The central theme of this week’s liturgy is the TRUST in God. It is essential for our relationship with God, one another and it is essential for our holiness. 

Job was tested (first reading) by God at the behest of the devil who argued with God that Job is obedient to God due to his ulterior motive. Once he loses everything, he will show his ‘true’ color. As a result, God agrees to put Job to the test.  Job did well to hold on to faith, but he questioned God’s way of justice. So, God poses these questions to Job:

  1. Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?

  2. Who shut the sea with it’s doors when it burst out from the womb?  ….and many more questions. 

These questions are found throughout chapter 38 and 39 in the book of Job. This is to stress the difference between God’s power and human frailty. God wants to give Job a perspective: Trust me. 

Trust in the midst of confusion, evil, suffering, fear etc.

The gospel further stresses the importance of trust. The question that is posed by Jesus to His disciples is in some way also a reprimand: “Why were you afraid? Have you still no faith?”

We all face these kinds of storms; Job also faced it. There is simply no way to get through life without them. You might be facing one of these storms today. I may or may not know about it. It may be raging within, tossing the boat of your life up and down, and threatening to overwhelm you with doubt or despair. If that is the case, even if it’s not, there is much that we can learn from this powerful story in the Gospel.

“Even though he sleeps, Christ is in the boat.” 

Even though he sleeps, our faith leads us to trust that Christ is with us on the boat, and with us in the storm. He may seem to be sleeping on the job, so to speak, but he is still with us. Martin Luther said: 

“When distress strikes and he does not help immediately, no matter, just hold fast, do not waver, but firmly believe that Christ is with you in the boat. For in his own good time he helps.” 

Christ is in the boat with us. And in his good time he helps, because it seems to me that Christ is not just on the boat asleep. He can also be woken up. 

Our faith and our prayers can wake Jesus up. When the disciples found themselves in the midst of that terrible storm, when they struggled with doubt, and wondered whether Jesus even cared about them, they still managed to do one remarkable thing: They woke Jesus up. 

Think about it. The waves were beating into the boat. In fact, the boat was already being swamped, according to the story. They must have been doing everything imaginable to keep that boat from capsizing or sinking. And yet, in the midst of all that, someone thought of waking Jesus up. And whoever that was should have been thanked by the others. 

And isn’t that the gift and blessing of being part of a church community? In the church, like in that boat in the storm, there is always somebody who thinks to wake up Jesus. That’s why we need each other; why we need this community. Because when we’re caught in the middle of life’s storms, we can forget to wake up Jesus. But there is always someone in the church to do it for us. Our faith is made stronger by the presence of other disciples. 

In fact, when you think about it, maybe that is one of the tasks of the church in the world: To be the one who remembers to wake Jesus up. We need to do this very diligently today more than before because of the decay in moral thought and misinterpretation of God’s law as well as the law of the nature. 

Through our worship and prayer, we can do that. We can wake Jesus up. And we can remind the world that Jesus is in the boat with us. That he cares for us all. And does not want us to perish.