Sermons at St. John's Presbyterian Church

Two Wave Hold Down

Walking on Water 3

 Transcribed from the sermon preached March 20, 2011

The Reverend Max Lynn, Pastor

Scripture Readings: Jonah 1-2, Rev.21

I resisted the dark sea last week, as I had hoped to stay in the garden a bit longer, to relax in the blessing of Creation.  But as so often happens in life, the darkness will demand our attention, a dark whirlpool will form and suck us in.  I assume that a majority of you have seen footage of the dark whirlpools and waters of the tsunami in Japan, and have been watching anxiously as nuclear reactors explode and send radiation to who knows where.  And then, if that were not enough, we decided it would be a good idea to be bombing three countries at once, as the slimy Moammar Gadhafi’s doesn’t know when to quit.  And in minor local news, a Hawaiian big wave surfer named Sion drowned Wednesday at Mavericks, the big wave break out at Half Moon Bay.

I don’t really like the image Revelation paints of a new heaven and new earth without any sea, but after the tsunami, we are reminded of how ominous and dark the sea can be.  And of course, our inspired and loopy author recognizes the sea as representing all things evil, violent and oppressive; even the dark seas within ourselves. I don’t know about you, but I can use a word of hope about a God who will wipe away every tear from our eyes.

Sion, the surfer, suffered a dreaded “two wave hold down,” when you don’t make it back to the surface for a breath before the next massive wave rolls over.  This has happened to me twice in my life, at La Jolla Cove in San Diego and Ocean Beach in San Francisco, both times in very big surf, though not the massive size of Mavericks on Wednesday.  The first time I ever attempted to surf big waves was during my senior year in college at San Diego State.  I was in very good shape, but didn’t know what I was doing.  The whole coast was closing out and unrideable…too big a swell for a good surfing wave, all except La Jolla cove, which breaks out into deep water. 

We pulled up and three hundred people lined the cliff watching at a few brave souls attempted to catch the massive waves.  There were only a couple of people really catching the wave and riding them, while most just tried not to drown.  The coast guard had a zodiac just outside the break and each set wave boards or leashes would snap and the zodiac would rush into save floundering swimmer s from being smashed on the rocks.  While I didn’t have the right equipment, I didn’t know it.  So despite the strong advice from the lifeguards, I paddled out to see if I could catch a big one.

I was brave enough but with too short a board I couldn’t paddle fast enough to get moving on the wave and stand up before the lip heaved out.  I decided to paddle right next to and copy the guy who was getting the good waves.  Still no luck.  He had a big stick; I had a small one.  But then we heard surfers on shore start screaming, “OUTSIDE!”  Outside!  When we came up over the crest of the next swell we could see what they were screaming about.  Four massive waves were rolling in way out at sea.  The lifeguards, who were in the midst of rescuing a boardless surfer pushed him out of the boat and punched the gas as hard as possible.  They sped out to sea in hopes of getting over the waves before they broke.  They hit the lip just barely in time and went sailing off the back straight into the air, launching one of the guards out of the boat. The crowd on the beach hooted.

Meanwhile, the rest of us were hopelessly caught inside and we bailed from our boards and dove as deep as possible to avoid the rapidly descending violence.  The leashes snapped on the first two surfers hit, flinging their pointed boards directly at us further inside.  I took the biggest breath I had ever taken and went as deep as I could.  The wave violently yanked and thrashed me about until the water became dark, pitch black.  I was so deep I couldn’t tell by the light which way was up.  Luckily, my leash did not break, so when the wave let me loose, I swam in the direction my leash was pulling me. Since the board floats I could assume it was up.  The people on the surface would notice that my board was “tombstoning,” an ominous term for when the leash of a submerged surfer holds the tail of the board under water so that the nose sticks straight up, like a tombstone. 

I fought like a mad dog to get back to the surface, but just as I thought I could see the top I was hammered by wave number two.  Now there was a moment of panic as the water went dark and threatened to rip me limb from limb once again.  First I thought of the very real possibility of dying.  Then I started to fight with desperation.  But I was in the midst of a big lesson. Sometimes the way to hold on is to let go.  Stop fighting and relax, really relax.  Relax as if your life depended on it.   Go with the flow.  People who have had this experience of being so clearly overwhelmed and overpowered by dark nature or life that we have to let go of our own individual mental and physical resistance often note graciously experiencing great expanded mental and physical capacity.  Time stretches out, but since you are not in a hurry, so do you.  I waited patiently until the waves power let me go, then swam firm and steady for the surface.    The lifeguards were in searching for me, but they had to bolt away as I took another big breath to go under the third wave and fourth wave of the set.  Sometimes you have to face the dark truth; you can’t save everybody.  Sometimes we find ourselves or get ourselves into such tough situations that others simply cannot help us.  Eventually we have to face death.

The Western, productive, creative, competitive, light oriented mind is aggressive, a go-getter, a muscler.  You have heard the saying: Indian build small fire and stand close.  White man build big fire and stand waaayyyy back!  We want to shape life and nature to fit our desires. We even shape ourselves to fit our desires, and we have been quite successful in many ways. We are addicted to the light. Lamen Sanneh, professor of World Christianity and Missions at Yale, called Las Vegas “the burning bush of secular culture.”  Light, light and more light, twenty-four seven, with plastic breasts, air conditioning and sprinklers watering golf courses in the desert. Our demonstration of our ability to shape the world the way we want it…to deny the dark.   And since we tend to have this assumption that we should be able to avoid or overcome anything nature throws at us, when nature throws us for a loop we are quick to blame somebody for messing up.  We should be able to be perfect.  And so, in our idolatry of ourselves, we convince ourselves that nuclear power and nuclear weapons can be handled, that we can avoid the eventual meltdown because we are smart enough.

