Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s quote, “Earth is crammed with
heaven,/And every bush is aflame with God/But only those who see, take off
their shoes/The rest sit around it and pluck blackberries” has been our
touchstone throughout this series. It can be fairly easy to find a bush
that burns in the day to day living. It just takes pausing to look around. When
we are sick, like Simon’s mother-in-law, we can find a burning bush in getting
well. In our times of seeking, we can, with Nicodemus find a burning bush when
we get answers. Martha, in her busyness of preparing dinner had a hard time
seeing the burning bush, but she was changed anyway.
As we continue our Lent search for burning bushes, we might
ask where do we find a burning bush when all hope seems lost? Where do we look
for a burning bush when we are adrift in a storm? Jesus and his disciples were
in just that situation. We hear the story in Mark 4:35-41, also Matthew 8:
23-27, Luke 8: 22-25.
“When evening had
come, Jesus said to them, ‘Let us go across to the other side.’ And leaving the
crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats
were with him. A great gale arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the
boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion;
and they woke him up and said to him, ‘Teacher, do you not care that we are
perishing?’ He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be
still!’ Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, ‘Why
are you afraid? Have you still no faith?’”
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| Jesus Stilling the Tempest, James Tissot |
It must have been a terrible storm. Remember many of the
disciples were fishermen, used to the wind and waves on the water. For them to
be frightened, the ‘great gale’ must have been pretty bad. Yet, in the middle
of this storm, Jesus is ‘asleep on a cushion’. Sometimes there are storms in our lives and we feel like God is asleep or maybe not even in the boat. We think all hope is lost and are afraid.
Because of the storm, the disciples lost their courage and
their ability to remember Who is in charge. CS Lewis reminds us, “Courage is
not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing
point, which means, at the point of highest reality.”
There are scary times when we can all lose our center, our
confidence, our courage. Then Jesus steps in and calms the storm and encourages
“your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word.” (2 Thessalonians
2:17) Ann Voskamp notes, “Courage births all virtue. Courage mothers everything
good in the world. Without courage, everything good, in us and in the world,
stillbirths…Needing courage is another
way of saying Christ is needed…When you’re between God and a hard place,
it’s God’s presence that transforms every hard place…Whatever place you’re in
is a place of God. And when you’re in a
place of God, you cannot displace your courage. Christ is for you, with
you, in you!”
When Jesus asks the frightened men, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” he was offering the
lifeline of courage. As Voskamp says, “You’ve got this—because Grace has you and Courage is in you and
Christ is with you, so a tender and brazen joy could be even in this place.”
Even in the storms of life, when things seem desperate, the light of the
burning bush points the way and offers courage.
I think that after the storm was over, the disciples would
have said a prayer of thanksgiving. Perhaps similar to this one from d365, a
daily meditation, adapted from a Jewish Sabbath prayer. I offer it to you for
use in your times of stress when it seems that God is absent, until you turn
and discover that really God is there all along ready to speak the word of
peace.
“Days pass and the
years vanish and we walk sightless among miracles. Lord, fill my eyes with
seeing and my mind with knowing. Let there be moments when your Presence, like
lightning, illumines the darkness in which I walk. Help me to see, wherever I
gaze, that the bush burns, unconsumed. And I, clay touched by God, will reach
out for holiness and exclaim in wonder, ‘How filled with awe is this place and
I did not know it.’”
Next week is Palm Sunday and the beginning of Holy Week. Where might we find burning bush moments in remembering those events?
