I’ve heard this phrase a few times over the years, but never really thought to figure out where it came from. I always assumed that it was just some rough metaphor for a sort of ubiquitous, sweeping change. But when I came across it while reading about a Danger Mouse album (of all things) I decided to look it up.

Lo and behold, it’s actually from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, which is is at once both crazy and completely unsurprising to me. A huge number of English idioms can be traced back to either the Bard, or to the Bible (or both), but while I have yet to read The Tempest I was surprised that I had never come it as the source for this phrase. Specifically, it is found in a song being sung by the spirit Ariel while he is enchanting Ferdinand, the King of Naples’ son:

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.

What a queer and evocative piece of verse. The idea of “sea change” is therefore not necessarily some wave-like rippling change, but a transformation, that is organic and in some way different or “other”. And more specifically a transformation into something uncanny but also deep and interesting.

I was struck by how well this idea describes the sort of change the is characterized by the kingdom of God. It is both strange and otherworldly, because it is, in fact, of another world, and yet it is good. Its strangeness is welcoming and stirring, and despite being otherworldly there is a sense that the change taking place has an aroma of homecoming.

Furthermore the kingdom of God is, in its other-worldliness, much like the sea. Inhospitable to man in his natural state, but thrilling and adventuresome to reach and experience, and yet despite how much one might want to dwell there he cannot, without a sea-change.