12th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B, 23rd June, 2024

 

The old things, the ones that scare us, are gone; behold, new things have been born: the new things of faith and hope.” Happy Sunday!

DOCTRINE AND FAITH

(Job 38,1.8-11; Psalm 106 (107); 2Cor 5,14-17; Mark 4,35-41; 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B, 23rd June, 2024)

God reveals himself to Job as the one who has power even over the indomitable powers of the sea, which in the eyes of a Jew were a symbol of everything that man could not dominate and by which he felt threatened. God, on the other hand, does not annihilate the threat of evil, represented metaphorically by the sea waves, but controls it, places an insurmountable limit on it, closing the sea “between two doors” and telling it: “You will reach this far and no further and here the pride of your waves will be shattered.”(Job 38.11). This power of God is manifested in Jesus, who is able to threaten the wind and command the sea: “Be quiet, calm down!” (Mark 4,39). We easily understand the amazement that seized his disciples and the question that arises from it: “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” (4.41). It is the same fear that one feels when one is placed before God and his mystery, which now transpires from the humanity of Jesus, whose authoritative word, whose powerful gestures seem to transcend human possibilities. A crucial passage in the life of faith is manifested here, very similar to that experienced by Israel at the Red Sea, when she was called to convert from the fear of the sea to the fear of God (see Exodus 14,31). In a similar way, on the boat the disciples must convert from the terror of the storm, the fruit of their disbelief, to the fear of Jesus, another name for a faith that allows itself to be questioned by his mysterious identity. The episode is narrated by Mark at the conclusion of the chapter on parables. What happens in this boat is also a parable of the Kingdom. Jesus sleeps in the stern as the seed rests in the ground. The farmer cannot do anything in this evening, however, whether he sleeps or watches, “at night or during the day, the seed sprouts and grows. How, he himself does not know” (Mark 4,27). The sower must have faith in the power of the seed, which seems inactive, but instead mysteriously releases its vitality. In the same way the disciples must learn to trust in Jesus and in his salvation, even when he sleeps. Furthermore, his ability to sleep just as “a great storm of wind broke out and the waves were breaking into the boat, so much so that it was now full” (4,37), is surprising. The disciples are terrified. We easily understand their reaction. What appears disconcerting instead is the sleep of Jesus, who “stuck on the pillow and slept” (4,38).

How can you sleep in such a situation? The disciples interpret this sleep as disinterest, to the point of waking him up with a poorly concealed rebuke: “Master, don’t you care that we are lost?” (4,38). Jesus’ sleep, however, is not so much an expression of carelessness as of trust. Even in the midst of danger he remains like a child who can fall asleep confidently in the arms of his father or mother. It is the sleep of those who know they are protected.

And it is this faith that he lives first, a faith that has already been able to convert the fear of the sea into the fear of God, and he would like to share this his attitude with his disciples. “Why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith?” (4,40). Perhaps, we must understand not so much “you still have no faith in me” as “you still have no faith in the Father, like me?”. Why, don’t you abandon yourselves too, with trust, in the hands of him who wants to keep you? Why don’t you too learn to pray like the psalmist: “In peace I lie down and immediately fall asleep, / for you alone, Lord, confidently make me rest”? (Psalm 4,9). The sea and the wind obey the word with which Jesus threatens them. However, before speaking to the wind and the sea, Jesus speaks to the disciples and then addresses their fear. He seems to want them to first overcome the violence of fear, and then also overcome the violence of the storm. As if the real danger were fear, or the disbelief from which it is generated. How not to be afraid, if life is threatened and those who can save are asleep? Isn’t Jesus’ reproach out of place, or excessively harsh? And perhaps a different reading is possible.

When we read the Gospel stories we also experience this difficulty: we focus on words, phrases, statements, without being able to immediately grasp the tone of voice, or the inclination of the gaze, or the light in the eyes of the person who said them. With what tone does Jesus address his disciples? Is it the tone of a harsh rebuke? Or rather is it the tone of someone who has compassion for their difficulty in believing? Is it the tone of someone who, rather than scolding, takes tender care of their and our fear? If poverty, smallness, fragility are places of God’s care in Jesus, even little faith, poor and naked faith, cannot help but be so. The Lord, who has mercy on us and on our lives, wants to free us not so much from a storm, but from the wrong attitudes with which we so often live in moments of crisis, confusion and danger. We are not spared from going through the storm, we are given the gift of doing so with a heart full of the fear of God rather than of fear of the moment of difficulty in which we find ourselves; with the heart of one who sleeps the sleep of a trust. By dominating the sea, closing it “between two doors” and setting “a limit” to it (see Job 38,8-10), Jesus repeats God’s creative gesture, narrated in the first chapter of Genesis. In him the Father brings about a new creation, or – as Paul reminds the Corinthians more precisely – he calls us to become “a new Creature”. The old things, the ones that scare us, are gone; behold, new things have been born: the new things of faith and hope (see 2 Cor 5,17). + John I. Okoye.

(Graphic by Chukwubike)