‘Be Calm’ by Sieger Köder |
A monologue delivered by the wonderful Jim Allen yesterday as part of morning worship focussed around Luke 8:22-25. I originally wrote it for Jim as part of the New Irish Arts 10th Anniversary event in the Waterfront nearly 10 years ago... but he's been using it here and there since then, but I've never used it again myself... So it was nice to have it come "home" yesterday...
That night he said to us, "Come on…
Let’s go over to the other side of the lake." Tell you the truth, we were
glad to get into a boat and leave the crowds behind… They really got on your
goat after a while... I do not know how he put up with it all the time… was it
any wonder that he fell asleep as soon as we left the shore… We needed four boats to get us all across,
but there were enough of us who had been fishermen to skipper them all… I was
in charge of the one Jesus was in, and I was proud in a strange sort of a way…
but all my pride flew out the window when a furious storm blew up out of
nowhere… It happens all the time, so some people have asked why we didn’t just
take it in our stride… Why were we so afraid?… Typical land-lubber’s attitude…
Because we make our living from the sea, we know how dangerous it can
be… we have reason to be afraid…
This storm was as bad as any I had ever
been out in… We quickly lost sight of the other boats and the waves were
breaking over the boat so quickly and with such force that it was impossible to
bale it out… The mainsail was ripped in two and was dancing on the yard-arm
like a demon. The others were holding onto ropes, or the gunwales or anything
they could grab hold of… They looked at me with terror in their eyes and
shouted at me to do something. But I knew we were going down and there was
nothing I could do about it… And yet Jesus slept through it all… When I saw
that, I cracked… I did something I never thought I would do… And even today I
can’t believe I did… But I reached down and shook him awake and said.
"Rabbi, don't you care if we all drown?" I don’t know what I expected him to do… I
mean he was a carpenter, not a sailor.
But without answering me, he stirred
himself, stood up and said to the wind and the waves in a quiet but
authoritative voice "Quiet! Be still!" And the wind died down and it
was completely calm.
Then, and only then did he turn to me,
and the other disciples who were with me and said, "Why are you so afraid?
Do you still have no faith?"
We were more terrified now than when we
had been in the middle of the storm… Someone asked, under his breath, "Who
is he? Even the wind and the waves obey him!"
And I thought to myself… He spoke to
those waves as if he had done that before… And they responded as if they had
known his voice for a long, long time…
Selah
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