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.