Psalm 107: 23-26, 28-31

Voyagers on the sea in ships,
plying their trade on the great ocean,
have seen the works of Yahweh,
his wonders in the deep.

By his word he raised a storm-wind,
lashing up towering waves.
Up to the sky then down to the depths!
Their stomachs were turned to water;

They cried out to Yahweh in their distress,
he rescued them from their plight,
he reduced the storm to a calm,
and all the waters subsided,
and he brought them, overjoyed at the stillness,
to the port where they were bound.

Let them thank Yahweh for his faithful love,
for his wonders for the children of Adam!

2 Corinthians 5: 14-17

For the love of Christ overwhelms us when we consider that if one man died for all, then all have died; his purpose in dying for all humanity was that those who live should live not any more for themselves, but for him who died and was raised to life. 

    From now onwards, then, we will not consider anyone by human standards: even if we were once familiar with Christ according to human standards, we do not know him in that way any longer. So for anyone who is in Christ, there is a new creation: the old order is gone and a new being is there to see.

June 25, 2006 

(Job 38, 1. 8-11; 2 Cor. 5, 14-17; Mark 4, 35-41) Four hunters were out tramping through the woods looking for deer.  Suddenly a large buck jumped out of the bushes and they all fired at once.  The deer fell down dead, but when they examined it it was only hit by one bullet.  They couldn’t’ figure out whose bullet had killed the deer and while they were arguing over it a game warden came by.  They asked him to help them figure out who brought down the deer.  After examining it he asked whether there was a preacher in the group.  One of the men said he was and the game warden said the deer was his.  They were amazed at his answer and asked how he had figured that out.  The game warden said, well the deer was killed with only one bullet and it went in one ear and out the other. 

God did not reveal the concept of reward and punishment, heaven and hell, in the next life until about a century or two before the time of Christ.  Prior to that time they thought that when a person died, the soul went to a place somewhere down below the surface of the earth called Sheol. Sheol was a place where nothing much ever happened.  The spirit of a person experienced neither happiness nor unhappiness there.  At the same time, God’s people firmly believed that God was just and fair, that God rewarded good people and punished bad people.  Because they had no clue that reward or punishment could occur after this life, they logically concluded that, since God is fair, God rewards us in this life if we’re good or punishes us in this life if we’re bad.  The logical conclusion to that kind of theology is that if we look at a person and see they are prosperous, healthy, happy, and blessed in numerous ways, that is a sign they are a really virtuous and holy person.  Conversely, if a person is having problems, if they are poor, or suffer from physical sickness, or suffer in some other way, they must be being punished for some evil in their life, even if they themselves are unaware of anything evil they might have done. 

But they were smart enough to know things didn’t always work that way.  Sometimes bad things happened to good people while other people got away with murder.  These everyday realities must have caused a real crisis of faith for many good people at that time.  The book of Job tries to explore this dilemma.  Job is a very holy and good man.  Even God admits it at the beginning of the book.  He is blessed in every way.  But by a few sudden tragedies he loses his crops, his livestock, his lands, the respect of his peers, and all of his sons and daughters.  His wife and a few faithful friends kept telling him he must deserve all this for something he did.  Most of us are familiar with his initial view of what was happening to him when he declared: “the Lord gives and the Lord takes away.”  People often speak of the “patience of Job,” but even his patience wore thin and he started asking for answers, or rather I should say he started demanding answers as to why he was suffering all these things. 

God’s response to his demands came in the form of questions, questions mostly about the mysteries of nature, questions like we hear in today’s first reading such as “who has power over the sea and the waves.”  These questions go on for four chapters as God asks Job how the stars were put in place, how the clouds are formed, what causes the wind to blow, who feeds the fish in the depths of the sea, or how do the animals in the wild live. These questions were meant to lead the readers of the book of Job to a sense of trust that God is in control of all things. Even if we don’t understand or know what he’s doing, he knows, and we just have to trust him. 

Through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus we have been given more insights, more answers, more help to our faith and to the mystery of suffering than Job was able to come up with.  And yet, many of us still tend to think about life the way that people long before Jesus did. At least subconsciously we think if we are good, God should make life pleasant for us and if other people are bad (not us of course!) God should not let them get by with it.  Sometimes that’s the way things happen.  A good life does have many rewards and an evil life usually catches up with a person, but it doesn’t always happen right away. And when life doesn’t go the way we think it should, our faith is shaken. We don’t understand how God works.  We are somewhat like the apostles in today’s gospel, when storms come up we cry out, “Lord, don’t you care that we are going to drown?” 

In each Sunday’s liturgy, in Communion, in our prayers, God gives us as many answers as he thinks we can understand right now. We have the good news that God loves us so much that he sent his only Son to teach us, to heal us and to suffer and die for us.  We have the resurrection which gives us hope that sin and evil and suffering will not have the last word.  We have the Eucharist which tells us that in our journey through life God will not abandon us, but will always be with us to strengthen us and unite us closely with himself.  The answers we get, like the answers Job got, continue to require us to have faith. Jesus asked the apostles in today’s gospel, “Why are you so terrified?  Why are you so lacking in faith?”  Jesus asks us those same questions today.  As I meditated on this gospel, I wondered how the apostles might have responded if Jesus had asked those questions before he calmed the storm.  Think about that for a moment.  If he did, do you think they would have heard him? It probably would have gone in one ear and out the other as they would have been too worried about the storm.  It’s easy for anyone to see we should have trusted more after danger has past, but our Lord wants us to hear this question also when the storm is raging and the waves are high.  God wants us to know he is still in control, even though we may wonder, “how can he be?”