“What manner of man is this, that even the wind and sea
obey him?” (Mark 4.41b)
The miracle of this Sunday’s Gospel manifests the source of divine power
and the secret of Lordship. The irresistible force of a storm at sea reveals
the mighty power of creation, while the overmastering word that brings
calm points to the rule of providence strongly and sweetly ordering all
things.
The miracle takes place in an instant, but its purpose was not just
to astonish. Its purpose was to strengthen faith: faith in the person who
worked the miracle. The disciples were moved to wonder and cried out, ‘What
manner of man is this, that even the wind and sea obey him?” And so we
should learn from the disciples to ask the right question about Christ’s
miracle. We too should be moved to wonder and inquire, “What manner of
man is this?” We too should wonder at the source of his power and the secret
of his Lordship.
Nowadays, I suppose we think that such lordship and power over nature
is something that comes from science. For us technology seems the key to
power and authority. We may not yet be able to control the weather, but
we can smash atoms, harness electrons, and master the invisible forces
of nature.
Now all of this is pretty heady stuff, and I’m certain the disciples
would regard the mastery we do have over nature to be an amazing thing.
Well it is true that science has given us a mastery of the elements, but
I wonder if we are any more advanced in the mastery of ourselves? For all
our wizardry and skill, I wonder if we are any wiser in securing peace,
or in protecting ourselves and our world from being poisoned by our own
inventions and waste?
Year by year the gap grows wider between our power to control nature
and our powerlessness to control ourselves. Despite all our technical advances
we are more and more coming to resemble the dinosaurs whose great power
and appetites left them unable to survive in a world they seemed to rule
as kings.
With such thoughts in mind, perhaps we have good reason to look elsewhere
for the true source of lordship and power over creation and ourselves.
Perhaps instead of always looking to future scientific progress to save
us, maybe for a moment we might look back, back to the beginning, to the
very beginning of creation. Perhaps there we shall find the clue we seek.
As we begin the Book of Genesis, we come across another storm, a cosmic
storm that engulfed the entire universe. The newborn creation was then
a watery chaos without form and utterly empty, and darkness was upon the
face of the deep. But above it all there moved the mind of its maker. The
Spirit of God hovered over the face of the stormy waters. And then in the
midst of this cosmic storm God spoke: his mind uttered a creative word,
his Spirit breathed order upon the elements and there was peace.
And God’s creative thought continued until it reached the crown of all
creation in the making of man, whom God placed in creation to have dominion
over it. Man was to rule and watch over creation, not as God, but as God’s
viceroy. And man was to watch over himself, keeping himself under obedience
to his creator.
It is here that we find the clue we have been seeking. Adam’s lordship
over creation came from his obedience to his Lord and Maker. The key to
all power and mastery of ourselves, and of the creation around us comes
from harmony and agreement with the divine will.
Harmony and agreement in all things through obedience to God’s will
is the first and fundamental law of all creation. But it was a law that
man learned by forgetting it. God’s service was from the beginning perfect
freedom: all things obeyed the one who obeyed God. But man turned from
that will, and exchanged freedom for slavery. He exchanged the original
harmony of creation for conflict and war. Man became a source of conflict
and death to himself, and to creation, for creation lost her appointed
viceroy and keeper in the fall of man. She too fell into bondage and labour,
waiting, as St. Paul tells us, for the new birth of true sons of God; (Romans
8. 19-22) waiting for sons who had learned the secret of lordship through
obedience.
This is the secret that the true Son of God came to teach the sons of
Adam. In Christ we are shown a life lived in obedience to God, and in his
obedience we see the original harmony and order of creation restored. Christ’s
calming of the storm fulfills and reveals the fundamental law of creation:
that all nature obeys the one who is in perfect harmony with the mind and
spirit of God.
In Christ the spirit of man and the Spirit of God meet and move as one:
he speaks and the wind and sea obey as in the beginning. As wonderful as
the miracle of Christ’s mastery of the elements is, it is meant to reveal
to us a greater miracle still. The miracle that Christ does is meant to
reveal the miracle that Christ himself is. He is the obedient one; he is
man restored to the glory of his first place in creation, and he is God
in the form of a servant, humbling himself to reconcile the world to its
creator.
Now unto him that is able to keep us from falling and to present
us faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy; to the
only wise God our Saviour be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both
now and forever. (Jude 24-25)
