Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time – June 23, 2024
Today, we might focus on Jesus’s power to calm life’s storms and give thanks for God’s care for us. But the Lectionary’s wisdom of putting various Scripture passages in conversation with one another is that a more challenging message breaks through our initial surface reading.
The key phrase that pulls us into deeper waters comes from the terrified disciples: “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” If we put the Gospel story into dialogue with the first reading, we could say that the answer to their complaint is a surprising “No,” or at least a “No, this is not about you.”
The God who created storm and sea, sun and clouds does not bestow blessing as reward or misfortune as punishment.
The first reading begins God’s response to Job’s questions of why he suffers such misery although he has lived an upstanding life. Over the next four chapters, God drowns Job with a relentless flood of “It’s not about you!” The tempests that erupt in our lives have nothing to do with whether God loves us or approves of us. The God who created storm and sea, sun and clouds does not bestow blessing as reward or misfortune as punishment. It’s not about us but about who is with us through it all: Jesus.
As we give thanks for the blessings we have, let us be careful not to imply that those “less fortunate” are any less cared for by God.
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