Year B / Ordinary Time / Twelveth Sunday
Readings: Job 38.1, 8-11 / Psalm 106. 23-24,25-26, 28-29, 30-31 (R/v cf. 1b) / 2 Corinthians 5.14-17 / Mark 4.45-41
“You can do it, Josh.” He checked the helmet on his 4 year old son; it was safely strapped on. He checked Joshua’s feet; they were on the pedals of his bright red bicycle. The supporting side wheels were removed for today’s big ride, Joshua’s first on two wheels.
Kneeling down, his face alongside Joshua’s, Dad then stretched out his arm, his index finger pointing to the end of the pavement: “Go, buddy, ride across to the other side; you can do it, son!”
And off Joshua went. Pedaling hard to pick up speed. Pedaling hard to keep his balance. Pedaling hard to get from here to there. Then he wobbled; he panicked; he was afraid he could not get across.
“Let us cross to the other side,” Jesus says in today’s gospel passage from Mark. He is inviting his disciples to join him there as he continues proclaiming the Good News that God’s Kingdom is in their midst. Before this moment, Jesus teaches them how God’s kingdom is like seeds that God scatters onto fallow land and God grows into abundance. “Let us cross over to the other side.” There, Jesus will teach them about God’s power to cure the sick. Learning about God’s power to give life, whether in creation or through healing, is how Jesus schools his disciples to also proclaim Good News.
We are in Ordinary Time in the Church’s calendar. In Ordinary Time, we do not celebrate a specific aspect of Jesus’ life, like we do in Advent, Christmas, Lent and Easter. Instead, we are to devote ourselves to growing in intimacy with all aspects of Jesus’ life in Ordinary Time.
You can say that Jesus is inviting us in Ordinary Time to journey with him, to cross from where we are now to where he desires to lead us to in the future with God. Crossing over from bad habits to a good life, from selfishness to selflessness, from mediocre Christian living to a worthier life in Christ, from sinfulness to saintliness.
I believe we all want to make this journey with Jesus to God, and we want to do this as fellow pilgrims. Our efforts to live the Christian life daily; our coming to mass and confession regularly; our honest prayer to God and our generous sharing with neighbours: all these speak of our faithful, persevering and hope-filled efforts to accomplish this journey of crossing over.
But don’t we struggle on this journey? Don’t we fail now and again? Two steps forward, one step back. Saints have described the difficulties of their spiritual life in terms of a rocky road, an arid desert, and the dark night of the soul. Today’s gospel passage images this rough, tough struggle on our Christian journey as a raging storm.
Storms come and go; they have a life of their own. No matter how sophisticated today’s weather forecasting is, we cannot control when storms will break or how strong they will be. Our life storms should remind us that all of us, including the prayerful and saintly among us, will always have challenges in following Jesus.
But the good news is that in the midst of each of our Christian journeys, there is Jesus, with us and for us. He always is, even if he was snoozing away when the storm broke and the disciples had to wake him to calm the waves. The disciples must have felt like scared children.
But it is when they are like children, vulnerable and in need, that Jesus challenges his disciples to deeper faith in God. “Do you not yet have faith?” He asks them this question from within in their midst, not apart from them. He responds to their fears and needs, delivers them from danger and urges them to greater faith by being with them. Here is Jesus making the crossing over with his disciples.
Isn’t this also how Jesus is with us too? Always challenging us to deepen our faith in God in the most difficult of times when we are drenched and tossed about in those storms that besiege our life and faith.
But why does Jesus allow these storms into our lives when he can command the wind and rain? Because storms are graced-filled moments that induce faith and trust in us.
Faith and trust are how we can open ourselves to God’s love. God does not cause pain and sorrow. But God cares enough about us to allow pain and sorrow to find us, and to draw us into deeper life-giving relationship with Godself. Instead of only happy, painless living as human beings, we can now partake in the life of God who took on human form, and once in a storm long ago taught all that God is never far away but very near if we but have faith.
This is why finding God in all things is a faith-filled way to live the Christian life. It guides us to keep looking out for God, like a child on a wobbling bicycle looking out for his father’s assuring presence.
It also invites us to hope and not despair as Pope Francis teaches us as he ends his new encyclical, Laudato Si. Yes, the earth, our common home, is in bad shape. Yes, we have messed her up. But we can make the needed changes and save it, Francis encourages, because Jesus is with us still to help us do this:
In the heart of this world, the Lord of life, who loves us so much, is always present. He does not abandon us, he does not leave us alone, for he has united himself definitively to our earth, and his love constantly impels us to find new ways forward” (§245).
Jesus gave his disciples a new way forward through the storm. Jesus died for us to journey forward in new way: as God’s new creation (2 Cor 5.17).
Today, you and I have reflected on Jesus who cares for us like a father does – paternally loving, paternally forgiving, paternally life-giving.
That Jesus fathered his disciples safety to life is how we can also remember our fathers. Our fathers who picked us up when we first scraped our knees. Our fathers who raised us up onto their shoulders to see parades when others blocked our view. Our fathers who walked us into adulthood. And yes, my father too who taught his children to welcome life eternal as we cared for him to his death.
The bicycle wobbled. Joshua thought he would fall. Then Dad came, steadied him and helped him pedal, pedal, pedal to the end, all the time keeping him balanced on two wheels.
Yes, isn’t this too how Jesus is with us too, always steadying us into fullness of life, steadying us like only God can as our Father?
Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
Photo: www.babblebikes.com
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