Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose

We often talk about the rapid and extraordinary changes we encounter in our lives every day. However, I was listening recently to a radio interview about change, with an historian arguing that the changes we are experiencing are nothing compared with a century or more ago.

Consider the changes when the motor car made the horse-drawn vehicle obsolete, or when refrigeration became common place, or when penicillin was made widely available. The staggering transformations arising from the industrial revolution seem to dwarf many of today’s rapid changes in technology – even with the advent of the internet.

Perhaps part of the way we manage change is by challenging, even complaining, about it. By naming our discomfort with the “new”, we discover how we can resolve that same discomfort, whether it’s wind turbines, IPads, or new songs in worship.

Mark’s Gospel highlights the transformations initiated by Jesus. Having called his disciples and offered miracles of healing and forgiveness, Jesus takes them beyond the boundaries they expect. The Jewish community have received his ministry and then Jesus invites the disciples to come with him to the other side of the lake, where he heals a possessed man, a foreigner.

It seems that each time Jesus crosses the lake to strange soil, a storm comes up, frightening the disciples. Change is not easy, it can be fearful, indeed. Mark takes the time to show Jesus feeding crowds and offering miracles on both sides of the lake – not just for the community who would lay claim to a “better” relationship with God. Indeed, at one point, Jesus’ ministry in hampered in his home town, by the stunted faith he finds there.

The people of God are so often convinced that they are exclusively the people of God – and then God acts. We would like to lay claim to primacy in our discipleship and then we discover that Jesus is present with us and with them (whoever they might be).

Jesus invites us into transformation. In fact, transformation is Jesus’ core business. It has always been thus. If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation … We discover that the forgiveness, or the healing offered to us, wonderfully, is available to all.

We are reminded that those we would not choose are completely within the ambit of God’s love. We find that God is as much at work on the other side as God is here.

What is more, as we discover ourselves in the maelstrom of change, and find ourselves entirely disoriented, our next discovery is that Jesus is in the midst of it all, with us.

Let us cross to the other side.