12th Sunday in Ordinary Time Cycle B June 22, 2024

 12^th Sunday in Ordinary Time  Cycle B               June 22, 2024

 

Our Gospel presents us with the scene of a near shipwreck.  The disciples and Jesus get caught in a violent squall.  Waves break over the boat so that it was already filling up.   The wind is blowing like crazy and the disciples have no control of the ship. The disciples are in a desperate situation.  AND THEY ARE SCARED!   //

Ever been in a shipwreck?   Maybe a literal shipwreck.  But also perhaps a metaphorical shipwreck:  Some health disaster.  Marital problems with stormy relationships and even crashing of the marriage?  Or a business failure or your company collapsed?  Or you were laid off unexpectedly?  Or you were the victim of violent crime, or in a car wreck, or a child overdosed on drugs, or caught at a mass shooting, or an earthquake or tornado, or some other situation where everything went to hell and it was a disaster?   

Life is sometimes a shipwreck.  In the worse case scenario of a disaster or shipwreck, you die.  People die in tragedies all the time.

Jesus’ life was a shipwreck.  Misunderstood, rejected, falsely accused, convicted in a kangaroo court on trumped up charges, brutally beaten and horribly executed.  That’s a hell of a shipwreck. 

As we look around, if you pay attention to the news at all, the whole world seems to be a giant shipwreck: war in Ukraine, terrible violence in Jesus’ own homeland of Palestine, genocide again in Darfur, mass shootings and violence in our own state and city, and an upcoming national election that induces dread and fear.  The potential for shipwreck is all around us. 

What keeps us going in such a situation?  If you don’t want to stop up your ears and firmly shut your eyes and pretend that everything is OK by distracting yourself with lots of silliness and entertainments, or alcohol or drugs or sex, then I believe we need to look to the Gospels and to Jesus. 

He is our Savior.  It is from this mess of shipwrecks that we want to be saved.  It is for the fullness of life and joy that we want to be saved.  He is our Savior.

 

In our second reading today St. Paul makes an unusual claim:  “The love of Christ impels us, once we have come to the conviction that one died for all, therefore, all have died.”

          The NRSV translation states it more clearly than our translation: “For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died.”

“one has died for all; therefore all have died.”   That is an odd statement.  What does Paul mean?

My limited understanding is this:  Jesus totally and freely gave His life for us, holding absolutely nothing back.  I do not understand why His death was necessary or required, or why Jesus could not have saved us in a less painful and awful way, but none-the-less Jesus did give all He was, to the last drop of His blood, for us.  And by that total self-gift He achieved for us the freedom of having already died.

We have all spiritually died in Him.  And once you have died, you don’t fear death anymore.  It has no more hold on you.                      

 “For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died.”   We have the assurance of Eternal Life.  We can start to let go of our fear of physical death.  And by letting go of that fear we gain not only freedom from fear, but also the freedom to live as the children of God:  that is, the life of people who are loved and who are free to be authentic and real, no matter what is going on.   

 

When the disciples in the boat panicked, freaked out and woke Jesus and cried, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”  Jesus asked them in turn, “Why are you terrified?  Do you not yet have faith?”  

Today Jesus calls every one of us to not be terrified.  To let go of fear.  To have faith.  He is our Savior.     God bless. 

Eleventh Sunday of Ordinary Time Cycle B June 16, 2024

 Eleventh Sunday of Ordinary Time   Cycle B     June 16, 2024

Do you like rhetorical questions?  …  We have a lot of University type people here, being so close to the prestigious University of Texas, so I am going to assume that most of you like, appreciate, or at least are comfortable with rhetorical questions.  

That is good because in today’s Gospel Jesus asks a rhetorical question.  “He said, ‘To what shall we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable can we use for it?”   A wonderful rhetorical question. 

Now if I had heard this question without knowing the parable, I probably would have chosen some large, grandiose, impressive, terribly dramatic and important image as a comparison of the Kingdom of God.  Isn’t that what you would expect, something magnificent and impressive and divine??

But Jesus gives a surprising answer, which is of course, the mustard seed.  The Kingdom of God, presumably something enormously grandiose and of the utmost crucial significance, is ….. like a mustard seed?  ¿ A tiny, insignificant, barely visible, mustard seed? 

Jesus admits that it is the smallest of seeds.   And because it is so small it seems insignificant and of little or no value.  And left just to itself, the mustard seed is pretty inconsequential and of little worth. 

But, “once it is sown”, … “once it is sown”, it then “springs up and becomes the largest of plants and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the sky can dwell in its shade.” 

The important factor here is that little phrase, “once it is sown”.   Without being sown, that is, planted in the earth, it remains tiny and insignificant.  But once it is planted in the earth, and watered, and cultivated, “it springs up and become the largest of plants and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the sky can dwell in its shade.”

But it first has to be sown.  It has to be planted.  Otherwise it remains just a tiny, teenee, insignificant seed.  //

 

Brothers and Sisters, you and I have been given one of those mustard seeds.  Those tiny, little, insignificant seeds.  It is the gift of faith.  The gift of faith when given to us is small.  It is even tiny.  It is almost nothing.  Certainly not big and showy and impressive.

If you do nothing with that seed it remains insignificant, a nothing.  But if you take that seed and sow it, you plant it, and water it with prayer, and fertilize it with self-control, and tend it with generosity and care of others, that faith will grow.  It will develop and blossom, and your faith will do good things, and other people will be blessed by it. 

If you take the faith that you have, even if it is pretty insignificant and tiny, and you put it into practice, you let it guide you, and you start prioritizing your time according to your little bit of faith, then it will grow. 

Then you will have the faith to reach out, to start offering shade and rest to those who are weary and tired and ready to give up.  And as your faith is used it will grow and become a beautiful plant that harbors life and harmony. 

And then Kingdom of God will truly be within you.   AMEN.