WEBSITES and commentaries tell us that windstorms are common on the Sea of Galilee. The surrounding geography apparently creates wind funnels, as air is forced through a narrow space. But Luke is no more interested than are his fellow Evangelists in the topography of Galilee. For him, the storm is an actual storm, but its meaning is not centred on meteorology.

Storms are something that we can expect to hear more of as climate change begins to bite. But they have always stuck in the memory of those who experienced them — and not just as weather events. People who were not even born at the time of the great storm of October 1987 have heard of it as a morality tale, to illustrate human hubris: the BBC’s lunchtime weather forecaster, Michael Fish, reassured viewers: “A woman rang the BBC and said she’d heard that there’s a hurricane on the way. Don’t worry, there isn’t.” He was right, of course. It was an extra-tropical cyclone.

Alongside the literal language of meteorology and geography, and the facts of climate science, storms also have their place within a rich world of metaphor and allusion. Hardly surprising, this, when, in every era but our own, they are the most powerful force on the planet that most mortals ever experience. Nowadays, we give them names, as if humanising them could bring them under our control. But they remain terrifyingly alien to us, both in power and in their destructive effects.

When Luke described the calming of that Galilean windstorm, it was more than just a local weather phenomenon. Those who witnessed Jesus’s words and their effect drew their own conclusion: “He commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him.” They could have drawn a lesson from his lack of fear, his being unperturbed by elemental forces. But what makes the biggest impact on them is Jesus’s power, not his nonchalance.

The Hebrew Bible/Old Testament sometimes witnesses to an opposition between God’s power and the forces of chaos. At other times, God is creator, as well as controller, of those elemental forces. Psalm 107.23-39 shows God as master and originator: “He commanded and raised the stormy wind. . . he made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed.”

We know what the storm meant to the disciples, because Luke has told us. It caused them to fear. Its ending caused them to be astonished at Jesus’s power. Luke does not state directly what Jesus himself made of it, but the fact that he “rebuked” the wind and waves suggests that he saw them as forces of chaos, in opposition to God.

The calming of the storm, then, is an event in Luke’s Gospel which has a straightforward message: Jesus our Lord has power over the forces of nature. That message can speak simply and directly to us as inhabitants of an island, many of whom have seen and felt the power of wind and wave.

But there is another way of taking it: a figurative way. And, for once, the figurative interpretation is not outdated or contrived. It speaks directly to our understanding, because we use the language of storms for experiences that have nothing to do with actual weather, but everything to do with emotional turbulence, stormy relationships and passions, conflict and chaos in our lives.

“Each one of us is steering a course in our heart. And if we think on what is good, we will not be shipwrecked.” That was Augustine’s approach to Jesus’s calming of the storm, and it gives this episode meaning, even for landlubbers.

He takes the storm as an image for the raging of human emotion, particularly anger, which is uncontrolled: “What I have said on the subject of anger, you can cleave to in every temptation you experience. A temptation emerges? It is a wind. It is turbulence. It is waves. Wake Christ up, let him talk with you. Imitate the winds and the sea: submit to your Creator. The sea hears Christ’s command: are you going to be deaf to it? Do not let the waves overwhelm you in the tumult of your heart.

“But we are human: if a wind drives us, if it troubles the feelings of our souls, we should not lose hope. We should awaken Christ, to set our voyage in calm waters, until we reach our true home.”