Episode Details

God’s Calling in ExistenceOur Gospel text today, it seems to me, is highly appropriate for a day on which we celebrate the sacrament of Holy Baptism. For it speaks to us of God’s faithfulness in his calling and constant presence in our lives.The drama of the story, of course, is the storm that threatens to envelop the disciples’ boat and their panicked cry as they wake their Master to inform him of the danger. But consider the beginning of this story: ‘One day he got into a boat with his disciples, and he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side of the lake”’.The initiative was Jesus’s. He called the disciples to get into that boat and go, knowing full well the danger that they would face. The same is true of us and of our lives.The fact that we are called by God is true whether or not we are aware of it. The twentieth-century German philosopher Martin Heidegger spoke about the way that human beings are “thrown” into the world without having chosen anything about their lives: the time and place they are born, the social context – rich or poor, and even the condition of existence itself. We do not choose to exist. We simply find ourselves in this world – both existing and existing in a certain condition.So if we are indeed thrown into the world then we might infer that there is someone who throws us into it. Or we might say that there is someone who calls us into existence. Why does God do this? The answer is simple: so that we might love him and respond to him: there’s a hymn that captures this idea nicely. It says that God ‘calls us out of nothingness to find in him a resting place’.God’s Calling in ActionSo we might say that God calls us to be. And in our story we also see that he calls us to do. He calls us to act. As Jesus calls the disciples to get into the boat and go to the other side, so we are to respond in this life to God’s calling to us. How it works out precisely is different for each one of us, but the basic call from God to humanity finds its most potent symbol in the cross of Jesus Christ: there we see the sinfulness of humanity atoned for by the once-for-all sacrifice of the Son of God and this so that we might be brought back into relationship with God, our transgressions having been forever put away and the demonic powers that held sway over us decisively banished.But the calling to each one of us is also different and personal: to me it is to be a priest, a father, a husband. But the point is to listen for that call and to respond. As we baptise today, it is a good time to remind ourselves of this and to ask: “Lord, what are you calling me to?” and “Am I trying at least to fulfil that purpose with my life?”God’s Calling and the StormWhen the storm threatens to overwhelm the ship, we see that disciples are still in an early period of spiritual formation. This is because they don’t understand the calling of God. They don’t recognise the power of Jesus Christ, who is so unconcerned about the storm that he falls asleep in the stern of the boat.Why does he fall asleep? Why does he give the impression that he is absent and that he will not be able or willing to help? The reason can only be that he is seeking a response: the response of faith. This spiritual lesson is articulated in many ways in Scripture. For example, in the Book of James 1:2-4:Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.The testing of your faith – this is what the disciples faced as their ship filled up with water and threatened to be overturned. What was this for? That it might produce in them steadfastness. In the King James Version of Scripture the word for steadfastness here is “patience” and it can be defined as ‘the characteristic of a man who is not swerved from his deliberate purpose and his loyalty to faith and piety by even the greates