NewCreation

Homily for Sunday 12 in Ordinary Time, Year B

Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this the homily for the 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time. This week the Gospel continues directly on from where we left it last week. You remember last week Jesus was sitting on a boat talking in parables, first to the crowd and then to the disciples. He told them the parable of the person who planted seed and then left it day and night, went to sleep, got up and left it until it grew to harvest. And then he tells them the parable of the mustard bush, or the mustard seed. After this, he says that same evening, having finished telling these parables, he says, "Let's go to the other side." So a crossing is being announced. This doesn't appear to be one of the great crossings. It's crossing the Sea of Galilee. So obviously there are memories in the background of the great crossings of the Red Sea, of the Jordan, but here it's the relatively modest Sea of Galilee, ten miles, sixteen kilometers across. And the other side is the Syrophoenician side. It's the side where non-Jewish people live — some of the people who remained from whom Joshua, on the original movement into the promised land, had not extirpated. So there were still pagan groups living there, and we'll see that soon, because the pagan group that he comes to will be the Gerasenes, the Gadarenes, who keep pigs. So they're en route across to the other side, and it's an initial visit. This will not be — Jesus is not going to spend much time there, because in fact after his encounter with the Gerasene demoniac he then comes back to the Jewish side once again. So this is just an initial visit. So let's think of this in terms of the split-screen vision which I always talk about with Mark. The historical instance that the disciples lived at the time, without understanding much of what's going on. And following Jesus's instruction to them — or the angels' instruction to them — "Go back to Galilee, and there you will find him." This is also how the young Church is starting to live the reality of Jesus and the Word, remembering that all those parables about sowing and scattering were to do with the Word. And today we're going to see the importance of the Word during the crossing, and I hope that you'll bear with me on that. So, "On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, 'Let's go across to the other side.'" And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. That's curious. I don't have an answer to this, but why would you say they took him with them in the boat just as he was, if he had told them to do it? Wouldn't it be more normal to say, "So they went with him"? But they took him just as he was — so presumably tired and disheveled after a long day's teaching. But it makes him curiously an object that's being carried… something that is being carried rather than a protagonist. There's something curious about that. Other boats were with him, so they were not alone on the lake of Galilee. Then it says our translation says "a great gale arose." This is in Greek lailaps anemos, and that's a direct translation — it's not proper Greek, it's a direct translation from the Hebrew: "a storm of wind." And this is the key point: it's exactly the phrase that is used in a couple of key places in Scripture. First of all, in the psalm which is our psalm for today, where it says "some sail to the sea in ships to trade on the mighty waters" — which is why it's important there was more than one boat on the sea at this time. "These men have seen the Lord's deeds, the wonders he does in the deep." Okay, so we're going to see a wonder of the Lord. "For he spoke, he summoned the gale." That's what it says in our translation, but in fact the Hebrew behind it is "the storm of wind," which has been translated by Mark into lailaps anemos. So: "For he spoke, the storm of wind, tossing the waves of the sea up to heaven and back into the deep, their souls melted away in their distress." So the psalm is a very good description of what the disciples are then going to live out. It's also, incidentally, exactly the same phrase in Psalm 148: "Praise the Lord from the earth, you sea monsters and all deeps, fire and hail, snow and frost, storm of wind fulfilling his command." It says "stormy wind," "storm of wind" — it's exactly the same phrase. But notice that in both cases the stormy wind is fulfilling his command. I want to suggest to you that the relationship between word and what is going on here is very important. This is all to do with the one who is speaking, and whose word can be relied on and trusted, and that this is in a sense what's the difficult learning thing here. So great gales arose, and the waves beat into the boat so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. Again, this is a wonderful detail, and I wonder why it's put there, because I can find no reference to a cushion that conceivably matches the phrase here in Mark in the Scriptures. Maybe I'm just missing something. But it seems a wonderful point. I doubt very much whether Mark would have put it in unless there was some good reason for it. But he sleeps on the cushion. In practical terms, it means that that perhaps explains why he was able to stay asleep, because he wasn't being bumped about by the rocky passage across the waters. So they woke him up. Actually, they roused him. So one can imagine actually grabbing him and saying to