12th Sunday Year B - Homily 5

Homily 5 - 2021

“Who can this be?” the disciples asked. Indeed, disciples of every age could well ask. They had asked him to save them. But what prompted their comment, their question, was more their consternation that, "Even the wind and the sea obey him.” It is so typically human to be fascinated, in fact, to be distracted, by the spectacular. Elsewhere in the Gospel, Jesus expressed his disappointment with the crowds in general when he sadly commented that “Unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe”.

Mark probably included this story in his Gospel because he wanted to stimulate the disciples of his time, of his community, to reflect on the issues that the story raised for them. The Church of our time has chosen to include it every couple of years in our Sunday Liturgies, perhaps to stimulate us to learn from it what we can. And what better time? As we see and feel the changes happening in our Church, many of us start wondering how it will all end. Many pray that things will return to the way they used to be, that vocations to the priesthood and religious life will once more increase, that children and younger generations come back to fill our pews as once they used to do. Judging from the way some pray, they hope that somehow God will have to be the one to make it all happen.

No doubt people pray like that out of love for the Church. We can hardly criticise anyone for that. We do need labourers for the harvest. But why do we assume that the labourers in question will be priests and religious? Might it be that God invites every disciple to be active in spreading or strengthening the kingdom of God? perhaps in ways many of us would never dream of? Jesus asked only a few to leave home and follow him, at least full-time.

Might our problem be a failure of imagination? Have we allowed the familiar past to mesmerise us? Can we imagine a Church where everyone who is a disciple, by that very fact, and without any further change of lifestyle, takes on and works consciously and deliberately to further the kingdom of God — a kingdom of justice, where people inter-relate in genuine respect and cooperation, seek to share as equitably as possible the wealth of the community, and actively and responsibly do their best to ensure political structures that are most suited to bring that about?

While we ask God to somehow do what we think needs to be done, might God be asking us rather to listen intently for a start to what Jesus had to say, indeed, to the new things that the Spirit of God might already be showing us?

Is it too late? I don’t think it is ever too late. It could even be that God felt that the Church as it used to be was simply too set in its ways to listen and to change; and so maybe God is not upset at all by the various changes that already seem to be happening? What we assume is a terrifying storm threatening death may not be such at all.

What matters may be that we all — all — make the effort and learn to tune in to the voice of God, to the voice of Jesus, to the voice of the Spirit [They sing the same song!]— and that we find the courage to share with each other what we think our God of surprises might possibly, just possibly, be up to.