In the Gospel passage for this Sunday Jesus and the disciples are caught in a storm while crossing over the lake (Luke 8.22-25). The disciples are afraid that the boat will capsize and they will drown but in the meantime Jesus is asleep at the back of the boat. Any crisis will always bring out the best and worst in people. The etymology of ‘crisis’ is the Ancient Greek word for judgment. The idea of judgment is that people are shown for up whom they really are and this is what happens on the lake – the disciples are fearful and Jesus is peaceful. The Japanese character for crisis is a combination of the characters for ‘danger’ and ‘opportunity’. The point at which danger and opportunity meet is where the future is in the balance and events could go either way. A crisis is therefore not the end of an opportunity but in reality only the beginning. In this sense, as Kraemer (1947:24) wrote, the church is always in a state of crisis and its great shortcoming is that it is only occasionally aware of it – could the same be said of us?

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