Chaos

We hear an awful lot about chaos: whether it is caused by weather disturbances like hurricanes, wildfires, floods and blizzards; by immigration and enforcement policies at the southern border; chaos in world markets; chaos of terrorism; chaos in the White House. We forget that the entire biblical record begins with chaos: “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” That is, the wind, the ruach of God, the spirit of God, sweeps  over the formless chaos and deep darkness of the seas. Then God begins to bring sovereign order to the formless stuff that was already there and that resists God’s ordering.

Chaos in the Bible is more than disorder. For the Bible, chaos represents that active agency that is engaged in challenging the rule of YHWH-HaShem, the Lord. Chaos seeks to undermine the possibility for life and seeks to negate all prospects for well-being. Think the life of slaves in Egypt, the Israelites in Assyrian and Babylonian captivity, and Israel under Greek and then Roman occupation. Totalitarian states such as Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Greece and Rome enact chaos techniques to undermine social order as cover for their evil ways at the expense of those enslaved and colonized.

Often the biblical narrative associates this chaos with the sea: water, deep, dark waters, which ultimately are forced to submit to the Lord’s intentions for life and the well-being of creation.  YHWH-HaShem marshals the flood waters to attempt to eliminate human sin, or, holds the waters of the sea back just long enough for the slaves to escape Egypt, and then lets waters loose in time to demonstrate that Pharaoh, with all his military might, cannot tread water.

As the fourth chapter of Mark [v35-41] chronicles the night-sea journey of Jesus and the disciples, one way of interpreting the story is that it is a reminder: that forces of evil chaos frequently threaten the community of God’s people, and the counter-narrative that reminds them and us that ultimately in the long-term, God prevails over the chaos.

Note that the boat journey across the sea is Jesus’s idea. This is not meant to be leisure time with the disciples, for at the end of the journey they are greeted by a man so possessed by demons that he has been chained in the tombs, chained among the dead, so as not to be a burden to those in the village or city nearby. This is a missionary journey to liberate, to offer freedom, to one whose life has been in mortal danger for a long, long time. Jesus seeks to destroy the chaos that has been the man’s life and provide him a home once again in a safe community.

The unruly power of the sea and the wind makes the journey itself dangerous. The text is clear, the boat is about to be swamped. The disciples are thrown into desperate, chaotic fear and cry out to their Lord, “Do you not care that we are perishing?!” They are in great distress.

Meanwhile, Jesus is asleep in the rear of the boat. Asleep amidst the torrential wind and waves threatening to capsize the boat and disrupt his mission of liberation and freedom. His own trust in God brings remarkable peace, even in the face of the storm, and contrasts dramatically with the panic the disciples display at the chaos of the sea. He knows the story of past similar events in the history of God’s people. He knows that it is only God who can and will still the storms of life. He sleeps while we fret. Later, he will fret in Gethsemane while the disciples sleep.

Once again, as God instructs Moses during the Exodus, Jesus rebukes the wind and the waves, while offering the disciples a mild rebuke as well: Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith? The disciples we are told are filled with awe and ask, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” They tremble with fear appropriate for those who have experienced the presence of almighty God. Who is he, indeed! The one who says, I am who I am.

The disciples are stand-ins for us whenever we find ourselves tossed to and froe by the winds and waves of chaos. The disciples are stand-ins for us all and our collective amnesia, forgetting that it was God who tamed the waters of chaos in the beginning. Then there’s Job, another stand-in for us, who found his own life turned upside down by chaos, who while defending God from the complaints of his companions exhibits tremendous hubris suggesting he knows all there is to know about this God. God emerges from a whirlwind [Job 38:1-11] to remind Job that the ways of the Lord are inscrutable: “Were you there when I laid out the foundation of earth? Were you there when I told the sea you shall come no further, and here shall your proud waves be stopped!” Like the disciples and Job, we forget how the Psalmist sings that when “they cried to the Lord in their trouble, he delivered them from their distress. He stilled the storm to a whisper, and quieted the waves of the sea.” [Psalm 107:28-29]

When we find ourselves amidst cultural upheaval and collapse of the ‘old order,’ widely experienced as moral, economic and political chaos, we find ourselves frantic like the disciples, or at the other end of things self-assured like Job that we and only we know the ways of God. Our collective amnesia prevents us from re-membering these stories from beginning to end in the Bible of how the wind and waves of chaos, forces that challenge all possibilities for life and negate all possibility of well-being in the name of some kind of human law and order, stand over against the laws and order of the Lord. As Jesus rebukes the wind and the waves he means to remind the disciples and us to return to ways of God.

When we do, we are given the freedom to acknowledge the present reality of chaos in God’s world, while at the same time remember the sacred assurance that God ultimately governs the chaos to provide order and justice and peace for all people of all origins and all orientations. It’s easy to forget: God cares for the well-being of all people, especially those in danger for their lives. St. Paul urges the Corinthians that just as God’s heart is open to us all, “open wide your hearts also.” [2 Cor 6:13] It is easy to over-romanticize biblical Hope. The hope is real, but it does not negate our acknowledging the negations of life and liberty that continue to walk the earth. The chaos is real and evil. We must remember, the falseness and chaos of this world is ultimately bounded by a larger truth. God’s truth and God’s love for all creation and all people.

An anonymous Anglo-Saxon in the fifth or sixth century likened life on this earth to a Seafarer who travels the dangerous seas alone while others feast lavishly in mead-halls on land. He laments the earlier days of great kings and heroes have passed recognizing that the accumulation of great riches does not protect one from God’s judgement when the time comes: “Blessed is he who lives in all humility/what comes to him in heaven is forgiveness.” The one hundred and twenty-five verses conclude: “Let us ponder where our true home is and how to reach it/Let us labor to gain entry into the eternal/to find the blessedness of belonging to the Lord/joyfully on high/Thanks be to God who loved us/the endless Father/the Prince of Glory forever/Amen.”

Jesus says, “Let those who have ears to hear, listen!” [Mark 4:9]

[The Seafarer, translated by Mary Jo Salter in The Word Exchange]