Proper 8b: Beloved/Believe

Many years ago, when my boys were little and before my daughter was born, we spent a week with my family at our annual family reunion/cousin love fest.  One morning, we headed to a park on the banks of a wide river.  Two cousins wanted to cross a footbridge over to the other side of the water.  I told them I’d take them and left Cole and Sam playing with their other cousins as Drew, Amaya, and I headed to the other side, still barefooted and in our bathing suits.  We scouted around for a while, collecting colorful rocks on the shore, and then the kids pointed to people wading in the middle of the water, also picking rocks.  

“Can we go back that way?” my niece Amaya asked.  “There must be better rocks in the water.”

I looked out and saw all the way across the river that no one was in the water much over their knees, and the water was calm; I smiled and said, “Sure!” and we began wading.

I noticed a bit of current as we started across, but I figured it couldn’t be too bad with all those other people in the water.  But suddenly, about halfway across, the water deepened slightly, and the current strengthened.  The rocky bottom, too, was way more slippery than I had expected.  I looked at the other people calmly wading around us and saw–augh!–they were all wearing rubber-soled shoes.  

I looked back to the shore we’d just left, about to suggest that we head back, when both children suddenly lost their footing.  I grabbed for them, but it was too late–both started heading down the river.  It was still shallow–I could see them touching with their hands and feet, but the current was too swift for them to get back on their feet.  I watched helplessly as the water washed them further and further away from me until about 50 yards down the river they both grabbed onto protruding rocks a short way from each other and held on tight.

It was all I could do to keep myself standing, and I knew that if I tried to go after them,  even if I got to where they were, I’d never be able to get back to shore.  At that moment, I felt, for the first time in my life, my powerlessness against the force of water.  I’d feel it again a few years later at a friend’s house when Duluth was flooding and a time or two in high winds in the BWCA.  But I’ve never felt as powerless as I did at that moment;  all I could think of was the waterfall we’d passed earlier that morning downstream and how I’d face my sisters after putting their children in such danger.  

So I can empathize with the disciples in today’s readings, who thought they were doing Jesus a favor by getting him away from the crowds by crossing the lake they knew so well, suddenly facing a storm that threatened to capsize their boat while Jesus lay there fast asleep.

I looked out at Amaya and Drew, out of my reach in the water, and wondered, watching them clinging on to the rocks, not crying, not shouting for help, just waiting, still as Jesus sleeping in that boat and like the disciples wondered how they could be unafraid.  But their calm calmed me too, enough to pick my way over to the nearest person picking rocks. I pointed at the children and explained we were all barefoot: could he rescue them for me?

And, as assuredly as Jesus calmed the waters that night as the disciples watched, the man walked over to the kids, took their hands, and brought them to shore, where I joined them, and we told their confused moms what had happened.  

After the storm, Jesus asked his disciples, “Why were you afraid? Don’t you have any faith?”  

I don’t think Jesus is angry when he says these words.  Fear is natural when lives are in danger.  Of course, I was afraid when I couldn’t rescue my niece and nephew from the river’s current; of course, the disciples were fearful of drowning.  What’s more interesting is that Jesus and Amaya and Drew weren’t.

I think Jesus questions the disciples’ faith, not because of their fear, but because (in Mark) they don’t say, “Rabbi, save us, we’re drowning!”  Instead, when they wake him, they say, “Rabbi, don’t you care that we are going to drown?”

In that place of fear, they stop believing in his love, which they had seen save so many others.

Unlike the disciples, I think Amaya and Drew weren’t afraid because they never stopped believing in their belovedness. They were children sure that their parents, their Nana, their aunts, and their uncles loved them so much that they would always come to their rescue. This is probably one reason that Jesus told his followers to become more like children–because somewhere along the road to adulthood, even the most secure and happy children lose that trust that the adults who love them will always be able to save them, that their love really has no limit.

And so it is with the disciples–and my and probably your–relationship with Jesus, the one who God called beloved, the one who invites us into that all-encompassing love. We’ve seen that love in action and heard parables about its breadth and strength. And still, when we are afraid, we forget that all God asks is that we trust and lean in–that we understand that we are as beloved to God as Jesus is to the one he call Abba, as children are to the adults who love them.  We forget there is no limit or end to that love, a love that will always find a way to reach out and save us if we just hang on and believe that the One who made us, the One who has the power to calm the roughest waters, will not let us drown.