One stormy day out at Sloat Street at Ocean Beach I was getting dressed in the rain and a news crew showed up to ask my opinion about reconstructed road.  You remember Howard spoke of this when he said he was surprised to turn on the TV and see his minister naked and talking to a reporter.  The reporter asked me if I thought the road which washed out last year and was reconstructed would last.  Now if you know the ocean, especially Ocean beach, then you know this is a ridiculous question.  It is like a child asking his dad if the sand castle they built will be washed away.  Same question, just different scale.  The answer is, eventually.

Can we avoid a nuclear disaster is the same ignorant or arrogant question. Sooner or later some kind of human error or natural disaster will lead to a nuclear meltdown or explosion that will literally, once again unleash hell.  Robert Oppenheimer, one of the physicists who helped create the first nuclear bomb said:

Despite the vision and the far-seeing wisdom of our wartime heads of state, the physicists felt a peculiarly intimate responsibility for suggesting, for supporting, and in the end, in large measure, for achieving the realization of atomic weapons. Nor can we forget that these weapons, as they were in fact used, dramatized so mercilessly the inhumanity and evil of modern war. In some sort of crude sense, which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge, which they cannot lose.

Nuclear power is the apple on the tree, the original sin that cannot be undone without God’s grace.  It is so tempting for so many reasons; it is red and juicy and tasty, it gives us power and light and knowledge and all the stuff we want.  It will decrease our dependency on foreign oil and the burning of fossil fuel, which contributes to global warming and war.  But just like the tree in the Garden of Eden, pick that fruit and life will never again be the same.  Sooner or later a horrible global disaster will happen.   Now people say this is cynical.  And people would have said Jonah was cynical.  And the serpent said that God was cynical in suggesting Adam and Eve would die if they ate from the tree.  But I think it is cynical to think we cannot live without something with such evil consequences.  It is cynical to deny our mortality and our inability to control all things.  I think it is cynical to pretend that we hold back the sea or stop its natural flow, rather than move out of its way.  But it is one thing to build a stretch of road that will eventually be washed out; it is quite another to risk a disaster that will affect life on this planet for 300 years.

There is a basic fact of life; sometimes nature and life will throw us more than we can handle, and the way to survive is not to resist, but go with the flow, or flow in a different direction. Even then, someday, it will be our time to move on from this life.  Still we trust that the dark sea is not void of the eternal God, and that even darkness is as light to God.

In other words there is wisdom in the dark, in silence, in being emptied, in resting in nothingness, in not fighting dark feelings but letting pain be pain, in the humility of recognition of limitations, in letting go.  We are conceived in the dark, we grow in the dark waters of the womb.  We get good sleep in the dark. We dream dreams in the dark.  We make love in the dark.  We often discern the will and truth of God in the dark.   T.S. Elliot – “I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you which shall be the darkness of God.”  Some of my most powerful meditations have been surfing alone in the fog.  Even though there is a couple of million people living and working 300 yards away on shore, for a couple of hours you cannot see or hear evidence of another human being.  It is just me, God and the big fish.

Jonah gets a word from God to go to Nineveh and prophetically call them to repent.  Now Jonah has a couple of problems with this.  First, he doesn’t like Nineveh and would like them to be condemned.  And he certainly doesn’t think they can change, or even if they could he doesn’t think they deserve forgiveness.  And second, he just wants to hang out.  Why does God have to call him?  Why can’t God get someone else who wants such work and is better qualified?  Jonah jumps on a ship heading in the opposite direction.  Now God doesn’t cause all bad things to happen but if we turn away from God and head in the opposite direction, we should not be surprised if we run into a storm and a big fish.  This is just the way it is.  Now we wouldn’t normally think of getting eaten by a fish as a good thing.  I mean, this is darkness within darkness; he is in the dark belly of a dark fish in the dark and stormy sea.  But the extra layer of darkness saves Jonah’s life.   

He sings his poem from the belly of the whale.

[1] Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from the belly of the fish,
[2] saying, "I called to the LORD, out of my distress,
and he answered me;
out of the belly of Sheol I cried,
and thou didst hear my voice.
[3] For thou didst cast me into the deep,
into the heart of the seas,
and the flood was round about me;
all thy waves and thy billows
passed over me.
[4] Then I said, `I am cast out
from thy presence;
how shall I again look
upon thy holy temple?'
[5] The waters closed in over me,
the deep was round about me;
weeds were wrapped about my head
[6] at the roots of the mountains.
I went down to the land
whose bars closed upon me for ever;
yet thou didst bring up my life from the Pit,
O LORD my God.

We might be heading in the wrong direction.  We may not want to pay attention to the call of God.  But we will then likely find ourselves in the middle of a dark storm that will challenge us to repent and take another look at God’s will for our lives.  We may not be able to fight against the current of the dark sea where we find ourselves, but we can learn that God is with us and teaching us to go with the flow.