The Fourth Sunday after Trinity
“He said to them, ‘Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?’”
Summary
All of us have weathered storms at some time or another. Suffering is an inevitable part of life but how we respond to it is not. This morning both Job and the disciples are struggling with how to respond to chaos and difficulty in their lives. Job is looking for someone to blame for his misfortune. He is not to blame so God must be. In Job 38:1-11 God answers Job with a vision of God as midwife to ferocious storms and mighty waters. The storms of life are not beyond God or outside of God’s care. More than this, God right sizes Job who cannot look beyond his own problems. Jesus treats the disciples in the same way when they panic in the storm in Mark 4:35-41. No one wants to suffer yet it is part of the process by which the whole of creation is brought to birth. The task for Job, for the disciples and for us is to find meaning and purpose in our struggles. Does our suffering lead to self-pity or does it lead us to connect with and understand the suffering of others? does it paralyse us with fear or does it galvanise us to engage with the wider causes of suffering in the world? If the kingdom is to come, we need to do more than survive the storms of life, we need to be able to engage with God’s work of suffering and struggling to bring a better world to birth.
FIRST READING
Job 38:1-11
The Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind:
‘Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
Gird up your loins like a man,
I will question you, and you shall declare to me.
‘Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.
Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?
On what were its bases sunk,
or who laid its cornerstone
when the morning stars sang together
and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?
‘Or who shut in the sea with doors
when it burst out from the womb?—
when I made the clouds its garment,
and thick darkness its swaddling band,
and prescribed bounds for it,
and set bars and doors,
and said, “Thus far shall you come, and no farther,
and here shall your proud waves be stopped”?
GOSPEL
Mark 4.35-41
When evening had come, Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Let us go across to the other side.’ And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. A great gale arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, ‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?’ He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’ Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, ‘Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?’ And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?’
