Ahead of the Shipwreck

Ahead of the Shipwreck—January 20, 2017

Since they had been without food for a long time, Paul then stood up among them and said, “Men, you should have listened to me and not have set sail from Crete and thereby avoided this damage and loss.  I urge you now to keep up your courage, for there will be no loss of life among you, but only of the ship. For last night there stood by me an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I worship, and he said, ‘Do not be afraid, Paul; you must stand before the emperor; and indeed, God has granted safety to all those who are sailing with you.’ So keep up your courage, men, for I have faith in God that it will be exactly as I have been told. But we will have to run aground on some island’.” [Acts 27:21-26]

I know this is a weird story, not just for today in particular, but perhaps on any given day.  But it is weird stories like these that give me hope—real, solid hope that is honest and weather-tested.

We may lose the ship, but God is going to get us where God has promised to get us.

That’s one way of putting the hope that holds us through the Christian life.  The thing we have to hope in is the movement, the motion itself, rather than in the vehicles we may be currently using to get there. God will get us where we need to go—but that is different in hoping in the sturdiness of the ship, the durability of the car, or the permanence of the institution. Those may or may not last.  But the motion is promised—God is going to get us where we are supposed to go.

We need that kind of reminder to keep us honest, and to help us be prepared for the inevitable reality of losses in this life.  Sometimes we forget that, or we choose to ignore it.  You will find plenty of religious voices out there who will say things like, “Without God in your life, your car, your job, and your family are all insecure,” which is a fair point… except that it is still true, even with "God in our lives." Even if you do your utmost to dedicate your whole life to Jesus, the car will give out, the job can fall through, and family can flake out on you.  The promise of God is not, “If you let me into your life, I’ll keep all the important stuff from falling apart,” but rather something more like, “Because I am already holding you, I will make sure you get where I need you to be even if the wheels fall off of everything else in your life… or in the whole world…” Being a follower of Jesus is not a deal that guarantees you will not lose your job or that your kids will not get cut from the team this year.   Sometimes we have to face the reality that we may lose the ship… but we will make it to shore.

I say that because we can hear the stories of Jesus calling those fishermen disciples and conclude (wrongly) that it was all upward progress from there on out.  We can (wrongly) assume that Simon and Andrew and James and John and the rest all struggled with mediocrity in life BEFORE they signed on with Jesus, but, ah, from then on, they had success after success.  Except… that’s not the way the story goes.  They lost their livelihoods, their homes, their comfortable family situations (at least some of the disciples were married when Jesus called them—what do you suppose that did to their home lives or their kids’ college funds?), and eventually their own lives. Following Jesus wasn’t the key to getting the rest of their lives all sorted out—not the way so much “inspirational literature” and “Christian-living” books or radio shows can make it out to be.  The Christian life is not about using Jesus to get a more comfortable, insulated (privileged) life, and nowhere does Jesus make that promise.

Instead, the promise—like the promise made to Paul on board the ship that will take him to his trial before the emperor in Rome—is that God will get us where God needs us to be.  The people around Paul will be protected, too.  But they will lose the boat.  Their hope was never supposed to be in the boat, but in the God who was carrying them along.  Their hope was never supposed to be in the physical structures, but in the presence of God to provide the motion.

For Paul, the motion was to get the apostle to a place where he could speak truth to power—where he could have a forum to say, right at the seat of the arrogant empire’s glory and vanity, that the real Lord of the universe was a crucified homeless rabbi, not the decadent pompous dictator called Caesar.  For Paul the promise was not that God would spare him from any trouble or hardship, but that God would bring him through it all so that he could be a more faithful witness to the coming Reign of God, right in the face of the reign of the emperor (who claimed to have divine backing for his rule). For Paul, the promise was not, “You can put your feet up—God’s gonna give you a comfortable life now because you have been such a good Christian now,” but rather, “I will carry you through to the place where you can speak and live most powerfully as a witness to my new order of things, the Kingdom.”

That is our hope, too.  Nothing less, but neither more.  If we have come to Christianity thinking it will help our kids do better in school or rekindle romance in marriages that have been left on auto-pilot, we have missed the point.  If we think that if we pray hard enough, our struggling religious institutions (like cultural Christianity, denominational structures, or the old ways of “doing church”) will all come back to us the way we imagined they “use to be” in some previous golden era, we have again missed the point.  If we have assumed that by doing this or that “religious-looking” thing, God will smile from heaven and give national prosperity and “greatness” (whatever that is) as a reward for our devotion, we have missed the point.   

This was never about us using God to get our wishes.  This has always been about letting God leading us in ways that reveal and embody God’s new creation, God’s reign of grace and justice, God’s movement of mercy.

So… Paul is promised a safe arrival, in order that he can keep standing up to the pitifully self-absorbed powers of the day in the capital of the empire.  And you and I are promised that God will carry us to where we need to be—but it might not be in the vehicle we expect. Paul’s fellow travelers and the crew lost their boat… and had other misadventures along the way. There were setbacks and disappointments that could have been avoided (Paul even gets in a little “I-told-you-so” action here).  There were sufferings to be endured.  But Paul doesn’t give up, and he tells those around him listening to him not to give up either, because he believes the promise that God will not give up, either, in getting him where he needs to be.

This is the truth for us as well: there are going to be hardships ahead. There are going to be strains and struggles that we could have avoided. We might just lose the boat. There are going to be days it feels like we are just barely treading water and our legs are getting tired.  But the promise of God is never to let go of us, and instead to bring us where we need to be. God has arranged for us moments and times ahead to live out the loving Reign of God in the face of the powers of the day, just like Paul. Even if the vehicle is not guaranteed, the motion is promised. 

Today, if you find yourself like Paul staring down the prospect of a shipwreck ahead, regardless of whatever fears or anxieties surround us, and regardless of whatever we have to lose (and, yes, it could be the whole boat), let us listen to Paul’s words: “keep up your courage. We are promised we will get where we need to be.”

 Lord God, give us courage in the face of shipwrecks, to trust that you will lead us and hold us and direct us to the places you want us to be.