Scripture Study for

Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Understanding the Word

By Br. John R. Barker, OFM

God’s creative power is often expressed in the Bible through the  metaphor of God controlling chaotic waters. In Genesis 1, God  controls by speaking, while in other places, God must defeat the  waters, personified as hostile “sea monsters,” in battle (Psalms  74:12–17; 89:10–12). Here God refers to this creative power in  response to the demand that he give an account of himself for Job’s  suffering. This response includes the assertion that Job is not capable  of comprehending the complexity of the world and how it works,  because Job did not have a hand in it. It was God, not humans, who  “shut within the doors the sea” and “set limits for it,” stilling its  “proud waves.” Only God, in other words, is capable of controlling  the chaotic waters. 

Paul has just been speaking of the need for perseverance. It is  precisely what we do with this life that will determine the nature of  our encounter with Christ the Judge. But what really impels Paul  is the love of Christ. This is true in both senses: the love shown by  Christ in dying for all so that we can become a new creation, and our  love for Christ in return, which should lead us to embrace the gift of  this new creation. Christians no longer live for themselves, but for  the one who transformed them. The gift, in other words, can only be  received by loving the giver back and living into the larger purpose  for which the gift was given in the first place. 

The account of the stormy waters of the Sea of Galilee draws  clearly on Ordinary Time images of dangerous, threatening waters  that represent personal or social chaos (note, for example, that a  psalmist regularly cries out to be saved from drowning or from  sinking into the deep, an expression of personal distress and danger).  In the Old Testament, it is God alone who saves by controlling  chaotic waters, and yet the same is true of Jesus here. The fact that  Jesus was asleep during the storm reflects his own faith that the  chaos will not prevail, and his questions to his disciples are intended  to provoke the same faith in Jesus’ saving power.

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