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Lord Of The Waves

Psalm 93

There are few experiences in human existence more terrifying than a great flood.

"I thought the judgment day had come," said one man who survived the extensive flooding in Pennsylvania and Virginia after a hurricane had passed through those states. "We woke up in the middle of the night with logs and things crashing into the house. We didn't have any lights. I ran to the front porch. I couldn't see much, but the water was churning around the house as if we were in the middle of a rapids. There wasn't any chance of getting out that night. We put on our rain coats and hats and climbed out on the roof as the water rose in the house. Next morning, the whole world around us looked different. You couldn't see anything but hills and the tops of houses. Everything else was under water."

The writer of our psalm may have had a similar experience. At least he was familiar with the devastating power of a flood. He may have lived in the Tigris-Euphrates river valley, where floods were an almost annual event. Many farmers in such valleys depended on the rising of the waters to bring new soil for their crops. But when the waters came they often wreaked havoc and claimed many lives.

The flood in fact became a metaphor, in many middle Eastern countries, for troubles or difficulties of any kind--for illness, brokenness, despair, lostness, and failure. Writers often used it as a way of describing the vicissitudes to which human life is always subject. The famous "Jonah psalm," as it is called, the words supposedly spoken by the prophet Jonah when he was swallowed by a whale, was in this tradition:

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. (Jonah 2:3)

It is an apt metaphor, isn't it? Most of us experience troubles as a flood, as waves and billows passing over us.

And, in the light of this, the ninety-third psalm is a wonderful New Year's affirmation that God is still in charge despite all the floods people have gone through. The floods have risen, "have lifted up their voice," but

Mightier than the thunders of many waters, mightier than the waves of the sea, the Lord on high is mighty! (Psalm 93:4)

When it is all over, when the terror and the wreckage and the devastation are over, God still reigns supreme. He is, as another psalm puts it, "king" of the flood (Psalm 29:10).

I say this is a wonderful New Year's affirmation. Think of the flood of problems you've been through in the past year. Some of you have suffered unusual illness and have had a hard time getting back on top of things. Some of you have lost jobs or suffered indignities in the jobs you have. Some have suffered from burnout, even to the point of getting in your car in the morning and being unable to turn the key in the ignition and drive to the office. Some have been hurt in difficult marital situations; you have felt betrayed or neglected or beaten. Some have lost the dearest persons in your lives; you have felt totally devastated or "concussed," as C. S. Lewis said he was when his wife died.

All the waves and billows have gone over you. But God still reigns! The floods have come and gone, but God is King of the floods! The psalm is a ringing reminder: The Lord reigns; he is robed in majesty, the Lord is robed, he is girded with strength. (Psalm 93:1) May I speak from personal experience? I try not to do it very often, at least not in a serious vein. But you will understand what I mean and why what I have to say is applicable.

Last year was a climactic year of losses for me. I say "climactic" because it began more than three years ago, when my mother died. Soon after she died, my father began to become senile and needed to be institutionalized. We went back to the little home town and spent a week cleaning out the store where Mother and Dad had worked for years, and sold it. A year and a half ago we spent a week cleaning out their house, and sold it. In April of last year, my father died. We went home to bury him. I conducted the graveside service. Then, in May, I agreed to come to Los Angeles as your pastor. We sold our home in Virginia, which we had planned and built ourselves. At the end of the summer we left our children on the East coast and came West. En route, much of our furniture was damaged. As some of you know, many cartons of my books--friends of twenty or thirty years--became mysteriously dampened and were molded beyond redemption.

There were mornings, in the fall, when I awakened with an anxiety I could not describe. I said I felt "tossed"--as if I had been stripped of my past and set in a world I did not knew. The floods passed over me, the waves and billows rolled over my head.

I cried and I prayed. I tried to be brave, and I didn't want you to know how I felt, for you might misinterpret it. But I hurt.

And through it all, even when the prayers did not seem to help, when all I could do was tough it out, I knew God was there. I could not doubt it. Everything I have invested my life in said he was there. He did not speak to me--at least, not in any way I could hear him. But I knew he was there.

And in the end, when the floods had gone and I was standing only ankle-deep in the waters, I knew he was King of the floods. I knew he was Lord of the waves.

The New Testament affirms this too, you know. It's in the story of Christ calming the sea. Remember? One version of it is in the fourth chapter of Mark. Jesus and the disciples are out in a boat on the sea of Galilee and a great storm comes up. Jesus is asleep on a cushion. The wind blows and the waves are stirred to a frenzy, lapping over into the boat. m e disciples are beside themselves in fear. Unable to stand it any longer, they shake the Master and say, "master, we're going to die! Don't you care?!" Jesus awakens and says to the sea, "Peace! Be still!" And suddenly the sea goes calm and the wind dies away. Jesus chides the disciples for having too little faith. And they are filled with awe, and say to one another, "Who then is this, that even wind and sea obey him?" (Mark 4:41)

"Who then is this, that even wind and sea obey him?" The point is, he is the same Lord who reigns over the flood in the Old Testament. And in the New Testament there is an added dimension. Scholars are coming increasingly to recognize that this passage about Jesus and the sea is actually a post resurrection narrative. m at is, it is not about a historical occurrence in the life of Jesus; it is a highly-charged allegorical narrative designed to represent the power of the resurrected Christ. The constant theme of the book of Mark is that Christ is the eternal Messiah of God and people don't have eyes to see it. This story is about the church, about Jesus' followers, when the waves of life are crashing about them. He seems to be asleep. They call upon him and he rebukes the waves and the wind, which fall away before his lordship.

He is the crucified one now risen, which means that the floods have gone over him too. But the floods could not conquer him. He was raised to glory in spite of them.

And so shall we be. Even death, the final flood, shall not destroy us. The Lord of the waves will see to it.

We received a Christmas card a few days ago from a man who went under the flood last year. He is a lovely, gentle man who works for a large insurance company. His wife was having a severe headache. She went to an ENT doctor, thinking she had an allergy. While she was in the office she suffered an aneurysm. She had been strong and healthy at the breakfast table; they had been planning a trip to Colorado. That night she lay in a coma and the next day she died. I have never seen a man more broken up. Something delicate and beautiful was crushed inside him.

His card said he is coming through on the other side of the waves. He is leaving his job to go to work for the college where his wife was getting her degree when she died. She had gone back to school in the special years program and had completed all the work. Hey awarded her degree in absentia. Now he is going to devote his life on the campus where she spent so many happy, enthusiastic hours. It is as if he will be communing with her by doing this.

But he has come through. That is the important thing. All the waves and billows have gone over him. But they have not destroyed him. His faith would not let them. In his quiet way, he has held on. He has kept in Christ's hand. And the Lord of the waves has brought him through. The Lord of the waves always brings us through. The psalmist knew that. The writer of the Gospel knew it. And the writer of the book of Revelation kneel it. "In the end," he said, "there shall be no more sea" (Revelation 21:1). That's right. No more sea. No more floods, no more waves. That's the promise of what is to come.

But for now there are floods. And he is King of the flood. He is Lord of the waves.

Dr. John Killinger

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