The Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, June 20, 2021

Mark 4:35–41

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. And other boats were with him. A violent squall came up and waves were breaking over the boat, so that it was already filling up. Jesus was in the stern, asleep on a cushion. They woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” He woke up, rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Quiet! Be still!” The wind ceased and there was great calm. Then he asked them, “Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?” They were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this whom even wind and sea obey?”

The first reading for today’s Mass is one of the most striking, dramatic readings in the Scriptures: “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? When I set limits for it and fastened the bar of its door, and said: Thus far shall you come but no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stilled!”  God is answering Job’s demand to know why is suffering, though he has always behaved justly.  God’s reply, to be brief, is that while Job owed all that he has ever could be said to possess from God, God owes nothing to him.  In the verses for the reading, God majestically points out that he is infinite and all else that exists, exists by an act of his will, and it does so according to the limits he establishes for it.  Limits are important because without them, nothing lesser than God can exist.  Limits exclude formlessness and powerlessness and permit forms and powers.  Even the most powerful of God’s creations known in ancient times, the sea, was bounded by limits.  There are, then, necessarily, limits to human beings, both physical and spiritual.  We each have a certain ability to apply our free will to our various functions.  For instance, in economically developed parts of the world, humans can choose to become carpenters or bankers.  We cannot choose to change ourselves in any intrinsic way, however: we cannot  become a new species such as zebras or ostriches, or become a new sex, or to cause ourselves to possess, naturally, new powers, such as regrowing limbs (some scientists are working to create a human/plant creature that could do this, but it would be distinctly unnatural).  Limits, boundaries, terms, are good things for us.  They allow us to exist, to co-exist, and to understand ourselves.  And understanding natural limits also enables us to think about God, who is without any limits.

In the Gospel reading for today’s Mass, we see displayed before us the power of the natural world and the infinite power of the Lord.  He is in a boat with his Apostles.  A storm rises up without warning.  St. Peter, who dictated his memories of Jesus to his secretary St. Mark, recalled the scene very vividly: “A violent squall came up and waves were breaking over the boat, so that it was already filling up. Jesus was in the stern, asleep on a cushion.”  Peter cries out to the Lord in very much the same way as Job had cried out: “Do you not care that we are perishing?”  And then Jesus “woke up”, without any alarm, and “rebuked” the wind: “Quiet! Be still!”  Mark says, in the very next line, “The wind ceased and there was great calm.”  The storm vanished as though it had never been.  We note how the storm itself meant nothing to the Lord: left to himself, he would have slept through it.  He only rouses himself for the sake of his followers.  And just as without fuss or display he cured the sick and gave sight to the blind, he spoke a couple of words and it was done,  he need not have so much as that, except for the benefit of the Apostles.  Perhaps if he had not told the wind and the sea to “be still” they would have doubted later that there had been a storm st all, that they had imagined it somehow.

The Lord does not then shrug at Peter and go back to sleep, but he teaches him that his power was not confined to certain activities, such as healing, but that it was infinite; and because his power was infinite and because Peter and the others were his chosen Apostles, they could trust in him to use it to protect and assist them.  He questions Peter, “Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?”  Surely, no master ever asked such a thing of a disciple before: one might understand the other’s teachings and admire them, but the Lord is demanding a personal commitment.  He is demanding that Peter acknowledge and believe in his power, as well as believing that his Lord would use it on his behalf.  Peter, ever impulsive and outspoken, cannot speak here.  He ponders, he ruminates, he prays.  He discusses with his fellows what the Lord Jesus has done: “Who then is this whom even wind and sea obey?” And he will give his answer shortly, when he professes, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God” (Matthew 16, 16).