Psalm 107 could be considered four different movements in a symphony of praise and thanksgiving. Four different groups of people who have experienced God’s powerful and providential care share their common experience of being saved from mortal danger by God. The first movement of our symphony is sung by people who wander in a parched desert, the second is proclaimed by people who have been wrongly imprisoned, the third by people who have been ill, and the fourth by those who have experienced danger at sea. Given the context of the readings for this Sunday, it is the fourth stanza of the psalm which is sung today as our response.
Israel’s children were not naturally seafaring people. Only once in the reign of King Solomon did they build their own naval fleet. Two centuries later, King Jehoshaphat attempted to renew naval contacts with other nations, but the ships were wrecked by a storm before they left the harbor. The sea represented angry chaos to these people. It was the home of Behemoth and Leviathan, dreaded sea creatures which are introduced in the Book of Psalms and in chapters forty and forty-one of the Book of Job. The point of the Behemoth and Leviathan passages is to announce that only the Lord can control the cosmic evil which these forces symbolize.
When God addresses Job in today’s first reading, the voice of God comes in the whirlwind, another force of nature which occurs several times in the Hebrew Scriptures. The cloud or whirlwind is a common vehicle employed by God for self-disclosure, especially in the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Zechariah. It was the whirlwind that swept Elijah up to the sky in the Second Book of Kings. The Creator uses the power of nature for self-disclosure. His answer to Job is rather simple: Who do you think you are demanding answers from the one who has created all there is?
It is against the background of this imagery and symbolism that we read the story from the fourth chapter of the Gospel of St. Mark. As I mentioned last week, chapter four follows three chapters of miraculous healings and exorcisms which have produced both positive and negative reactions to Jesus. At this point in the Gospel, St. Mark shifts away from Galilee to the communities that lie on the other side of the Sea of Galilee, communities which are not Jewish. Jesus and his apostles are moving into Gentile areas. Ordinarily, the Jews would have avoided such areas, but Jesus asks his disciples to cross to the other side. While they are piloting the boat, Jesus falls asleep in the stern of the boat. St. Mark could be using the storm in this instance to portray the anxieties that the apostles might be feeling as they approach these less than friendly neighbors.
Jesus does much more than quiet the storm waves roaring across the sea and tossing the boat from side to side or tipping it dangerously into the jowls of the seas. Jesus is emerging as the new creator, bringing peace and order out of chaos, just as the creator did in the first chapter of Genesis, creating the universe out of chaos. The apostles respond to Jesus’ power over nature with awe and fear: “Who then is this whom even wind and sea obey?” They knew that only God could control the power of nature. So it is quite obvious that Jesus, the man who is sleeping in the midst of the storm, is more than he appears to be. Not only can he heal the sick and cast out demons, he also controls the forces of nature.
In his Second Letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul picks up this thread as he proclaims that the man Jesus has died once for all just as all had died in Adam. Jesus is the Lord of a new creation and the followers of Jesus know him not simply as a man of flesh and blood, but as the new creator. The old things have passed away. The new things have taken their place. It is this Gospel that we are to carry to all people. Yes, we too might be anxious about what Christ is asking of us. However, the question Jesus asks his apostles in the boat is the same for us: “Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?”
Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator