Sunday, June 20, 2021

20 June 2021 - over troubled waters


On that day, as evening drew on, Jesus said to his disciples:
“Let us cross to the other side.”
Leaving the crowd, they took Jesus with them in the boat just as he was.

We want to be like the disciples who were willing to go where Jesus called them, even as evening already drew on. Like them, we should desire to take Jesus just as he is, just as we find him, not forcing him into a mold based on who we would like him to be. The disciples were always learning and relearning this lesson, for Jesus was not what anyone expected him to be. Again and again the disciples had to choose the real Jesus over and against their expectations and preferences. But again and again this Jesus proved to be more than they could have asked or imagined (see Ephesians 3:20).

A violent squall came up and waves were breaking over the boat,
so that it was already filling up.

We usually wish for a Jesus who would not permit storms in the first place. But this is not the Jesus we encounter. The character of the one we do encounter is in keeping with that of him who permitted Job to undergo trials so difficult that it was in no way evident what good could come from them. Fortunately for us, we don't usually suffer to that degree, nor are we often tested so severely. But we do often experience the same inability to make sense of suffering. Even after the fact we might not be able to articulate it the meaning of trials we have undergone. But we do not remain unchanged. One aspect of that change is often a new holy fear which would no longer seek to force God to justify himself to us, and a new trust in God's plan even when we cannot understand it. Job finally seemed to come to this place following God's self-revelation to him.

The Lord addressed Job out of the storm and said:
    Who shut within doors the sea,
        when it burst forth from the womb;
    when I made the clouds its garment
        and thick darkness its swaddling bands?

We might still risk thinking that God was unsympathetic, that Jesus was asleep in the boat because he didn't care. But before we entertain that thought we should remember that Jesus himself entered into our sufferings, that he experienced that apparent absence of God, and yet commended his Spirit peacefully into the Father's hands, and slept in death for three days. His disciples were terrified then as well, but they could not wake him sooner than he planned. Nevertheless, on the third day he woke and spoke to the very storm of death itself and said, "Quiet! Be still!" 

We need to receive Jesus as he is, the Jesus who does not eschew the storm of the cross and who chooses to sleep in death. We do this even before we can fully understand what is happening, even though it feels at first as though we have been abandoned. We are called to learn to trust him enough to believe that though he seems to sleep, "he who watches over you will not slumber" (see Psalm 121:3). More and more we can have peace that he will wake before we perish, that he will speak peace to whatever storm we face.
I suffered complete spiritual dryness, almost as if I were quite forsaken. As usual, Jesus slept in my little boat. I know that other souls rarely let him sleep peacefully, and he is so wearied by the advances he is always making that he hastens to take advantage of the rest I offer him.

- Saint Therese of Lisieux
Jesus was able to sleep even in the midst of the storm, and trust in him can help us to experience the same peace he had, the peace which was even able to calm the storm. Just as the Word spoke over the waters at the beginning of creation so too did he begin a new creation in himself. The only way to enter into that new creation is by the boat of the cross in the storm of the world, but not alone. Jesus is with us in the boat, and he only permits the storms so that he can give a new and lasting peace. He only permits suffering and death so that we can be transformed and experience the resurrection.

The love of Christ impels us,
once we have come to the conviction that one died for all;
therefore, all have died.



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