him, "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" Well, again, what an interesting phrase. If I were to wake up somebody, I would say something like, "How is it that we're able stay asleep during this. Whereas their question assumes him having some kind of concern over all these events even while he's asleep. And that in itself is rather a remarkable attribution. It suggests that even the one who is asleep, they think that he's somewhat more than that. And incidentally, this is the first time in Mark's Gospel that they address the word "teacher" to him. This is the first time he's described as teacher. But they clearly think he's something more than teacher, because they attribute to him the ability to be concerned while sleeping, which is an odd thing to do in my book anyhow. "Do not care that we are perishing." So there's something going on between our two split visions: a first time when he's asleep, and a second time perhaps now after the resurrection, when they're going through a rough patch and they're aware that Jesus seems to be asleep — that the rough things that they're going through, he doesn't seem to be caring about them. A little thought back: had he not just told them a parable about someone who planted seed — that's to say, put out the word — and then went to sleep and got up again, imagining that the seed would be growing he knew not how, in other words automatically? And has not Jesus just actually done that with his disciples, just gone to sleep and seen whether the seed has been sprouting? So he woke up, having been roused. Then he says — he rises — and of course there's a hint of the resurrection in that. He wakes up and rebukes the wind, and says to the sea. Again, the importance is the word. He's actually speaking. Epitimao. He rebukes the sea. And he says — he rebukes the wind and says to the sea — "Peace, be still." The first word is a word spoken to humans; the second is a word spoken to animals. Literally, it's "be muzzled." It's how you address inanimate objects. So the word is both the word spoken to humans and the word spoken to inanimate objects. And incidentally, it's the same word as we get in the psalm which is our psalm for today: "Then they cried to the Lord in their need and he rescued them from their distress. He stilled the storm — the storm to a whisper. He told the storm to be still, to be at peace. And all the waves of the sea were hushed." So here he's absolutely literally fulfilling the psalm. But a little bit more than that. Because when Moses gives his final instructions to the people of Israel before leaving them in the hands of Joshua, so that they can then be taken across the sea to the land of milk and honey, to the promised land — in other words, just before that happens, what Jesus has done to his disciples — Moses and all the Levitical priests say to the people: "Be silent." Exactly the same word: "be silent." And that's immediately before the passage across — before Moses dies and the passage across to the promised land. So no wonder they say, "Who is this?" They've called him teacher, but they've heard him address with the words Moses used to the people of Israel — not merely people, but the wind. Then the wind ceased and there was a dead calm. He said to them, "Why are you afraid? Do you not yet have faith?" In our translation it says, "Have you still no faith?" But it's rather as though he's talking about the planting of the seed and waiting for it to come up. He's planted the seed and he's saying, "Has it not yet come up in you?" He's been planting this. He's about to take them across the sea to plant a seed amongst the Garasenes, as we'll see — a seed which then left a former demoniac wandering around that whole area telling the people about Jesus, so that no doubt when the second tour comes around, in other words the post-resurrection tour, the disciples going in mission into the field of the Gentiles already start to meet people who had already begun to hear about Jesus. The word had already started to spread. But so he's asking them, "Has the seed spread?" And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, "Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?" So the master — even more than Moses — and the Word. And here I'd like to end by stressing something. The power of the Word is what brings things into creation. If you thought Jesus was a magician, you think of someone who has power over things. That's the magician picture of Jesus, and that's absolutely not what's at work here. What is at work here is the Lord — the Lord whose Word speaks the storm into being. It's not that he just controls it when it's convenient or inconvenient. He's actually the Creator. It's his Word that can take the form of the storm. His Word produces things automatically. His Word is behind all these things. So of course Jesus can go to sleep. The Word is at work. The disciples who are frightened and scared have at their disposal — and are part of the spreading of the Word — behind them, in their midst, impelling them onwards, impelling us onwards, is a power far greater than we can imagine. Not a magical power, but a power that stunningly is bringing things into being in unexpected places. And he's continually pushing us on saying, "Has the seed sprouted a little bit? Are you able to see that the Word is at work?" My word, that this is the word of God, and of course it accomplishes whatever it purposes. In the name of the Father, of the Son, of the Holy Spirit. Amen.