The Night-Sea Journey
We are mistaken when tempted to think that this journey we
call life is meant to be a time to find something – or, rather someone – or The
SomeOne. That is to ignore a great cache of literature that seeks to direct us
in a different way. Rather than a quest, they suggest, we are best to abandon
all that we think we know and even that which we “think” we are. Such
abandonment of “self” is often experienced as darkness, as aloneness, as
stillness, but may result in being found.
The prophet Elijah, for instance, on the run for his life
having challenged the Canaanite God Baal, and having slaughtered the prophets
of Baal after a contest on Mt. Carmel, hides himself in the darkness of a cave
on Mount Horeb – the only person in the Bible to have gone back there since
Moses left after his encounter with YHWH several hundred years prior. [1 Kings
19:9-18] Jezebel, wife of king Ahab and worshipper of Baal, had set a price on Elijah’s
head. In this darkest moment of his soul, it is the Lord God YHWH who comes to
find him, and summons Elijah to come out as He promises to pass by. There is a
great wind, splitting rocks, tossing trees and shrubs all around, but God was
not in the wind; then an earthquake, but God was not in the earthquake; then
fire, but God was not in the fire; finally, Elijah barely hears a still, small
voice – the sound of sheer silence. It turns out that when things are bleakest,
life is at its darkest, most precarious ebb, God comes to us. God seeks us out.
God gives Elijah new “marching orders” and sends him back into the fray!
John Matthias, later known in sixteenth century Spain as
Juan de la Cruz, Saint John of the cross, famously wrote, “Upon a gloomy
night/With all my cares to loving ardors flushed/(O venture of delight!)/With
nobody in sight/I went abroad when all my house was hushed.” For John, it
was Elijah all over again. It was a “dark night of the soul,” having been
jailed in a tiny cell by rival friars. This led him to discover that once he
allowed himself to be “entirely burned away,” God came to him in the midst of the
hushed darkness: “Oh night that was my guide!/Oh darkness dearer than the
morning’s pride/Oh night that joined the lover/To the beloved
bride/Transfiguring them each into the other.” John felt rescued from his
despair by the “beloved bride,” the alive-again Christ, who had come to shine
light upon John’s night of deep darkness.
In this season of renewed interest in Homer’s Odyssey, and
directly related to our gospel for today, we are reminded of that other
metaphor for spiritual growth and mystical experiences of God: the darkness and
potential dangerous wildness of the “wine-dark sea.” There may be no other life
as lonely as that of one of the prophets and those like John of the Cross than
those who sail the often roiled and wild seas. The Seafarer, by an
anonymous Anglo-Saxon poet describes life on the open sea while others on land
spend nights in the mead-hall enjoying lavish banquets before a roaring fire:
“I can sing my own true story/of journeys through this
world/ how often I was tried/by troubles. Bitterly scared/I would be sick with
sorrow/on my night watch as I saw/so many times from the prow/terrible, tall
waves/pitching close to cliffs./My feet were frozen stiff/seized and locked by
frost/although my heart was hot/from a host of worries./A hunger from
within/tore at my mind, sea-weary. But men on solid ground/know nothing of how
a wretch/like me, in so much pain/could ever live a winter alone/exiled, on the
ice-cold sea/where hail came down in sheets/and icicles hung from me/while
friendly hall-companions/feasted far away./The crashing sea was all/I heard,
the ice-cold wave.” [translated by Mary Jo Salter in The Word Exchange]
As the night-sea journey continues for our Anglo-Saxon poet,
he is struck by just how “Terrible and great/is the Lord, and the very
world/turns to him in awe….Blessed is he who lives in all/humility, what comes
to him/in Heaven is forgiveness…” The Seafarer then concludes: “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.”
Which certainly needs no analysis to lead us into a deeper
look at what is the Second Night-Sea Journey in Matthew 14:22-26. Earlier,
Jesus had invited others to join them in the boat, but who had other things to
do before getting in [8:18-27]. This time, Jesus “made the disciples get in
the boat and go on to the other side” while he took a very much needed
time-out to recharge after healing and feeding thousands. Not for long, though.
These men, among them fishermen, found themselves rowing against a mighty wind,
with the boat in danger of foundering. It is dark. It is night. Waves batter
the boat. The going is rough. The going is exhausting to be sure. We try to
imagine what was going through their minds as they continued to fulfill their
mission to get to the other side. When all of a sudden, a vision appears. They
suppose it is a ghost. They cry out in fear! But immediately the vision speaks
to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” Actually, it
says, “Take heart, I am.” They would recognize “I am” as the voice of
God to Moses from the bush that burns but is not consumed. Like our Anglo-Saxon
poet, they recognize that in the darkness on the wind-blown sea they are in the
presence of the Lord God, “I am who I am.”
This is where it gets a bit strange. Peter demands proof as
their Lord stands upon the battering waves before them. He wants to be like
Jesus, standing on the roiling sea. OK, says the Lord. Give it a try. So, Peter
gets out of the boat, starts to walk toward Jesus when suddenly, he noticed the
strong wind and begins to sink. He has been rowing against the strong wind all
night. How is it just now that he notices the wind? Or, is he suddenly struck
oblivious? Or, is he thinking only of himself and not the great “I Am” who
stands before him? Or, is this really a ghost? A vision of overly exhausted
rowers on the boat? Or, is this a resurrection appearance of Christ that
Matthew has for some reason inserted back into the middle of the story? And if
so, why?
So many questions, all of which are worth tracking down. Of
important note, in any case, once again, in the dark of night, in the despair
of near-drowning, it is the Lord who comes to us. For we are the disciples. He
sends us off, thinking perhaps we now know what kingdom living is really like. And,
when they finally get there, with Jesus in the boat, they get back to the work
of healing all those in need. But in the darkest hours of the night-sea
journey, they seem to have forgotten who they are and whose they are. Matthew
seems to present this second night-sea journey as a step-along-the-way to fully
knowing who God in Christ is.
Unlike John of the Cross, Peter has yet to have let go of
all he thinks he is to allow Christ to gather him fully into the life of the
kingdom. As it is for Peter, it is, no doubt, for all of us. We think we know
the Christ, and perhaps we do, but we allow personal and social distractions to
forget who we really are, and whose we are. We all experience “dark nights of
the soul” – a night sea journey. Matthew offers this story so we might take the
Seafarer’s lesson to heart: “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.”
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