TWELFTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME B

[cappie]

In today’s Gospel, our Lord calms the wind and the waves and says to the tense disciples,  ‘Why are you so frightened? How is it that you have no faith?’

 Listening to this story, for those of Mark’s community who were from a Jewish background, the Lord’s mastery over the violence of the sea would have called to mind an Old Testament theme echoed in the first reading from the Book of Job. St  Mark’s community belonged to the infant Church of Rome, who found themselves in the storm unleashed by Nero’s persecution - that was to lead to the martyrdom of Peter. They have found the ‘faith’ to which Jesus had invited the disciples in the boat - a trusting awareness of God’s almighty presence in the ordeal that they were facing. This gospel speaks to the Church in every age – its relevance to our stormy times needs no elaboration.

So, Jesus surely intended the link between faith and fear.

The opposite of faith is not doubt or unbelief; those tend to be doctrinal differences. No, the opposite of faith more often as not is fear. We fear the unknown. We fear the undiagnosed lump in the breast, or the persistent cough. We fear SARS or, in the region where I live, West Nile Virus. We fear losing control of our bodies and our health because of aging. We worry about how changes in politics, technology, or the economy will influence our jobs and the income from our savings and retirement funds. Fear is like waves ever seeking to knock us off our footing — our faith footing.

The story that follows, one of faith in a potentially fearful situation, was told by a Presbyterian minister. He told of his days as a Navy submariner in the Pacific during World War II. “We would often come under depth charge attack by Japanese destroyers,” he said. “The other sailors would be trembling with fear, while I just leaned back and read a comic book. One of them asked how I could be so calm. I explained to him that in my childhood I had truly little supervision from my parents, so I spent many hours each day at the New Jersey beach. Sometimes a huge breaking wave would catch me by surprise and thrust me under the water, rolling me in the sand. But I learned when I would just relax thousands of air bubbles like the fingers of God would catch me up and lift me to the surface. Now, whenever I find myself in trouble, I just relax and wait for the fingers of God to reach under me and lift me up.”

Faith is a stance toward life. I had a friend who, several years ago, within a period of six months, lost his last surviving parent and grandparent, as well as a favourite aunt and uncle. It dawned on him at the time that all of the people in his life who loved him unconditionally were dead, and that he was out in the front of the line. About the same time, his non-tenured University position was eliminated because of lack of funding. In those painful and challenging months, my friend wrote down his own definition of faith. I share it with you: Faith is the simple trust that life still can be good despite the fact that it is very painful and difficult. Out of the worst of experiences that my friend could have imagined, he found many little bubbles of love, joy, and hope in the form of friends, family, and church lifting him upward like the fingers of God. And the worst year of his life was followed by what he declares to have been one of the best years of his life.

 ‘Why are you so frightened? How is it that you have no faith?’  In these rather impatient words directed to his disciples, our Lord brings into focus to the polarities of faith and fear. Faith is a stance and how we stand up to those things that would threaten us and how we manage our fears makes all the difference. In the midst of troubles, try reaching up your hand to God and saying, “Help!” And when you reach your hand out to others around you and say, “Help!” the fingers of God will never fail to reach down and lift you into new and reassuring experiences of God’s grace. AMEN.