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Uttered beyond Fear Isaiah 43:1-5;Mark 6:47-52 The entire drama of our faith and the entire truth of our lives is present in this narrative of the storm that takes only six verses to tell. You know very well the plot and the maneuvers made. I will line it out for you one more time. I will line it out for you one more time, because we have nothing better to talk about, and because, if you are like me, you need to hear it yet again. I There was a storm; there always seems to be one in the Bible. The NRSV terms it an "adverse wind." Old Testament people call it "chaos." Barth named it Das Nichtige, the crushing, irresistible force of disorder as yet untamed and on the loose in our world. That is the recurring place of the disciples, the place of the church, the place of preaching, the place where we all live. It turns out that the Bible is much more preoccupied with the threat of chaos than it is with sin and guilt, our middle-class fascinations notwithstanding. We have devised ways of forgiveness, of handling sin and guilt, an assurance ofpardon, a hug, an embrace. But the storm is not so easy. The storm produces a more elemental, inchoate anxiety, a sense of deep helplessness because you cannot touch it anywhere or handle it or measure it or hold it. It is bottomless in size and beyond measure in force, call it flood, call it Leviathan, call it chaos; all the new scientific theories of the "goodness of chaos" do not touch the deep fear about which the Bible speaks, where preachers must work, and to which pastors must attend. II Second Isaiah, my second text, finds the imagery of Chaos useful in order to say what Babylonian exile was like, a deportation and a 51 disconnect from all that was familiar, into a hostile environment that tried to take away all semblance and signs of hope: This—this exile... is like the days of Noah (Isa 54:10). Exactly like the days ofNoah when everything comes loose and nothing is reliable or safe. This—the end of the twentieth century—just like the days of the flood, like the days of Noah, all the old certitudes gone, all old power arrangements failed, all old moral convictions injeopardy. The loss makes us crazy toward each other; we are all prepared to teach preaching and Old Testament in a church and in a context too preoccupied to pay attention or to listen, and we wonder even ourselves. Only two other things are said: 1. They strained against the adverse wind. Surely without success. Water always wins. Storms are always too strong; it is in their very character to be too strong for us. 2. He wasn't there. The church was on its own, without him in the adverse wind. He was on the land. He was not far away. He was on the shore, out for a walk, intending to pass by, not preoccupied with his disciples or their dangers. He seems not much concerned. Big storm, straining without success, absence ... what a set-up for faith! Ill Then they see him. They had not thought to call out for him. This is different from Mark 4 where they wake him up. This time they try to manage the wind themselves. They looked up and there he was. He was there but not recognized. He was in a place and in a form other than habitual. It is like when we see someone out of their normal context , so surprised that we do not recognize them. I would have thought they would have welcomed him. But he scared them. He scared them more than the storm, because in the stormJesus appears in forms that are not immediately recognizable. He is no good buddy, no nice uncle, no familiar presence. He turns out in the storm beyond their categories. His being there at the edge of the storm with them, moreover, does them no good. He changes nothing . . . until he speaks. Everything depends upon his utterance. The being of Jesus won't do without the self-announcement of Jesus. He has to say something. He says it: "It is I!" He does not need to say his name. They know it; they had not thought to summon his name or to utter his name 52 [13.58.252.8...

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