12th Sunday of the Year
Job 38:1, 8-11 2 Corinthians 5:14-17 Mark 4:35-41
In many ways the Gospel reading today is similar to that of last Sunday. Last Sunday St Mark told of Jesus beginning to explain to his disciples what the Kingdom of God was like. Speaking to a rural community, Jesus used parables about seed and crops so that the farming folk could identify with the images. Seeds, Jesus said, grow even when we don’t notice it and even the smallest seed can produce a huge harvest. In today’s gospel reading Mark speaks of water, water which was sometimes feared by a land bound people. Water has been a central theme throughout the history of salvation. The Jews were landlubbers who were very wary of the sea. In their minds the sea represented the chaos which God had to control before beginning the work of creation (1st Reading from Job). Then there was the Red Sea which blocked their path to freedom and the waters of the Flood which were seen as God’s punishment.
In the New Order the waters of Baptism heralded new life and salvation. So, it is appropriate that this incident of today’s Gospel is situated on the Sea of Galilee. Jesus suggested going across to the other side of Lake so as to proclaim the kingdom there too. But why was Jesus asleep in the boat? It may have been that he was tired following a long period of ministering and teaching. He was sound asleep – perhaps content in the knowledge that his closest disciples did now have Faith and Trust in him. Maybe this was a trial run for the time when he would be no longer be with them, when, as St Paul says in the second reading, we will know him in a different way – they must labour until his sleeping time is over and ‘until he comes again’! Alas, they do not have the strong Faith and Trust in the Lord which he expected. Not only do they rouse him from his sleep, they rebuke him. The storm has frightened them and they have forgotten the assurances of the Lord.
We can easily make the shift from Mark’s account here to our own day. As in last Sunday’s gospel the situation then can be compared to the situation of the Church in our time. We look to the stormy nights that the Church has endured and is enduring in our days. Have we too forgotten the words of Jesus; “Quiet now, be calm”? When we see our journey of Faith as a journeying in the Barque of Peter, the Church, we look for a certain assurance too. We wish to travel to the other side away from the storms and trials. But the storm churns up difficulties: waves of frustration in our living out our Faith, dryness in our prayer life, nagging temptations, festering hurts and anger at the way we have been misunderstood or unjustly treated.
In Mark’s story here today the storm is a combination of gale and winds …wind and water. Isn’t this the combination that the Scriptures use for the work of the Holy Spirit? In Genesis the wind blew over the waters before creation, in Exodus the wind drove back the waters of the Red Sea, and Jesus tells us that we are born again of water and the Divine Wind, the Holy Spirit.
So, when in our hearts and minds there is a storm churning up all these things, it is not necessarily destructive. Can we believe that it might be the Spirit of God at work? We may need to be moved by the storm in order to realise our need for the Spirit, Faith and Trust. “Quiet now! Be calm”. ‘For even the wind and the sea obey our Lord’.