If you listen to BBC Radio 4, as I do every morning, you may have heard their Newspaper Review, and have realised how sometimes two different Newspapers have taken the same story and told it in completely different ways. You can see and her me give this Homily on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHRtpLy-uTE
Well, apart from persuading me never to read Newspapers if I want the facts, this also tells us something about the stories we hear in the Bible. You see, although modern Newspapers claim to give us the facts, ancient writers would never have done so. They wrote their stories to make a point, to get over an idea; so even though the story might well be loosely based on something that actually happened, how it actually happened wasn’t of any interest to them. So, if you asked the person who wrote the story in today’s Gospel (Matt 14:22-33) if it really happened exactly like that, he would have looked at you as if you were mad, for to him what mattered was the point, the message, he was trying to get across; and so that’s what we ned to think about too.
The disciples were, “Battling with a heavy sea.” I suspect most of us can think of times in our lives when we have found ourselves battling with all sorts of problems and worries that have threatened to overwhelm us. Maybe you feel a bit like that at the moment? If so, you are like the disciples in that boat. Notice that, unlike a similar story when they have to wake Jesus and ask him for help, in this story they do not need to cry out for help, for suddenly they realise that Jesus is with them, even though they start by thinking he is a ghost. This is a reminder to us that God already knows our worries and problems and fears way before we think of asking him for help; and sometimes if we looked a little harder, we might realise that in the midst of the storm he is already nearby.
What happens next? Well, they have seen Jesus, but they are not sure if it is him, so Peter says “Lord, if it is you..” We do that sometimes, maybe quite often, don’t we, wondering if God really is with us. Then, like Peter, once we’ve decided God is helping us, we begin to cope with our problem; but then find, like Peter, that we don’t think we are going to make it after all. We feel that we are sinking. And then, in the midst of all this, often at the moment of our deepest despair, something happens to get us through. In effect, God has held out his hand to us, just as Jesus put out his hand to Peter and held him.
The next question is the tough one. How do we know what God is saying to us, how can we know that he is helping us? Maybe it’s just our mind working things out, and all this God-talk is so much nonsense? To answer this, we need to look at our other story today, the one in the 1st Reading (1 Kings 19:9-13) One of our big problems is that we want God to work in a way in which there can be no doubt. We want God to show himself to us in power and might and glory, and then we’d feel sure of him. Elijah was wise enough to know, that although God can show himself in powerful ways, for he’s just seen lightning fall from the sky when he prayed, now in this story God is not going to speak to him in the mighty wind, or the earthquake, or the fire, even though God may well be present in all these powerful forces; but God is going to speak to him in what our Reading calls “The sound of a gentle breeze.”
Now if you know the Hymn “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind”, you already know this phrase without realising it, for “The sound of a gentle breeze” is used in its older version when at the end of the Hymn we ask God to “Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire; speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire, O still, small voice of calm!” And, just to confuse us, when we in the UK get our new translation for Mass in Advent 2024, and we have to change all our Missals, we will get it translated in another way, as “The sound of a low whisper. Anyway, whatever the translation, the message is the same, that often God will speak to us so quietly that unless we are quiet ourselves we may fail to hear what he is saying. There are of course many ways in which this still small voice, this low whisper, may come to us. Often it may be a quiet thought in our head. “Perhaps I should do this? Perhaps I should contact that person?” And so, provided it is not a silly idea, we do it. However, I want to illustrate a different way, in which we hear that still small voice, by telling you about my mother. You see, often when I’ve driven quite a long way and am nearly home, I can feel myself relaxing, and then I hear the voice of my mother (who died some 50 years ago) saying to me quite clearly “Martin! Most accidents happen near home.” And I know to drive more carefully, until I get home. Think too of someone like St Bernadette who heard God’s voice speak to her through Our Lady at Lourdes, and how wonderful healings have taken place because she listened. But, of course, the still small voice of God does not just speak to us through people who’ve died, but through people who are alive. Maybe you can think of a time when someone said something to you that has really helped you, that maybe even changed your life, then that too is a way that God has spoken to you as he has spoken, and still speaks to me, and we should all thank God for such messages that we have received and the people through whom they were given.
It is all too easy to think that God only speaks in abnormal ways, outside our ordinary experiences. What I have tried to show you today is to keep looking and listening, because God speaks to us in the midst of life, and not necessarily in some extraordinary supernatural way. Those disciples were used to being in a boat. It was where some of them had made their living; and there in a place that for them was quite normal, God spoke.
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