12th Sunday of the Year B

When Churchhill described Britain and the United States as two countries separated by a common language, he was touching into something absolutely fundamental. Language is crucial to what it means to be human. It’s the means by which we communicate with each other and, as such, is the most obvious thing separating us from the animal world. And yet, wonderful as language is, it is fraught with difficulties. Designed to communicate what is in our minds, it can often, without our realising it, become a barrier to that communication. And I’m not thinking of foreign languages. They are no problem, because we know from the start that we don’t understand them. The problem arises when we are speaking the same language as others, using the same words as they are, and yet no genuine communication is taking place. When we know this is happening we can deal with it and gradually come to an understanding. But the real problem arises when we think we are communicating and aren’t, when we think we understand what someone else is saying and in reality the communication which lies at the heart of language is not actually taking place. And in this, we have one of the great problems with the Scriptures read at Mass. They have been translated for us into a language we think we understand. But the thoughts behind the words belong to a different era and a different culture, with the result that, although we understand the individual words, the thoughts which were in the mind of the author and which he is trying to communicate with us over the centuries, very often, like an e-mail lost in cyberspace or Captain Kirk not quite making it back to the Starship Enterprise in one of those amazing transporters, fail to reach us. And we have a classic example of this in today’s readings

The key word in this week’s liturgy is the word water. It seems a simple enough word to understand. Everybody knows what water is. And yet, but behind such an apparently simple word, lies a meaning which, unless we can enter into the mindset of a long-lost culture, we can never really understand today’s liturgy.The first reading was from the book of Job, a book which explores the age-old question of why, if there’s a God, bad things happen in life. For much of the book, Job complains about this and the passage we heard just now was taken from a very long section towards the end where God gives Job his answer. It speaks about the sea being pent up behind closed doors when it leapt tumultuous from the womb and God wrapping it in a robe of mist and making dark clouds its swaddling clothes. But these images mean nothing to us today until we know something about the ancient creations myths which lie behind them and in which the waters of the sea represented a primeval chaos powerful enough to resist even God. By depicting God as treating these powers like a baby, wrapping them in swaddling clothes and placing them securely in a play-pen, the author is speaking to us of the power of God over evil and encouraging us, through Job, to trust him completely even when things are falling apart all around us..

And this same idea is contained in the Gospel passage about the calming of the storm which we heard today as well as in that other well-known story where Jesus is said to have walked on water. Throughout the Scriptures, and not just in Job, control over the sea and the calming of storms are signs of God’s power and loving care for his people. As well as that, calm untroubled sleep of the kind we see in Jesus as the storm rages around him, is, again throughout the Old Testament, a sign of perfect trust in God. And so this whole story, aimed first and foremost at the Church of the first century, is an invitation to trust at a time when all kinds of storms are raging. The age of persecution had a;ready begun and the cry ‘Master, do you not care, we are going down,’ is the cry of many in the early Church who feared that God had abandoned them and that the Church was about to be swamped by the chaos waves that were breaking all over it. And so, in the story, Jesus awakes from his untroubled sleep, calms the storm and speaks those words that ring down through the ages, ‘Why are you so frightened? How is it that you have no faith?’

So what does all this mean for us? Well, it reminds us again that if we hear passages from the Bible which make no sense to us, the lack is in us rather than in the passage itself: and that, if the Scriptures are ever going to have the central place in our lives the Second Vatican Council dreamt of them having, we are all going to have to learn more about them. And that’s why, despite a number of other excellent suggestions, next year’s adult education course in the parish will be on the Bible.

But the real relevance of it all lies in the fact that the words of Jesus today, ‘Why are you so frightened? How is it that you have no faith?’ are directed at us too. The recent Church History Course showed those who took part that storms have raged around the ‘Bark of Peter’ all through history. And they continue to rage today in all shapes and forms. Just as was the case in those early days, many feel now that God has abandoned his people and that everything we once held dear is going down the tubes. But this has never been true and is not true now. Yes, there are storms raging. Big waves are crashing over the side and we are shipping water, sometimes on a truly alarming scale. Large numbers of people have walked away from the Church in recent years. Scandals, like the one surrounding the recent Ryan Report, are making people ask whether the Church can actually survive in what was once Catholic Ireland, and that’s before the next report comes out about child abuse by more than a hundred priests in Dublin. Years of superstition and religious mumbo-jumbo, along with a chronic unwillingnes to engage with the modern world, have left us looking sometimes as if we belong to the dark ages, alienating us from millions of people today whose thinking has been shaped by the world of modern science.

But the Church will survive. Jesus has promised to be with us until the end of time. There is nothing to fear. The question is: do we believe that and do we still want to be part of that Church?

BIDDING PRAYERS

As storms rage around the Church today, the great temptation is to lose faith in the providence of God and want to go back to what seemed to be a safer place. But this kind of nostalgia for a past which never actually existed has always been an illusion and is an illusion now. History only moves in one direction and that is forward. And so we pray for the Church that, despite the storms battering it, it will embrace both the present and the future with trust and confidence in God...................Lord hear us

One of the most common causes of loss of faith in religious people is the idea that, if we say our prayers and believe in God, he will stop bad things happening to us. But this is absurd and is rooted in a false idea of who God is. Things like ill health or the death of loved ones are inevitable in life. Sooner or later they touch all of us. What faith does is enable us to find hope and meaning in the midst of them and we pray for the wisdom and maturity we need to understand this................Lord hear us

And so we pray in a special way for all present here or in the wider community around us who are struggling to deal with things like sickness or loss at this particular time. We ask God not only to be with them – which he always is – but to give them today a deep, felt sense of that presence, so that, as the storm rages around them or within them, they will hear the words of Jesus in today’s Gospel. ‘Quiet now, be calm. Why are you so frightened?’...............Lord hear us

False images of God are passed on from one generation to the next. And so, as the time for Confirmation and First Communion comes to an end for another year, we pray for all the parents and children who have been involved over recent weeks. We ask God to give the parents in particular the commitment they need to renew, deepen and purify their own faith of all superstition and religious mumbo-jumbo, so that what they hand on to their children is healthy and true............Lord hear us

Many if not most of the conflicts going on in the world today, whether between nations or among individuals, have their root in a failure to communicate. We may be speaking the same language, but often the listening part of our brain is switched off. We all hear what we want to hear and block out unwelcome truths which, if we really heard them, would force us to change in some way. And so we ask God to open up the minds of people everywhere to what others are saying................Lord hear us

This weekend, the Church History Course came to an end with the pilgrimage to the Ruthwell Cross, near Annan. And so we thank God for the blessings he has poured on us over recent months. Next year’s course will have as its aim to help us understand better the Bible and the readings from it which play such an important part in Mass each week, and even now we ask God to stir in many people here a desire to be part of it............Lord hear us