If you look at the recessional hymn for today’s Mass, it’s a kind of commentary on the readings. It’s addressed to God the Father, and the second verse reads: “By your Son the wide creation / Rose where chaos held its sway; / By the Spirit, God Almighty / Swept eternal night away. / Son, the Father’s love revealing”. The Creator of the sea is the only one who can say to it, as he does in the book of Job: “I set limits for [the sea]...and said: Thus far shall you come but no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stilled!” And yet the responsorial psalm does not thank the Lord for his power.
“Some sailed to the sea in ships”, the cantors sang, and “the Lord tossed the waves of the sea up to heaven and back into the deep”, but “they cried to the Lord in their need, and all the waves of the sea were hushed. Then they thanked the lord” - not for his power - but “for his love”, and we all joined singing “Give thanks to the Lord, his love is everlasting”.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus says, “Let us cross to the other side”. But “waves were breaking over the boat” so the disciples cried out to Jesus to save them. Jesus echoed his Father who had said “Here shall your proud waves be stilled,” and he, the Son, said to the sea, “Quiet! Be still! And there was great calm”, says St Mark, so that the disciples “were filled with great awe”.
And yet it is not the power of the Lord that overwhelms St Paul in the second reading. He begins: “The love of Christ impels us” and then goes on to speak of death, as if it had something to do with all this sea imagery we heard in the first reading and in the Gospel. In fact there is a connection between death and the waves of the sea. At the Night Office on Sunday, the day of the Lord’s resurrection, the monks sing these verses from Psalm 18: “The waves of death rose about me, / the torrents of destruction assailed me. / In my anguish I called to the Lord / and he drew me forth from the mighty waters / he saved me because he loved me”. Not to show his power, or because he loves people in general, but because he loves each particular person, each me.
Seen in this perspective, the Gospel this morning is not just a sea story: it is a resurrection Gospel. As the evening of our life draws on, Jesus is the first to cross to the other side. The waves of death rose about him, and he fell asleep on the cross, but even the waves of death obeyed him. He changed the mighty waters of death into the waters of baptism, so that we too could cross to the other side with him, being baptized into his death, and rising with him in the new creation, where the waves of death have no more power over him.
And still it is not the power, but “the love of Christ”, that overwhelms us. He could have calmed the waves of death with a word, as he calmed the waves of the sea. But that is not the way of love. The way of love is to suffer what the loved one suffers, to die as every human being dies, and trust in God who was able to raise Christ from death, and did so, “so that we might live no longer for ourselves, but for him who for our sake died and was raised”. Those who live no longer for themselves may be utterly powerless, but their love for Christ is something stronger than death.
Our Lord and King has made death itself an act of life and freedom, because he has filled it with himself, with his love and salvation. And now, neither life nor death can separate us from the love of Christ. We don’t know when Jesus will say to each one of us in the evening of our life, “Let us cross to the other side”. We don’t know in what way the love of Christ will overwhelm us at that time. But we do know that our very death will be an act of communion with life, and that in Christ our own Passover, our crossing over to the other side, has already begun, that all the waves of the sea will be hushed, and that we shall rejoice because of the calm, for Christ is risen, and life reigns, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.