The 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time: B 23-24
The 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Job 38:1, 8-11 | 2 Corinthians 5:14-17 | Mark 4:35-41
Grant, oh Lord, that we may always revere and love your holy name for you never deprive of your guidance those you set firm on the foundation of your love. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen.
God the Father, Jesus his Son, the two are often confused, or at least the two cause confusion in people as to who is God or what is God. What is God? Is God a man? Is God a god? It’s really interesting how the two often — the way most people settle it in their minds and imagination and say, “Well, God’s the Father, and Jesus is his Son. God’s the angry one and the vengeful one and Jesus the nice one who protects us from the vengeance of the Father.” No. God the Father exists. He created everything. He created with the most loving disposition. Listen to that first reading, how beautiful it is that he created this world as if it’s a living being. When he talks about he created the sea, it was like he gave birth out of a womb. The sea was born, and then he gives it a place. Then he makes a cloud so that it has a blanket and then the darkness so that it can rest, and then he sets limits for it. What a beautiful way of imagining the earth, as a living being. And with this image, what we find is that God created everything out of love, and he gave limits to everything in nature. Trees can only do so much. Water can only do so much. And then he took this chance and created human beings, and human beings, in a sense, are not limited like nature is. They have this one element that is not in any other part of anything that Jesus — that God created, and it’s free will. He gave boundaries to the sea, and he gives — in a sense, he calls us to live within a certain limitation of who we are and what we can do, but if we think we can go beyond that, there we go. We are a little unruly compared to the rest of creation, and so what’s he do with that? Well, he works with it in the most loving, patient and kind way.
I’d like you to look at the gospel now and see that God, who has power over nature, controls it. We see that same power that’s God the Father now in God the Son, because Jesus, the best way to understand Jesus is he is a manifestation of God the Father in a human being, the same God that created the sea is the same God that’s in Jesus calming the sea. His humanity is with that, and the reason God chose to become also human was so that he could explain to us in a clear way that that’s his plan. He always created us longing to have a relationship with us where we work together. So Jesus is the manifestation of the fullness of who God is. He’s not just the God out there in heaven that creates everything, the master over everything. No, he’s also the partner that enters into our life like he did in Jesus’ life. But the thing about the humanity of Jesus that’s different than our humanity, it’s completely sinless. It didn’t come from another human being. God created the man Jesus himself. So he’s human but not as human as we are. He doesn’t have our weaknesses, but he has free will, which is really interesting.
So here is this beautiful manifestation of God in a human being, Jesus. So we see something that goes on in the relationship we have with God always comes up. Somewhere along the line, we’re doing what he calls us to do. We’re living as we’re supposed to be living, and all of a sudden, instead of calm and everything being the way we expect it to be, there’s a squall. We all know what the squall feels like. “What the heck is going on? Why isn’t this working? Why do I have this problem? Why is the person I love dying? Why is the world so filled with tension?” All those things, we get scared, and so what I love about the image of God in a human being creating calm in the midst of a storm, we have the man Jesus on a pillow in a squall in an open boat, which is kind of humorous to me. Talk about being relaxed, but his disciples are terrified. They realize they’re going to die, and so they scream out, “Help us. Help us. Help us.” And he’s sort of half awake, and he gets like, “What? What are you worried about?” It’s obviously the storm, so he just stops the storm, because he’s God. And they’re just amazed. “What? Who is this guy? Who is he?”
Does that mean that God is saying to the disciples that eventually, “If you let my Father live in you as he lives in me that you can do anything you want, and you can calm storms and things like that”? No, that’s not the point. What he’s saying is if you have God living in you and you believe in him, he will never let anything destroy you. That’s the key. Nothing will destroy you. Does that mean that nothing will ever frighten you or nothing will ever go wrong? No, no. It just means that no matter where and what you’re dealing with, he will never destroy you. Can you believe that? Well, the reason that’s so important to believe is because the power to do that is not in a human being. If you really think something is going to destroy you, you are terrified, and you will resist whatever is going on, because it can, in your mind, destroy you. So hold that thought. There is something out there that can be so terrifying that you will resist it, and let’s look at Paul’s insight, because it’s the most important thing, I think, I’ve ever really been focused on, because what we’re hearing in Paul is a mystery, and it goes like this.
