Message of Abbot Paul - Saturday 29th January
Message from Fr Paul for Saturday, 29th January 2022
One of the disadvantages of not going for longer walks with Toby is that we no longer get to see much of the monastery garden, let alone the cemetery, the woods or our playing fields. On Thursday, however, I did take a short walk into the cemetery as one of our parishioners was being buried there. What a joy to see so many snowdrops, a veritable carpet of them, the first signs of hope that Spring, Easter and the glory of the Resurrection lie ahead of us as we journey with Jesus through this New Year.
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Our Gospel reading today sees Jesus and his disciples take a boat trip across the Sea of Galilee after a period of teaching, using parables to instruct the large crowds that followed them around. We continue our journey through Mark, (Mk 4: 35-41). Jesus had already boarded one of the boats, so that he could preach more easily to the crowds without them pressing around him. The acoustic, too, would have been better with the sounding board of the water around the boat. Let’s read what Mark writes. “With the coming of evening, Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Let us cross over to the other side.’ And leaving the crowd behind they took him, just as he was, in the boat; and there were other boats with him. Then it began to blow a gale and the waves were breaking into the boat so that it was almost swamped. But he was in the stern, his head on the cushion, asleep. They woke him and said to him, ‘Master, do you not care? We are going down!’ And he woke up and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, ‘Quiet now! Be calm!’ And the wind dropped, and all was calm again. Then he said to them, ‘Why are you so frightened? How is it that you have no faith?’ They were filled with awe and said to one another, ‘Who can this be? Even the wind and the sea obey him.’”
It is already evening when Jesus invites the disciples to go with him to the other side of the sea. Jesus goes as a passenger and there appears to be a small flotilla with him. Suddenly, unexpectedly, a storm breaks out and, in no time at all, the situation becomes threatening. The boat takes in so much water that it could go under at any moment, yet Jesus is asleep, his head on a pillow, oblivious to what’s going on around him and the fear of the disciples. They wake him up, crying, “Do you not care? We are sinking.” These are the cries of the People of Israel so many times in their history. Just think of the Psalms. It is a cry repeated in so many ways in the midst of the terrors and distresses of our world today. If God is so great and powerful a creator, if God really cares about this world, then why do events in the world and in my life go so badly. The ready response: either God has no power, or God does not care for us or creation, or he does not exist. The cry is a prayer for deliverance. Jesus wakes, rebukes the wind and calms the sea. Peace returns and all is quiet once more. Jesus does not speak sternly to the disciples, nor does he criticise their fears. He simply asks them why they were so frightened, why did they lose faith? Faith is the remedy to fear. Faith would remind them that God is with them and will always be with them in any situation. They might not have shown much faith other than to wake Jesus, but they are filled with awe. If the wind and the sea obey him, then this must be a new creation and Jesus can only be the Son of God, the Messiah, Emmanuel, God-with-us.
Let us pray today for the faith not just to turn to Jesus when the going gets hard and life is difficult, but to know that he is always with us, that he has not forgotten or abandoned us and that we need not despair. Perhaps a quiet prayer of thanksgiving rather than a cry for help might be better.
