Fr. JC Maximilian

[Stained glass in the chapel of Westminster College, Cambridge. The glass is by Douglas Strachan and dates from 1921.]

As you drive into town, you see signs welcoming you to Tuckerton Seaport. We live in a seaport, and we heard a lot about the sea in today’s readings. I don’t know how many of you still make your living from the sea, but I am sure that many of you go out on boats. I see a lot of boats as I drive around this area, so someone must use them. We are familiar with the conditions of living on the sea, maybe even making our livelihood from the ocean. This is an important image.

We see it incorporated into the design of our church here. The first time I came to visit this parish, Fr. Mick brought me into the church, and started to explain the architectural features of the church. The color of the floors remind us of the sand on the seashore. Then as you come in through the main doors we have the water of the baptismal font and pool as the first thing that you see. While we describe this church as being “in the round,” it is really an elongated circle, meant to remind us of being in a boat, with the walls bowing outwards, and the ribs on the walls. Then of course, we have the sails above us, hanging from the ceiling — one for each of the apostles. There, in the center, where the Altar is, is the compass star, showing that Christ has come to save all people — from the north and south, east and west.

It is important for us to listen and understand what the readings, which today speak so much of the sea, means for us, and the importance of the boat as a symbol for the Church. For anyone who spends time on the ocean, you know that conditions can change very rapidly as storms seem to come with little warning. The ancient people, especially those civilizations that arose around the Mediterranean Sea, often saw the sea as a place of danger and chaos, even evil. Marvelous to behold, but also dangerous. In Genesis, before the creation of the world, the chaos that existed before is described as waters — that God breathed on the water and brought order out of the chaos. This showed that only God had real sovereignty over the sea.

That is what we hear in today’s first reading from the Book of Job and in the Psalm. The sea is an image of chaos, an image of something dangerous that only God can bring order to. As we move into the New Testament, the sea is also seen as an image of conversion. Oh, it is still dangerous and seen as chaotic, but it is also a place of conversion. The first apostles are called along the seashore, and frequently we hear of Jesus being near the sea or references to fishing. Jesus is the Fisher of Men; He brings order out of that chaos, and sets men and women free from danger and evil.

We have this account from early in St. Mark’s Gospel of Jesus asleep on a boat as the apostles face a storming sea. St. Mark’s account does not sugarcoat it. In St. Matthew’s and St. Luke’s account of this incident in Jesus’ life, they kind of sugarcoat things; making it seem as if the apostles wake Jesus up to present their concerns. Scholars say that in the original Greek, St. Mark uses words that says that the apostles basically rebuke Jesus for being asleep while they are all in danger because of the storm. They say rather sarcastically “don’t you care”. They are rebuking Jesus for being asleep, while the sea has turned dangerous and violent. Jesus gets up and rebukes the wind and the sea, and not only do they become calm, they actually become still. Then Jesus rebukes the apostles, asking them, “Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?”

Jesus is trying to teaching them that He is the Messiah, that He is the Divine, the Work made Flesh. As God alone has power and authority over the wind and the sea, Jesus wants them to recognize that divinity in Him.

Aren’t we so often like the apostles? I mentioned before that it is very fitting that our church here is designed in a way to invoke the image of being in a boat, because a boat is a very ancient image for the Church — cast at sea, a sea that can often be turbulent. Isn’t that very much as our lives are often?

I often have people — whether they are converts to the Faith, or what we sometimes call “re-verts,” people baptized in the Faith but who had practiced the Faith until recently because they have had this encounter with Jesus — and they are on fire with the Holy Spirit, but then they are surprised because all the difficulties that they had before their life changing encounter with Christ are still there; they haven’t magically gone away. They still have that job that they do not particularly like, they still have those arguments with their spouse and children, they still have those aches and pains and illness, and they wonder why is Jesus asleep in the boat?

Job, who we hear about in our first reading, was like that. It is hard having the readings from Job, because you really need to read the whole story of Job to understand it. Job was a righteous man who lived the covenant with God very faithfully. He is very wealthy and respected. Satan comes to God and says that of course Job is faithful, because he has the good life. Satan says that if Job was made to suffer, he would curse God, so God allows Satan to do horrible things to Job — his flocks are killed or stolen, his children die in a horrible accident, Job himself becomes covered in painful boils, and his wife mocks him. Then these friends of Job come to support him in his time of need, but they basically say that Job must have brought all this on himself by his own sinfulness, so he best just repent of his sins, and perhaps God will forgive him and take away his suffering. Job says that he has been faithful to God’s covenant. Finally Job gets angry with God, and wants to know why all this has happened to him. In today’s first reading we hear part of God’s reply to Job. God asks Job, “Where were you when I made the sea? Where were you when I ordered the heavens and the earth?” God is trying to teach Job, and us, that we might not always understand God’s will, but we must recognize His sovereignty over nature, and more importantly over us. Further we must recognize that God’s sovereignty is a sovereignty of Love.

God loves us! God wants the best for us, and while at times what is happening in our lives may not seem to be for the best, we must learn to trust God. We must God as our guide, as our pilot. That is why the early Church Fathers often used the boat as a symbol for the Church. Jesus is not asleep in the boat. That even if it seems that Jesus is asleep in the boat, He really is in control of it all. It is when we are together, in the Church, allowing Christ to guide us, when we are following Jesus, that the sea can throw its worse at us and Christ will see us through to safe harbor. That is why the ancient symbol of the virtue of hope is an anchor. Because of our certainty based on our relationship with Christ now, our certainty that He loves us, that He cares for us, and that He is God, we can have certainty about our future. We can have certainty that because Christ who loves us now, that we are called to have a relationship with now, we know that our future is secure if we just follow Him. We just need to allow Him to lead us. That is what Hope is; a certainty about our future based on our certainty of something in the present. We must encounter Jesus now! When we have fear, when we are terrified, it is a sign for us to turn to Jesus now, and see Him present, right here and right now in our lives, and to turn that fear over to Him. Trust Him, and that is where we will find the calmness, despite the storm.

God loves you. Live in His love.

[For the first time in about 10 months, I am posting a podcast of this homily to my homepage, http://web.mac.com/frjcmaximilian/Fr._JC_Maximilian/Podcast/ Podcast.html.  With my new iPhone 3G and the new 3.0 software, there is a voice memo program that allows me to record my homily as I give it, and then import it right into iTunes.  If this works as I hope, I plan to record all my homilies and put them on my webpage as a podcast]