Last week’s Gospel about faith the size of a mustard seed has set us up now to go deeper into an understanding of faith and how faith works in our relationship with God. The boat and the storm are like scenery on a stage for a play. In a really good play, it is the script that matters – not the scenery. So, these verses of St. Mark’s Gospel which we will hear at Mass (4, 35-41) are not about storms and boats. This incident is truly about faith.
The whole of St. Mark’s Gospel chronicles the development and growth of the faith of the disciples. This weekend’s account is, again, from chapter 4 (of 16 total chapters), so it is early, and clearly these disciples are “a little short” of what Jesus is looking for. Repeatedly, for the remainder of the Gospel, Jesus will chide them for their lack of faith. Here in chapter 4, they are impressed, awe struck, amazed, and wondering who this is in the boat with them, but they remain afraid. It was as true then as it is now: the measure of fear is always in relation to the measure of faith. Little faith, great fear. Great faith, little fear.
The point is, the disciples (at this stage of their growth in faith), look upon Jesus as their “safety net.” He is there to help them, and they are upset when the help is slow in coming. He’s sleeping for heaven’s sake! And they are scared to death! The assumption with this kind of faith is that God’s duty is to take care of and provide for anyone who deserves it. This kind of thinking, this idea of “faith,” is very handy for the fortunate in this world. It proves their supposed worthiness and gets them off the hook of responsibility for the masses of people who suffer. “Why doesn’t God do something about this?” “Why doesn’t God do something about these problems people are facing?” “Why doesn’t God send someone to help them?” This is the thinking which accompanies this kind of “faith” – which is more like an insurance policy than the kind of trust that Jesus is looking for.
The wisdom of the Gospel reveals this: people who only go to God in their need are stuck at the level of the Apostles’ early faith while in the storm-tossed boat. Self-concern is really what is expressed in their prayer (“Don’t you care about us?”), while the presence of God in others who are suffering finds no place in their awareness or their prayer. A greater faith looks at the poor, at refugees, at the lost, or the sick and sees God suffering. Only then can a prayer rise up which begs for a spirit courage to relieve that suffering, ease that pain, and share the burden. This is the kind of faith that Jesus is looking for! What He wants, what He expects, what He is looking for is: more than people just crying out when they are scared or hurt. He wants to see faithful people taking care of one another with genuine compassion, just as He has done and is doing among us now.
Let us pray. “Lord, help us to spread the fragrance of faith everywhere we go. Let us preach you without preaching, not by words but by our example, by the catching force, the sympathetic influence of what we do, and by the evident fullness of the love our hearts bear for you. In faith we pray. Amen.” (adapted from a prayer by St. John Henry Newman)
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Weekend Bonus: “Fear knocked at the door. Faith went to answer it. Nothing was there.”
