Second Sunday before Lent – Preacher: Rev’d Christopher Sterry
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Readings: Genesis 2: 4b-9 and 15-end; Luke 8: 22-25
The river of God is full of water. (Psalm 65:10)
Some people are mad about mountains and hills. I have always loved rivers. I was born on the banks of the Yorkshire Calder. I lived and ministered for fifteen years in Whalley on the banks of the Lancashire Calder, close to the place where St Paulinus baptised probably the first Christians in Lancashire. Then in 2012 we moved to Gloucestershire into the orbit of the great river Severn, and of course, here, also the Teme. After seven years here we know all the flood points around here, how to get around them, and when it’s best not to go out at all.
Rivers are like living things, they have characters and personalities, they are sometimes blissfully peaceful, and other times terrifying.
Today’s first reading is from the second creation account in Genesis. It begins with a land that is utterly barren, with no vegetation. It is like that, the story tells us, for two reasons. First
“The Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth”
and second
“there was no one to till the ground.”
There was earth there, but it lacked water, and it lacked manpower. To move to the next stage of creation, Genesis tells us
“a stream would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of the ground— then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground.”
Several sermons could be preached on this passage, and I’ve been at it long enough to be able to resist the temptation to preach them all. The pews here are not luxurious, and you don’t want to be kept from your dinners!
So today I will concentrate on the water. It is only after the stream has arisen and watered the face of the earth, that the rest can happen.
It is no surprise that Psalm 65 is set for Evensong at Harvest Festival.
“The river of God is full of water. You water its furrows abundantly,
settling its ridges, softening it with showers and blessing its growth.”
You can almost hear the trickling noise as rain flows gently into the furrows to nourish the land. Water is essential to life, and, so the Psalm says, it comes from ‘the river of God’.
“Thou crownest the year with thy goodness : and thy clouds drop fatness.”
I have often been caught out in the open when the clouds drop fatness, How we complain when that happens. But the Hebrews, who were more dependent on rain than rivers for their agriculture, thanked God for that blessing.
It’s a simple equation: rain at the right time = harvest; no rain = no harvest.
But before the ‘river of God’ is shown to be a blessing, we are reminded of the awesome and destructive power of water.
“You silence the roaring of the seas, the roaring of their waves, the tumult of the peoples.”
Storms and floods kill and destroy. We are all aware of that.
The Hebrews didn’t like open expanses of water. They were dangerous, inscrutable, unpredictable. Strange, mythical creatures like Leviathan lurked in them. They thanked God that he had tamed the waters of the deep, and brought out of them the fruitful earth.
The Sea of Galilee was notorious for sudden, unpredictable storms–one of them features in today’s second reading.
“A gale swept down on the lake, and the boat was filling with water, and they were in danger.”
Remember, this boat has in it four experienced fishermen, Peter, Andrew, James and John, local lads, who were very conscious of the peculiarities of the Sea of Galilee. Even they were terrified, and saw no hope of survival.
When they manage to wake Jesus,
“He rebuked the wind and the raging waves; they ceased, and there was a calm.”
The word rebuke in Greek is used for giving a short command to a dog, or perhaps a child. “Sit, NO, Down.” Here are no magic incantations or gestures. Just a simple, authoritative word of command.
Then as they look at him gobsmacked, he asks, what is on the face of it a ridiculous question,
“Where is your faith?”
And they, in their astonishment, reply with the the crucial question
“Who then is this, that he commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him?
Rationalists work very hard to find ways to explain away the miracles. I have heard sermons which insist that the healings and exorcisms of Jesus were simply an example of skilful natural healing. The feeding of the 5000 was the generosity of Jesus prompting everyone to open up their hidden packets of sandwiches and share with their neighbours. Even the raising of Jairus’ daughter and the son of the widow of Nain are put down to them being in a coma.
But not this one. You can’t rationalise this one.
Who is this? That is the question all the Gospels set out to answer.
God was at work when he raised the stream to water all the land in Genesis, when he silenced the roaring of the seas and caused the clouds to drop their fatness into the freshly ploughed furrows
In the same way, in the stilling of the storm, by that simple word of command, we see God at work in Jesus.
In John’s Gospel Jesus said,
“Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.”
As we read the gospels today, as we refresh and renew our belief in him, that stream of living water flows within each of us, like the stream which watered all the earth in Genesis. His creative power nourishes our bodies and our souls. His word of command stills our souls, as it calmed the waves, and as it brought forth creation out of the deep.
Who is this, that even the winds and the waves obey him? To him be glory for ever. Amen.