Tropical Cyclone Glenda in the Indian Ocean
(Image by NASA Goddard Photo and Video from nasa) Details DMCA
Readings for the Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time: Job 38: 8-11; Psalm 107: 23-31; 2 Corinthians 5: 14-17; Mark 4: 35-41
This Sunday's readings celebrate water as a fundamental gift from the universe. They remind us that without water life itself is impossible.
More specifically, the account of Jesus calming a storm at sea centralizes the Master's impatience with our fearful paralysis in the face of nature's brute force demonstrated today in the disaster of climate chaos.
In the process, today's selections also give insight into the way that modern scripture scholarship deals with the miraculous that post-moderns might reject out of hand as unacceptable or simply childish. Such knee-jerk reaction closes us off to the saving relevance of biblical narratives like those we encounter on this Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time.
To avoid such dismissal, contemporary scholarship applies what Jesuit theologian Roger Haight calls the principle of analogy. It says that we should not ordinarily expect to have happened in the past what is thought or proven to be impossible in the present. In applying that rule, scholars' purpose is to get to the historical facts and (more importantly) to the human meanings that may lie behind biblical stories most of us might otherwise reject.
Let's apply that principle to the Gospel story just mentioned (Jesus' calming of a threatening storm). Doing so will unexpectedly reveal the humanity of Jesus as it calls us to recognize the Great Parent's gift of water and its human-induced crisis.
Our Water Crisis
To set all of that up, however, consider more generally our readings' focus on water.
Today's biblical excerpts tell us that the ocean represents the Goddess' ultimate self-disclosure. It manifests her sacred order. When waters are in trouble, human life itself is endangered.
And the planet's waters are certainly in danger as we speak.
Think for example about the importance of water. Evolutionarily speaking, we all came from the ocean. Up to 60% of the adult human body remains water. Seventy-three percent of brain and heart are composed of water; the lungs are about 83% H2O. In the absence of potable water, we inevitably perish.
And yet, humans have come to treat this miraculous gift as simply another commodity. In my privileged position as a community elder, I still can't believe that we bottle water in plastic, sell it at a price that far exceeds that of gasoline, and then throw its plastic container into the ocean, where it kills whales and other sea life.
In fact, the world's oceans have become for us like huge commodes where we spew not only human but industrial waste including pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and nuclear detritus. With virtual impunity, cargo ships flush and spill oil into our seas along with untold chemicals. Islands of plastic the size of entire countries threaten to replace the earthen landmasses our post-industrial lifestyles surrender to surging sea levels caused by human-induced climate change. Wars waged primarily by the United States and its allies routinely bomb water purification plants serving civilian populations - as in Yemen and Gaza.
Then when those immediately affected by such disasters arise as anti-colonialists or "water protectors," authorities employ police, dogs, tear gas, live ammunition and water cannons to make them cease and desist. Elected officials enlist reporters and media in general to discredit protestors, even branding protectors of water as terrorists.
However, one Protestor whom industry-friendly authorities cannot silence is Mother Earth herself. Her responses to her children's shameless elder abuse include tsunamis, hurricanes, massive flooding, and destruction of entire cities. The Earth's response is to promise destruction of human life as we know it.
Today's Readings
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