Fundamentally, Jesus, the model of who we are, a human filled with divinity, was asked by God at one point in his life to do something that felt like he couldn’t do it, because he, the God/man, basically wanted more than anything else to save the world. He wanted to do his calling. He wanted to fulfill it. He wanted to bring people into a deeper relationship with his Father through what he could show them, and he knew their frailties. He knew their weaknesses, and now God finally reveals to the man Jesus that his calling is going to engage him in looking, in the eyes of his disciples, as a complete failure and allowing evil, which he always tells people he’s going to destroy — allow evil to destroy Jesus. And so he couldn’t — didn’t want to do it, because he was afraid it would be the one thing that would keep him from achieving the goal that he really wanted to do. Now, this is his humanity now, and so he says, “Please Father, I don’t want to do this,” meaning, “I don’t want my disciples to be tested this strongly because — I don't know. It’s too much.” “If I can’t do what I’m called to do, I won’t exist,” is what he’s kind of saying, and I want you to hear that again. “If I’m not able to do what I think I’m supposed to do, that’s my essence, then I will die.” And that’s exactly what Jesus went through in the Garden of Gethsemane. This is like a death, and can I let go of the very thing that is my core, my essence? Can I let go of that for some promise from God that it’ll be alright? He did it. He did it, but here’s what Paul says. Because Jesus did that, because he did die for others, and he no longer was living just for himself but others — he wasn’t living out of the model he had for who he was and how he had to function. He gave that up trusting his Father, and when he did that and he died, everybody died. What? Meaning he did something in reality, in the human race, being a member of the human race — Jesus was — that his surrender to that moment made something shift that reminds us of a mystery that, whenever we go through anything, we don’t do it just ourselves, but we are engaged in something much bigger than ourselves, and whatever we do impacts everybody else. But his act of selflessness and courage in that moment changed our capacity, and now we can do it ourselves. That’s amazing. Since he died for all and no longer for himself, all of us are empowered to die and not focus solely on ourselves. So that’s grace. That’s what it means to be saved.
Let’s go back to how that works in your life and in mine. So let’s say, if you know a lot about personalities, you know that people have a certain focus of their life for where they find value. Some people are teachers, and they have to always explain things to people. Other people are caregivers, and they’re always caring for people. Some people like me are performers, and they have to perform for everybody. Some people are people who have to control everything, and when I mean they have to, it means that, when they are doing that, they feel most alive, and if they can’t do that, they don’t think they exist. Their identity is so tied up in one of their roles — just like you might say the man Jesus was tied up in his role to be absolutely the catalyst, in his own mind, that he felt the disciples had to experience, someone conquering evil. And God said, “No, I’m going to show them that you’ve conquered evil but not by avoiding it but by giving into it and surviving and then becoming even more than you ever were before.” So follow that sequence, because what happens, when you and I are facing something like the Garden of Gethsemane and we don’t want to give into it, the reason we don’t want to give into it is not that we don’t want to, but we can’t. And why can’t we? Because our identity is too tied into something that gives us value. If I’m not caring for somebody, I have no value. I don’t exist. If I’m not up there in front of a crowd performing for people, then I don’t exist. I’ve heard many people say — they’re entertainers. The only time I really feel alive is when I’m onstage. The only thing [sic] I’m really alive is when I’m caring for somebody. The only time I feel alive is when I’m in charge. But that’s not who we are. So what Jesus set up in motion is the reality that we, as human beings, do have the ability to say to that part of us that says, “I will not exist if I don’t perform in a way that I’ve been trained to perform in order to have a sense of my value,” the life of Jesus is saying to us, and the grace is there to say, “No, you do exist even though you don’t do that.”
So funny. I think all the time, “I don’t want to do something. I don’t want to call that person. I don’t want to go there.” Why? Well, when I find — the reason I don’t want to go there is because, when I go there, I’m not going to do something they want me to do. I’m going to do something they don’t. I’m going to tell them something that they don’t want to hear. I’m going to tell them, “I can’t do that,” or I can’t help them. When I say, “I don’t want to,” what I should really be saying is there’s something in me that can’t. It’s not that I don’t want to. I can’t do it. Why not? Well, because when I’m telling somebody something they don’t want to know, or if I tell them I can’t help them in the way they want — and I have grown up in an environment where my own value has always been on performing for somebody, pleasing them, and then I feel alive, and then I exist. When that’s taken away from me, I’m consciously — I feel like, “I just don’t want to do it.” If I’m really honest, I’m saying, “I’m scared. I’m scared if I don’t do it, I won’t exist.” Now here’s the thing about evil that I think is so fascinating. It always hides the core of what’s wrong in us, the evil we’re hanging on to, which is always an illusion. Remember, evil feeds on lies. So if you have a lie inside of you that you’ve been trained — and we all have it on some level — that my value is found in this, and that needs to be chipped away. God needs to say, “Your value is fundamentally in your essence that I created for you. You’re not valuable because you are in the eyes of someone else approved.” And so how you free yourself from that is to go through the experience that feels like, “If I do this, if I can’t perform like I want, I will die,” and then you have to go through the experience of not being able to do it. Not only do you not die, but like Jesus, you rise. And when Jesus did what he did, surrendered to that which he feared the most, he was empowered to come back and do more than he ever did before. Now, that cannot be just a minor way of the whole story ending. No, that’s the essence of what we’re being taught. If you’re willing to die to that thing that you think you really are, you will become so much more of who you really are, and if you can believe that, you won’t say to yourself, “I don’t want to, because I basically can’t.” You’ll say, “I will.” And the way that’s said in Jesus is, “Not my will but your will be done. Not me hanging onto an illusion of what it means to be the Messiah but allowing your will, how it’s written, what reality really is like. I want to enter into that. That’s what I will, the truth.” And the thing about the truth always is it sets you free.
Father, through your Son, you have made all things new. You have given human nature a power we never had before, a power to trust in you more than we trust in our own illusions, our own fears. Bless us with the courage that it takes to live the life you’ve called us to live without the fear and the shame that so often comes from the patterns that we were taught. Your gift is life. Let us engage in it as fully as we can, and we ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.