Calming the Storm?
Rev. Seth Patterson
August 11, 2024
Scripture: Mark 4:35–41
We crested the sand dune and there it was in all its immensity and beauty: the Atlantic Ocean. I felt my daughter squeeze my hand tighter as we climbed the stairs up and over the dune in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. I was eager to teach her how to play with the ocean, how to be strong in it, how to practice letting it play with you. This is one of my great joys and I was eager to share.
Tucked within my excitement was fear.
Those waves carry with them a deep fear, reminding every part of my being about that one time I almost didn’t emerge from the saltwater alive. That one time I felt so tiny and alone in its muscley dispassion. That one time when I, for some unknown reason, did not drown.
Tucked within my excitement was fear. Tucked within my fear was excitement.
And sparkling within all of that was bravery and a desire to not let this valid fear be the final answer.
Fear.
We all, with practically no exceptions, experience fear. It is natural to the human condition and yet it is also unique to each of us. What I fear, you may not. And vice versa. How you experience fear may be different than how I experience fear of the same thing. All fears are valid because, for whatever reason, we perceive a threat (whether others or even we understand it or not).
And sparkling within all of that is your bravery. You are all so brave.
A fear of heights is because we can go splat! And yet we have developed airplanes, roller coasters, ladders and synchronized Olympic diving 33 feet above the water.
A fear of being laughed at or mocked makes what I’m doing right now a very common fear.
A fear of being maimed or dying gives us fear of spiders, tigers, hippopotami or wolves and yet we leave our homes not wrapped in armor.
Fear is not only about your own physical safety. We commonly fear the loss of people, ideas or things. We may fear unexpected or unwanted changes. We may fear the act of grieving. Fears shift and change as we live and are consistent companions.
We are all afraid. We all carry our fear with us everywhere. We continue to show bravery.
What are you afraid of and how do you calm those storms?
Fear has been present in the human animal since before we were human. Our amygdala, the holder and processor of fear, this little almond shaped piece near the center of our brain, is often referred to as the reptilian part of our nervous system. This means that all animals except insects and crustaceans have a similar structure, so it likely comes from a shared ancestor deep in our evolutionary tree.
This means that our shared spiritual ancestors we often refer to as ‘the disciples’ also had an amygdala and experienced fear. Let us take a deep breath together and open our ears, minds and hearts to this story of fear from the account of Mark.
On that day, when evening had come, Jesus said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion, and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” And waking up, he rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Be silent! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?
Our spiritual ancestors were afraid of the very real possibility of a sunken boat, an unbothered Jesus stops the storm, and then they were again afraid because of this supernatural response.
It is because of my own discomfort (and admittedly maybe fear) of this supernatural power that I have not engaged with this story before. I struggle with what to do with stories of Jesus performing magical acts. Since this story comes to us at the end of a series of parables, I am going to approach this with a bit of parable-like quality.
This is counter to a frequent approach that Jesus can stop a storm and that our faith is insufficient unless we believe this to be true. I don’t know how to interpret that today, but I do understand being afraid. I can identify with the disciples being afraid of drowning in a storm and I can understand being afraid of seeing something miraculous that I do not know how to interpret.
Sidenote: While they can feel similar in our bodies, fear is different from anxiety. The best way I have heard this described is that fear is when you are facing a roaring bear on its hind legs. Anxiety is when you feel that a bear can appear at any moment. A phobia, also different than fear, is when you refuse to leave your home because that bear might be out there somewhere.
What are you afraid of and how do you calm those storms?
While fear is something that we can all understand and that we all hold in common, what is it really? We know that the amygdala in our brain is the center of fear responses and processing, but that doesn’t quite explain the sparks of fear. Why is it that one person can be afraid of something that others approach with calm or even delight? Your clergy do not have any superpowers when we stand here speaking publicly: one of the things that people claim they fear the most. I am afraid of open water and some of you may love to swim far from shore.
A National Institute of Health article about the biology of fear names this complexity. It says, “The functional approach to defining fear [can be seen as] seemingly circular. What is fear? The state evoked by threat. What is threat? That which causes fear.”[1] You are afraid because something scares you and it scares you because you are afraid of it. Fear is both universal and individual, essentially human and as unique as each of us. Yet we can identify with the disciples in the boat. And learn with them.
What are you afraid of and how do you calm those storms?
When the disciples were afraid, they cried out. They named their fear and sought help. This might seem obvious and also describes an act of bravery. They didn’t freeze or leap overboard or fight with each other, they asked for help. They responded to their fear in a relatively rational way. Their amygdalae didn’t hijack them, which “is when your amygdala takes control of your body to protect you from danger…activating your fight-or-flight response so you can protect yourself.”[2] This automatic response can be incredibly helpful and is meant to protect us from immediate threats but also has unintended consequences by contributing to PTSD and increased anxiety.
We don’t know what these people in the boat did to avoid this fight/flight/freeze response, but experts suggest breathing deeply can help the more rational part of your brain reengage and calm the amygdala’s reaction. This can be difficult to do when in moments of fear and we can practice by spending time focusing on our breathing in non-emergency times.[3] We are capable of great bravery, friends, and we get to practice.
And we need to. We have spent the last many years (decades?) being told to be afraid. Money and power have been extracted from our stoked fear. What damage has been done by this constant drumbeat of fear? My amygdala is kinda tired. How’s yours? There are certainly things to be afraid of, it is natural, but what do we do about it? Do we continue to react or do we breathe and respond with love? How do we calm the storms and not fuel them?
One of the most common phrases in the entirety of the book we call the Bible is some version of “do not be afraid.” I argue with the idea that we can be told not to be afraid—fear is human—but the underlying wisdom here is that fear is not the end of the story. God doesn’t want us to stop at fear. Maybe a better, albeit too long phrase, could be: “go ahead and be afraid, name that fear and then see what happens. Trust that fear is not the final answer.” Fear is like our amygdala, an essential and lifesaving part of our brain system, but it is not the entirety of our brain. We are far more capable than this reaction.
Modern day griot Maya Angelou once wrote: “What is a fear of living? It’s being preeminently afraid of dying. It is not doing what you came here to do, out of timidity and spinelessness. The antidote is to take full responsibility for yourself—for the time you take up and the space you occupy. If you don’t know what you’re here to do, then just do some good.”
The disciples encountered so many moments of fear, most of which we will never know about. Maybe Peter was terrified of spiders and kept finding one in his bed. What is described is that they experienced a fear of storms and drowning, angry leaders and crowds, witnessing a crucifixion and an empire whose own fear meant they were constantly in danger. Yet they did not stop. We only sit here today because they were brave in the face of their fears. They were not unafraid; they knew that fear was not the end because God’s love was always with them. And as Ms. Angelou suggests, they did some good. They kept going and built the foundation of what we now call the church. Our friend and pastor DeWayne last week reminded us that as inheritors of this church, “we stand as an explicit rejection of hatred, violence, and division and witness a new way of living and being in the world.” That can take bravery, to be sure. And we cannot do that if we let fear be its own end.
What are you afraid of and how do you calm those storms?
Not being afraid is not an option, but we can breathe deeply and look past these fears towards an outcome that may or may not be what we expect. We are brave every day, we are brave alone and we are brave together.
So, name your fears, take a deep breath, calm those amygdala storms and receive whatever comes next, expected or not. Be brave for you are not the only one that is afraid. Be brave and keep going remembering that God is waiting for us beyond our fears, waiting for the storms to calm and we can respond with love and do some good.
[1]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3595162/
[2]Cleveland Clinic, https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/24894-amygdala
[3]Dr. Neha Sangwan, https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/amygdala-hijacking-emotions/