Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B

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For me the most interesting feature of today’s Gospel, The Storm at Sea, is the detail about Jesus being in the stern of the boat, his head on the cushion, asleep. And then he says at the end, “Why are you so frightened? How is it that you have no faith?” Could it be that Jesus has faith in these disciples of his, Galilean fishermen who have spent most of their life on boats on the lake, to get him across to the other side in one piece? He is no worried, content to sleep on the cushion. Could it be even that he has more faith in them than they have in themselves?

(My experience.)

Christ entrusts to us his Mission and in the same breath gives us his Spirit to go with it, the where-with-all to be the sons and daughters, to be Christ in the world and to continue his mission in the world. And in the Spirit we all have gifts, we are all God’s talented children. He entrusts these things to us, his mission of healing our troubled world and ministering to his lost sheep and to all his brethren. Could it be here also that Jesus not only has faith in us but typically has more faith in us than we have in ourselves? While still being there when our faith fails, and we get all anxious and even frightened, still there to say those magic words, “Peace, Be Still” as much to us his disciples as to the wind and the waves.

I think this faith he has in us is in fact part of his love for us, love in the sense of what Gabriel Marcel terms ‘creative fidelity’, an important part of Christ’s love, and of God’s love for us, a kind of love that enables, a love that enables us to be and to do what we could not otherwise be and do.

This at least is one thing we might take from today’s readings as we move, finally, into so-called Ordinary Time.

There is probably another level as well, which links up with the first reading and the responsorial psalm and possibly the second reading, and which may also link with our experience of the Cyclone, in so far as the gospel opens up the question of Jesus’ own faith.

It’s not often we think of Jesus’ faith. More often we think, he doesn’t have faith, he doesn’t need faith, he has knowledge. But faith is also trust, in fact in the gospels it’s mostly trust. And I think even in the other sense, faith is a key element even in who Jesus is, and who he wants us to be. He wants us to be like himself even in respect of faith, perhaps especially in respect of faith.

Faith I think is part of what it is for Jesus to be one like us, Word and Wisdom incarnate, God’s Son the Beloved come among, God’s so much love whereby he did not spare His Own Son but gave him up for us all. He entrusts himself to human beings, and even in this case has faith in them, and entrusts himself with calmness and peace also to natural forces, and to the God who stands behind both, his loving Father who makes his sun to rise and rain to fall on just and unjust alike.

I relate this to my own experience of our for many of us just as frightening Storm on Land…

Jesus’ faith also gets stretched to the limit and this is part of the story I think. The brilliance of human talent and creativity, and the power of natural forces are expressions of the wisdom and power of God (cf. Responsorial Psalm), but they also play their own game, albeit within the limits of natural law (which Christian tradition has always regarded as itself and expression of the wisdom and power of God). Both human beings and natural forces let us down, and we should expect them to, it’s the way things are, and sometimes even part of the same pattern… They are not God, but this means they can indeed be truly frightening.

Jesus entrusting himself to natural forces is also being obedient even unto death. Jesus’ entrusting himself to the power of men is also putting himself into the hands of sinners, being obedient unto death, death on a cross. His faith is tested to the limits, he becomes one of the forsaken ones, in this final total identification with all God’s lost and forsaken people. The challenge now is to commit himself into the hands of his Father, “Father, into Your Hands I commend my spirit”. Thereby giving us one final example of faith.

Except that it is not final in the temporal sense: after his resurrection and as an element within the event we call the Ascension, Jesus hands over both his Spirit and his mission to us his disciples. He entrusts it to us, he has faith in us, and as in today’s gospel, maybe he has more faith in us than we have in ourselves.

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