May I speak to you in the name of the one, holy, and living God. Amen.
In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus walks on water and calms a storm.[1] On the face of it, the story seems to be about the miraculous rescue of endangered disciples; much as the passage immediately preceding it that we heard last Sunday appears to be about the miraculous feeding of hungry crowds. But there is more here than meets the eye.
I read this story as a kind of picture-parable. The image of the storm is a common image of chaos, fear and despair, yielding various metaphors of drowning, treading water, walking on water and calming the storm: different ways of imaging our response to the storms that rage around us and inside us. These images point to very real and often devastating social and psychological experiences of physical violence, disruption, emotional pain and depression.
Some suffering is so intense that it cannot be communicated; except, perhaps indirectly. The great English poet-priest, Gerard Manley Hopkins, was no stranger to the depths of depression. Writing in the 1880s while living in Ireland, he expresses those depths in one of his “terrible sonnets” from this period:
No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.
Comforter, where, where is your comforting?
Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?
My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief
Woe, wórld-sorrow; on an áge-old anvil wince and sing —
Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked 'No ling-
ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief."'
O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne'er hung there. Nor does long our small
Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,
Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all
Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.[2]
Hopkins describes what it is like to be in the grip of a bottomless depression that leaves one feeling helpless. There is no point at which this depression stops and one can say, “it won’t get any worse than this.” It is as if the depression, having learned from its previous waves, discovers ever-new ways to inflict pain on the soul. There is no one to comfort him; not even The Holy Spirit or Blessed Mary. His cries of pain heave like the waves of the sea, sounding like the cries of a whole herd of cattle stretched out in a line – and yet these cries are all focused on the “chief woe” that is “world-sorrow,” the melancholy we feel at existing in a world so full of pain and suffering. It’s like being hammered on an anvil, crying out with pain that attacks quickly without lingering but repeats over and over again.
The mind has vast mountains, off the edge of which we can tumble into black pits of despair. People who have never known such depression hold this “cheap,” and don’t understand how bad it is. Life is too short, that small “durance,” to learn how to scale such steep cliffs. All the poor sufferer can do is creep beneath whatever small comfort is available and cling to it while the storm rages; the threadbare comfort of sleep, however fitful, or, finally, death.
Pretty bleak isn’t it? But for those who live with severe depression or chronic pain, or who suffer from grinding poverty or traumatic violence, it barely begins to express the truth. This is the kind of storm that our Gospel is describing.
Even if we have not known the depths of such despair, I don’t think any of us is untouched by this world sorrow; not if we are awake and paying attention. I consider myself pretty resilient, and even I’ve had some mornings in the past few weeks when it was hard to get out of bed. Jesus and his disciples were no strangers to the storm of world sorrow. Recall that they are still absorbing the news that King Herod executed their comrade John the Baptist, and that they are now on Herod’s list of enemies.[3] They are wrecked from dealing with the grief, rage, and pain of the crowds of people who gathered in protest over John’s murder; compassion fatigue is a real thing.[4] Everyone is feeling on edge, emotionally spent, and anxious about the future.
After dismissing the crowd and packing the disciples off into the boat, Jesus had the good sense to silence his smart phone, tune-out the news cycle, and head up to the mountain for some silent prayer – even if only for a little while. Notice that when Jesus comes down from the mountain, the storm is still blowing. Circumstances had not changed. What had changed, was Jesus’ relationship to those circumstances.
Suffering is real, but so is love. Our vulnerability to suffering is also our vulnerability to love. In the midst of the storm, the difficulty is to embrace our vulnerability, for it is the doorway that opens to love as well as suffering. It seems we cannot close the door against suffering without closing the door against love. But if we remain open, it is possible to suffer through to love.
This love is as great a mystery as suffering, and equally difficult to describe. Here, we again need the help of the poets. Listen to the words of another poet-priest, R. S. Thomas, this one a Welshman writing in the 20th Century:
Evening
The archer with time
as his arrow--has he broken
his strings that the rainbow
is so quiet over our village?
Let us stand, then, in the interval
of our wounding, till the silence
turn golden and love is
a moment eternally overflowing.[5]
Thomas, no doubt on some hillside bluff, sees the rainbow– that biblical sign of hope – the light that appears in the interval between storm and storm. He invites us to stand in a silence that gathers light unto itself until the moment when love begins to overflow, pouring forth from God eternally into time – into the time of our lives.
This is the vulnerability of Jesus: the willingness to stand in the interval of our wounding and allow the light and love of God to flow through him. Throughout his ministry, we see Jesus stealing away to pray, to allow the silence to turn golden and love to flow. The wounding is real. But so is the interval and in that interval, our relationship to our wounds beings to change. Held in a love that overflows our wounds, they begin to flower into compassion for ourselves and for others.
In the silence, we begin to see that we are not our wounds. We begin to see through the wounds to the center of our being in God, which is pure love. “The flower of the wound is the flower of awareness that is our grounding essence,” writes Martin Laird. “The flower of awareness beholds the unity in all the joyous particularities of creation. To perceive with the all-inclusive unity of creation is to be seen through by love.”
“When we sit in silent contemplation, we sit in solidarity with all who suffer affliction. To realize that our pain, though personal, is not private to us is deeply liberating. As we sit on our chair, prayer cushion, or prayer bench or simply lie in bed because at the moment we cannot manage much else, we are free enough, even in the middle of depression that will not budge, to become a gathering place for all who suffer in this life. We become a bridge for all those who have no bridge.”[6]
Isn’t this what Jesus does for Peter? He becomes a bridge for him to walk on the water and through the storm. This is what becomes possible when we pause in the interval of our wounding and allow light and love to shine through. We become a bridge over which others gain access to God’s love. I thank God for the people who have been that bridge for me.
Peter wants to cross that bridge, but he realized he couldn’t power his way through under his own steam, so he says to Jesus, “If you are who you say you are, command me to come to you.” We need a power greater than ourselves; we need to be seen through by love. But no one can be forced across. It really isn’t by command, but by invitation that we cross the bridge. We must embrace vulnerability, putting one foot in front of the other, trusting in love.
This story is so true, so very human. Peter embraces his vulnerability and trusts the love he sees in Jesus, until he doesn’t. He stands in the interval of his own wounding, but then the continuing presence of the storm triggers his fear again, and he begins to drown. But even the willingness to cry out for help is enough. Jesus reaches out his hand, catches Peter, and brings him back into the boat.
Our wounds, when seen through by love, can bring us into solidarity, into communion with our fellow-sufferers. There is a movement between silent contemplation, standing in the interval of our wounds, and banding together in community, moving through the storms of life together. It is only in the boat, in community, that the winds cease. The storm will end. But we can only ride it out together. We can be bridges of love for each other.
Amen.
[1] Matthew 14:22-33.
[2] “No Worst” in Gerard Manley Hopkins: The Major Works, ed. Catherine Phillips (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 167.
[3] Matthew 14:1-12.
[4] Matthew 14:13-21.
[5] R. S. Thomas, “Evening,” in Collected Later Poems 1988-2000 (Tarset, Northumberland, UK: Blood Axe Books, 2004), p. 223.
[6] Martin Laird, An Ocean of Light: Contemplation, Transformation, Liberation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), p. 217-218.
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