I watched the sun sinking into the western mountain horizon. How odd, I thought, that you can almost see that great source of vision-searing light turn to gold before your very eyes; you can even watch it move . . . I loved sunsets. They always give a satisfying final touch to a good day, and a redeeming patina to a terrible one. What happened between sunset and sunset seems almost inconsequential. A nourishing philosophy! I felt content.

By the time we made our way back to Galilee, a large mass of people huddled close to Jesus. Sometimes they seemed to appear out of nowhere, from behind the rocks, from behind the brush, up from the wadis. It was amazing. I have seen great crowds before, especially in the Temple at Jerusalem, and once I attended a contest of sport in a Roman arena. But I have never seen anything like the crowds that followed Jesus. For the most part, they were quiet, many sick or infirm. They had obviously come to be healed. Yet Jesus did not heal everyone. I always thought that strange for one so compassionate. But Jesus did his unnatural things naturally. He never made the case for doing extraordinary things outside the current and flow of the ordinary. Thus, he did not go to all the leper colonies and empty them of disfigured tenants. He did not visit all the homes of the infirm and do the same. But he did heal many, and it was enough to make for these huge crowds.

For some reason, though we had not had a particularly difficult day, Jesus seemed exhausted. He had stopped smiling and appeared desirous to relieve himself of the crowd. A child came up to him bearing a small bouquet of wild flowers. Jesus, though weary, stopped, took the flowers, bent, kissed the little girl on her head, but kept moving along his way. We reached the waterfront and a small flotilla of boats tied to their moorings. The boats themselves were substantial; they could easily hold fifteen to twenty men. Masts stood in each with a single crossbeam near the top to fasten sail. Into one of these, Jesus climbed while the disciples, a few others and I followed. Seeing our purpose, the other boats began to fill as well. “What course, Master?” from Peter.

Jesus seated himself on the bench and slumped himself against the stern of the boat. He arranged a few items for his comfort, a coil of rope and a small cushion for a pillow, upon which he laid his head, closed his eyes and responded quietly, “The other side.” In an instant, he slept.

Peter, James and the other fishermen among us raised the sail that filled with breezy winds, as did the rest of the boats, and we were off to the “other side,” wherever that meant. I don’t think any of us really knew – somewhere, I guess. Maybe just an evening sail, but if I knew Simon Peter, he had fishing and deep water on his mind. Yet how could we seriously fish with all of the other boats so close by? I looked at Jesus asleep in the stern as we scudded away from shore. In a few moments, the shoreline was a distant blur. Sleeping there on the thwart, a coil of rope and a pillow under his head, he did not look like anyone other than a very tired ordinary man. We had all grown used to that. His body, like ours, demanded rest when it was tired. The amazing things he said and did astounded us, but most of the time Jesus was just one of us. He was our undisputed leader, no doubt of that, but it was difficult throughout the day to sustain the impression that he was extraordinary. He ate and drank with the rest of us, sat around campfires at night and swapped stories with the rest of us. He spoke our language, coarse and distinctly male. Often we acted as athletes and gladiators might act before or after an event. While none of us actually were these heroes of sport, nonetheless, we were men acting and doing as men act and do. We laughed and joked with one another, and Jesus, far from reserved and withdrawn, was always a part of that. We had grown close to one another, our sense of camaraderie intense. We were sometimes confused as to how to perceive him. It was a strange mix of the desire to honor him, or just to accept him as one of us. At this moment as he lay asleep, it was the latter. We saw him as a very tired man and we took him as he was. That felt right for the moment.

The Sea of Galilee is one of the most unique bodies of fresh water known to men. Thirteen miles long, seven miles wide, about 150 feet deep in its deepest quarter; its waters sweet and teeming with fish, it is surrounded by mountains, high on the east, lower on the west. Snow-capped Mt. Hermon to the north in the distance. From the cold heights of these mountains, cold oceans of air, on occasion spilled down to the warm waters and generating sudden, intense storms. The fishermen among us knew all about these storms and had endured dozens of them in their professional lifetimes. There was nothing about this sea or the vessels that ploughed it that Simon Peter did not know about. Of all the fishermen, he was the most experienced, the most respected for his familiarity with deep water. If a storm came, it would not catch this man by surprise.

We were well out from shore, the shoreline a distant haze, the mountains rising majestically out of the wet horizon. Peter spoke suddenly, “Strike the sails.”

“Why, Simon?” said another of the fishermen among us. “The night has not yet fallen. The skies are clear. The stars are beginning to show themselves.”

“I smell it,” said Peter quietly.

“Smell what?” joked Thomas. “We all know Simon, do we not?” He continued jokingly, “The only thing he smells is the pig fat on his upper lip.” As the laughter began to rise, we heard both anger and urgency . . .

”Strike the damn sails!” Instantly, John and the others jumped, reaching for the lines.

The wind hit us like a rolling boulder from the north. The sail could not be reefed quickly enough to avoid heeling over sharply. Matthew — no seaman — almost fell out. The other boats were hit as hard as we. Some did not reef their sails at all; we could hear ripping as they heeled sharply and water gushed over gunnels.

Torrents of cool air tore at the water’s surface, which undulated and splashed small whitecaps back, as if angry at the wind for disturbing them. Moments passed like seconds while small whitecaps heaved into threatening waves. Another mountainside of wind. Our boat kicked, heaved and heeled as the lake vomited into our boat like a sick sow. Water swirled around our feet, and I could see fear on the faces of those of us who were not fishermen.

“Bail!” screamed Peter.

