An elderly woman named Maude had a window seat on a big 747 that had just taken off for Rome. She had been saving for years to fulfill her dream to visit the Eternal City. But this was her first flight and she was terrified. Even the stately presence of four bishops sitting behind her didn’t help. With fear and trembling, she peeked out the window just as one of the plane’s engines broke loose from the wing and disappeared into the clouds. “We’re going to die!” she cried out, “We’re going to die!”
The pilot then announced that everything was under control and that they could fly back to New York with three engines and land safely. But Maude continued to cry out, “We’re going to die!” A flight attendant finally said to her, “Don’t worry, my dear, God is with us. We have only three engines, but look, we have four bishops.” To which Maude replied, “I’d rather have four engines and three bishops, thank you!”
Judging by the crowds at the airport on any given day, fear of flying isn’t common but fear is something we can all relate to. For me, the most memorable line ever spoken by President Franklin Roosevelt dealt with the reality of fear. In his first inaugural address on March 4, 1933, he said, “Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself…nameless, unreasoning terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”
The gospel scene from Mark places us in the midst of a storm on the Sea of Galilee. We find the disciples terrified and for good reason. These storms could come literally out of the blue with shattering and terrifying suddenness much like tornados do in the Midwest. You might have thought what fools these men were to go out but all was calm when they left the shore to sail to the other side.
In this short passage, Mark portrays them as being quite afraid, so much so that they asked Jesus, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” Perhaps you have asked the same question, presuming your misfortune to be God’s will. God is omnipotent but God doesn’t decide the events of our lives; they are a byproduct of our free will, either the choices we make or others make.
Considering how often some disciples had been on the lake, that must have been one dandy storm. Still, after quieting the sea, Jesus asked them, “Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?” What an interesting question. “Do you not yet have faith?” Most likely they had faith or at least they thought they had faith. After all, the disciples had been traveling with Jesus for some time and seen a few miracles but if Jesus had to ask that question, maybe what they thought was faith was too shallow to really be faith.
The disciples were in danger, all right, but their most dangerous threat wasn’t the weather or a leaky boat. It was the temptation to give up and yield to fear. It was that “nameless, unreasoning terror which paralyzes” that FDR spoke of. Fear has the potential to incapacitate us. Unless something overrides it, fear short-circuits the system.
And what might that something be? As far as Mark is concerned, Jesus is that something that can free us from whatever fears we have just as he did for the disciples in the midst of that storm.
In the 20 years I have been a priest, I have weathered a fair number of storms and I imagine most couples have done the same in their marriages, be it dealing with the death of a loved one, the loss of a job, a life-changing illness or injury, rejection of some kind, to name but a few. In any case, you can probably relate to Job in his despair or to the disciples in their fear. Each time, you somehow reacted to the situation. Did you panic? Or did you pray? And if you prayed, did you feel as though God was responding? More than once, people have lamented that praying seemed so useless. God isn’t answering me!
I would tell them, that quite likely God is answering them but not in the way they wanted their prayers to be answered. Prayer is like a conversation and if we are to hear God then we need to be still long enough so that we can hear God. Recall what Jesus said, “Quiet! Be still!” Too often we do all the talking when we pray. In times of trouble, the best advice we have is this: Be still and listen to God. With the TV blasting in the background or our ears cabled to iPODs, we aren’t giving ourselves much chance to hear what God has to say. The clatter of our noisy world drowns out God’s quiet whisper but when we take time to quiet down, we will discover for ourselves that God is indeed there.
Blessed Mother Theresa of Calcutta once said, “The fruit of silence is prayer, the fruit of prayer is faith.” With faith, no trouble is too much. That is the point Jesus and Job were both making in these readings. With faith, grounded in prayer, “no storm,” as the refrain to one song puts it, “can shake my inmost calm while to that rock I’m clinging.”
Years ago, I was once in a fire, so I can relate to the fear of a young boy when his house was on fire. His father stood on the lawn with outstretched arms, yelling, “Jump, son! I will catch you!” All the boy could see from the second floor was smoke, fire and blackness. Naturally, he was afraid. “Jump!” his father said again. “But, Daddy, I can’t see you.” His father replied, “But I can see you and that is all that matters.” God can see us and that, my friends, is all that matters.