan is something small and even circular. Something that we can place in the palm of our hands and will this morning, the crucified body of Jesus Christ. In the name of God, father, son, and holy spirit.
Amen.