I looked for something -- anything that would allow me to move water out of the boat. Nothing. No vessel of any sort. I cupped my hands and began to toss water back into the sea as fast as I could.

“Bail!”

All of us madly began to slap at the water in the boat as it heeled again and a massive amount of water sloshed into it. At once it was obvious: it was impossible to fight this. We were going to sink! Already our boat was wallowing. God knows what was happening to the other boats! It was a figure of speech, an expression of futility. The thought flitted into and out of my head so fast that I did not recognize its significance. The bow dipped into a trough between the waves. Looking up, I saw a wall of water descending on us. Had it hit us full force we would clearly perish. Oddly, I thought of Jesus. At the same moment I heard Peter scream, “Master!” Then the wave hit. The boat filled with water and began to sink. Again, Peter’s voice screamed against the wind, “This is the worst I’ve seen. Steady the tiller! Bail! Merciful God Almighty! Bail!” With the sea legs of a cat, he made his way aft where, incredibly, Jesus still lay asleep. How could he sleep through this? Mad thoughts went through my mind. Had he taken some kind of medicinal potion? Another wave hit. The boat filled. He slept on, undisturbed.

Peter reached for Jesus, grabbing fistfuls of robe. Shaking him violently he cried, “Master! Dammit! Master! Wake up! We are perishing!” His eyes fluttered open. I heard Peter scream mere inches from Jesus’s face, “For God’s sake man, help us bail! Do something!” Then with vehemence, “Don’t you care at all about what’s happening here? How can you sleep through this?” At this point, under these circumstances, Peter was by default our leader. This was not Jesus’s field of expertise. Peter had survived countless storms on this lake. Even though he said it was bigger than any he had seen, we still looked to Peter – not to Jesus – to get us out of this. Jesus was a carpenter. What did he know of storms and waves and boats?

I was close enough to see his eyes. He looked at Peter with what at first I thought was rage, but then they softened. He took Peter’s wrists and said simply, “Where is your faith, Simon? Release me.” Peter unclenched the fists that were filled with the Master’s robes. Peter was nonplussed, angry, exasperated. “Faith? While we are drowning, you speak of faith? Where is your sanity, man? Help us!” Just then, another wave struck us, heaving the stern of the boat where Jesus lay up into the wind, which shrieked through his clothes. What was the point of waking him? What could he do now? It would have been a merciful thing to let him drown in his sleep.

Grasping at the rigging, Jesus managed to stand. He looked at the sea heaving and tossing, then into the darkening sky. Spray stung his face. Wiping with his sleeve, he actually laughed! Into this black, raging storm, he laughed! As if all this were entertainment! As if it were fun! I laughed not. None of us laughed. Why this infuriating smugness? Was he not aware of the danger? Did he not see that the boat was filled to the gunnels with water? Was he mocking us, naively oblivious to his own peril? Clouds had obliterated the stars and moon. It was dark, foreboding and terrible, a fitting place for death, not mocking laughter!

In our panic, the other boats were forgotten. Abishag barked, and as was her habit it seemed, only once. The dog! I had forgotten the animal had been sleeping under the bench where Jesus himself slept. Unlike the rest of us, the beast did not seem excited. She looked at Jesus and licked his hand. The Master merely stroked the animal’s head. Abruptly, he spoke to all of us, “Where is your faith? Why are you so frightened?” We saw the water in our boat, the raging wind and waves and wondered if Jesus had taken leave of his mind. And then he spoke to the elements, sentient beings, as if they themselves had a mind of their own. “Peace!” he cried to the winds. Suddenly, instantly, there was no wind at all. Not so much as an errant eddy. “Be still!” He spoke again to the waves. This took a few seconds longer but the waves subsided and the surface of the water became as smooth as glass. For the first time we could see the other boats. Some were swamped completely with men in the water. Abishag barked again, panting contentedly.

Jesus spoke to Peter, spoke to all of us again and for the third time asked of us, “Where is your faith?” I thought you knew. The disappointment in his eyes was palpable.

Our minds could not begin to conceive of the reality of what had just taken place. Had I not seen it with my own eyes, had I not been there to experience it myself, I could never have believed it. Things like this did not happen. It is beyond the capacity of the mind to imagine. Questions flooded my mind. The others questioned as well. “What manner of man is this? Who is this?” Jesus merely returned to his bench, the coil of rope and the cushion. He laid his head and stared at the sky until his eyelids became heavy once again. Abishag laid her chin in the crook of his arm and blinked sleepily. The boat rose and fell softly at the last vestiges of undulating water. We were becalmed.

We looked at the other boats devastated by the storm and began rescue and repair operations. Jesus did not help. He had done his part. Not a single soul was lost.

I — all of us — were stunned. Later as I thought upon it, and I thought upon it often, I considered: It is impossible to understand or appreciate his teaching or the things that he did if we do not understand and appreciate — who he was. Who he is.

We will not forget this day. I have lived a long and fretful life. I have experienced many extreme moments, visited the valley of the shadows of death more than once, but none so terrible as that day on the sea with Jesus and the others. In the days and years of my lifetime, I have learned that God does not always step in and rescue us from tragedy. Sometimes tragedy overtakes us, accidents happen; a child is crushed under the wheel of a chariot, disease takes a loved one, leprosy is everywhere. Sometimes it seems God has absented himself. But that is an illusion. He is always there with us. He may seem asleep and uncaring, but whether on this side of the valley of pain and death, or on the other, he is very much present, and to all he speaks, “Peace. Be Still.” And we are comforted. We are becalmed.