"WHY ARE YOU TERRIFIED?"

Homily for June 30^th, 2015: Matthew 8:23-27.

Jesus is sound asleep in a boat, in the middle of a storm B the only place in the gospels, incidentally, where we find Jesus sleeping. It was the sleep of exhaustion after a busy day of healing and teaching. But it was also the tranquil rest of the only man in that boat who had no reason for fear amid the elemental forces of nature.

Though the disciples were experienced seamen, these seasoned fishermen turn in panic to their sleeping master, who unlike them was no sailor, with the anguished cry: ALord, save us! We are perishing?@ “Why are you terrified, O you of little faith,” Jesus responds calmly. Then, Matthew tells us, he “rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm.”

It was more than the stillness of nature. There was an eerie calm in the boat as well, as Jesus= disciples look at each other in amazement, each formulating the same question: AWho then is this whom even wind and sea obey?@ Their Scriptures told them that only God could do what they had just seen Jesus do.

From the earliest times Christians have compared the Church to a ship. Like the ark, which rescued Noah and his family from the great flood, the Church preserves us from the flood of danger and evil in the world. Time and again, however, our ship is buffeted by storms. Whenever storms assault the Church, it is easy to think that the Lord is absent B or at least indifferent. Like those first friends of Jesus in the storm on the lake, we cry out in fear. At the proper time B which is God’s time, not ours B the Lord banishes the danger, and with it our cause for fear. In Mark’s version of this story Jesus puts another question to his terrified friends: ADo you not yet have faith?@ Jesus is asking us that same question right now: ADo you not yet have faith?@ What better response could we give than the cry of a friend of Jesus in Mark’s gospel: ALord, I believe. Help my unbelief.@  (Mark 9:24)