Calming the Storms of Life
A Homily for the 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time.
Job 38:1,8-11
2 Corinthians 5:14-17
Mark 4:35-41
In today's Gospel we are given the story of Jesus calming the winds of the storm at sea. In particular we are told that evening had come and after a long day of ministering to a whole lot of people, the Scripture says that there was a multitude there, that the Lord asked the disciples to pass over to the other shore. Today on the Sea of Galilee with modern technology, this is not a journey that would take very long (the Sea of Galilee is thirteen miles long and eight miles wide. Even in the evening, with motorized technology or even with modern sails, it would be quite possible to make it to the other side before any serious danger.
That wouldn't necessarily have been the case in a first century vessel, however. On top of that, we aren't told if the disciples were doing anything else that night other than trying to move the boat from shore to shore. At least three of the apostles were fishermen by trade, and they could just as well have begun the evening saying “we will take the time to stop and fish for a while before we get to the other side.” We don't know if that's exactly what happened, but we do know that whatever happened, it blew up a storm that evening while the boat was on the lake. This storm became so violent that these men feared for their lives.
The Gospel recounts that the storm blew up such a great wind that the waves lashed against the boat and the boat began to take on water. The disciples, as anyone probably would in that situation, began to panic and began to wonder what it was that they were going to do. In the midst of all of this the Lord is on the boat. While the rest of his disciples were wondering how or whether at all they were going to survive this violent upheaval, the Lord was in another part of the ship fast asleep on a pillow. Everyone else is wondering what they're going to do, Our Lord is asleep as if nothing is happening. One might say that the Lord doesn't appear to have a concern in the world at that particular moment.
When the disciples awaken the Lord, their reaction is basically to say “doesn't it concern you that we are perishing?” We quite literally in today's language could take it as a statement of “don’t you care what happens to us, can you not see and hear any of this?” Jesus, on the other hand, isn't the least bit concerned because he knows that he is ultimately in control. He calms the wind and the sea by simply saying “peace, be still,” and he chides the disciples for their lack of faith. “Why are you afraid, do you have no faith?” The disciples' reaction shows that they still hadn't quite gotten there yet, they ask amongst themselves: “Who is this that even the wind and the sea obey him?”
The disciples thought that they were going to perish, they looked at Jesus and undoubtedly thought that he was oblivious to their situation, but he wasn't. He calmed the storm, but this clearly didn't happen in the way that these men would have envisioned. They expected Jesus would be active and concerned while all this is going on, but he is quiet and largely unassuming, trying to get a couple of hours of sleep. The disciples simply presumed that Jesus would be immediately concerned with what they were concerned with. What Jesus managed to show was that he had control over the wind and the sea and everything else.
The real lesson for us today is pretty obvious. When we cry out to the Lord and it seems like he doesn't know or care what's going on in our life, the reality is that he does know, he does care, but he is in control. Ultimately, we are not. That doesn't mean that there isn't anything we can do, when we ask for the Lord's intervention very often he sends it and he will do it in ways we are not expecting. I personally have learned that sometimes the Lord intervenes and not only was I not expecting what came, I didn't see it for what it was, the Lord's intervention in a situation that I had asked for, until after the fact. The great lesson to be found in the story of Christ calming the storm is not only that he is in control and we are not, but that he does know what's going on in our life, even if we think that he is distant and doesn't care. Even if we believe that he is asleep on the other end of the boat of our life.
In our humanity what we fail to grasp, often merely because of our own frailty, is that when we think God isn't listening or that he doesn't answer, he knows exactly what is happening in our life. Sometimes we are put into situations where we have a storm to steer our way through, or a cross that we have to bear that seems particularly heavy to us. We don't realize that we are usually put into those situations in order to help us to rely on God, on our relationship with Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity. How many of us have gone through our days believing that everything is going to be just fine, but when something comes up that is difficult, that we think we just might not be able to get through on our own, then we call on the Lord and say “hey Lord, can I have a hand?” The Lord doesn't just want us to ask for his help when we think we are in a rough spot, or in a bad situation that we believe we can't get out of. The Lord wants us to go to him even when it seems easy, precisely so that we know who to depend on when it's hard.
The disciples woke Jesus up and he had been sound asleep in the midst of all commotion. Jesus calmed the storm, and he chided the disciples for their lack of faith. Why did he do that, when it surely must have been a terrifying experience for them? Jesus wanted to show his disciples, as he wants to show us today and every day that he knows what is happening in our lives, and no matter what we think about what's going on in any given moment in our lives, that he is in control. We might think he doesn't care, we might think no one cares, but he does care. Very often it takes the storms of our lives for all of us to be reminded to call upon Jesus, to turn our eyes and our thoughts and our prayers toward him. It shouldn't be that way, we should be willing to call upon the Lord all the time, but we think we can get through this life ourselves, that we can navigate our ship through the stormy waters without the help of the one who made us, created Heaven and Earth, and is the maker of all the waters. The disciples learned that they couldn't do it without the help of the Creator.
The Lord is trying to remind us that we can't do it alone, just as his first followers could not. We not only need his help, he's ready to give it. That help might not come in ways that we realize, and sometimes it might come in some form that we don't even completely understand, but it does come. We want to ask the Lord the very same thing the disciples did. “Don't you see we are struggling here? Do you not care that we perish?” In reply, the Lord asks us: “Don't you have any faith?” Jesus reminds us that whatever the storms of our life, whatever the crosses we might carry, he is aware of them, even if he seems to be sleeping, and the Lord is in control.