For most of us, power means that we get our way. Power means that we can impose our will upon the world around us. Power means we can conform others into our images in order to achieve unity and security. In our minds, we equate power with control.
So, when the world spins out of control as it did in Oklahoma, and at the Boston marathon, and at Sandy Hook Elementary School something over six months ago, we begin to wonder what happened to this all-powerful God to whom the skies and seas and nations are supposed to bow.
Are the heavens really declaring the majesty of God when a tornado destroys an entire town?
Only the most deranged and pathological of leaders suggested in tragedy and disaster’s wake that God was in control of the situation or was somehow, ultimately, responsible for such occurrences. I’m sorry, but I don't believe that shootings, terrorist acts and tornadoes are part of God’s plan!
Most of us can admit that without losing our faith, just like we can admit that God isn’t really calling the shots (no pun intended) when it comes to bullets, bombs, jet streams, weather patterns and 200-mile-per-hour winds. What we imply in this, but don’t often say, is that, deep down, we know God is not in control. Secretly, we give thanks for that.
Naturally, we then ask where exactly God is in the midst of tragedy and suffering. This question doubles as an unconscious prayer of thanksgiving and relief. While we may feel desolation and alienation from God in the midst of great tragedies and natural disasters, we also feel grateful—hopeful, even—that God isn’t orchestrating all the pain and destruction in the world. It’s a relief not to be worshipping a God who sends tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, disease, and plague. It’s a relief not to pray to a God who indiscriminately kills children with the same heavens which declare God’s glory.
God is not in control of the weather. I don't believe God is in the business of controlling anything.
But if God isn’t in control in the midst of such destruction, then who or what is? Something more sinister? Maybe something more dangerous than a sinister being? Perhaps no one—and nothing—is in control. It’s a scary and disorienting thought to begin to consider God isn’t protecting us like the divine Secret Service from the suffering and tragedy in our world.
We find this idea jarring because I think we misunderstand what divine power is. God doesn’t control the weather, because that isn’t the nature of God’s power. God’s power is something more mysterious, more paradoxical.
God’s power is in the giving up of power, in the act of disarming divine omnipotence in favor of covenant and relationship with creation.
God’s power is in the act of becoming empty (Gk. kenosis) in order to become one of us. As Paul writes in Philippians 2:5-8:
Christ Jesus … who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.
God’s power is in being in us and with us, not as all-powerful and “up there” somewhere.
In the gospel of John, Jesus tells us that when we see him, we see God. There’s a popular saying based on that notion, suggesting that the radical nature of the Christian faith is not that Jesus is like God, but that God is like Jesus. And Jesus is in the business of emptying himself of power to the point of utter alienation and forsakenness by God. So what if God is indeed like Jesus?
But, you might argue, there’s a story in the gospels about Jesus and his power to control the weather, and it’s true—there is such a legend. Once upon a time, as the writer of Mark tells us, a terrible storm rises on the sea, threatening to swamp the disciples and the boat they are in. They are terrified, undone at the prospect of capsizing and drowning. They are baling water from the boat, struggling with wind-whipped sails, hanging on for their lives.
Jesus, meanwhile, is sleeping.
“Don’t you care that we are perishing?” the disciples finally shout at him to wake him.
Jesus rebukes the wind and commands it to quiet down. As the text says, “He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’ Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm (Mk 4:39).
Jesus is rebuking the disciples as much as the storm when he says, “Peace! Be still!” Then they marvel at his power, asking, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” (Mk 4:41).
We are like the disciples. We want God to calm the wind and seas. We want to shout, "God, what’s the matter with you? Don’t you see we are perishing? Don’t you see so many of us — children, even! — have already perished? Wake up, God! Stop sleeping when we need you most!”
Like the disciples, we believe the power—the divine—is in the ability to control things. We assume, like the disciples, that the miracle is in Jesus rebuking and calming the storm.
But if you notice, Jesus doesn’t seem to want to do anything. He wants to keep sleeping! He goes so far as to rebuke his disciples for even asking for his help. He calls them faithless. This storm-calming power is the kind of power Jesus came in order to give up, to empty himself of. It’s the same power he rejects when he refuses to throw himself from the pinnacle when he is tempted in the desert. It’s the same power he turns down when he refuses to kneel before the Adversary. It’s that same superficial power that controls earthly things.
I don’t really think the miracle in this story is about Jesus calming the storm and taking control. The miracle in this story is that Jesus is there, with the disciples in the water-logged and weather-beaten boat, experiencing the same terrible storm, the same terrible waves, and the same terrible danger, and that alone should have been enough.
God’s power isn’t in the control of creation or of people, but in being in covenant and relationship with them. It isn’t in imposing the divine will or insisting on its own way but in sojourning with us as we fumble around and make our way in the world. God’s power is not in miraculous interventions, pre-emptive strikes in the cosmic war against suffering and evil, but in inviting us to build with God a commonwealth of love, peace and justice. God’s power is not in the obliterating of what is bad in the world, but in empowering us to build something good in this world. As Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa has said, “Do your little bit of good where you are; it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”
Instead of enforcing control and solutions onto the world, God’s power is revealed in coming alongside us, journeying with us, suffering with us, and even staying with us in the boat when the storms come.
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