GREAT CRUISES OF THE BIBLE, A Sermon delivered by the Reverend Dr. Geoffrey G. Drutchas, St. Paul United Church of Christ, Taylor, April 17, 2016 This morning I start out with a statement of the obvious: sea-going cruises are very popular right now. Gone is the day when we used to look forward seeing the USA in our Chevrolet. Ever since that late 1970s and early 80s television show Loveboat, cruises to all kinds of destinations have been the prize vacations. Just in the last week alone, I have talked with three or four people planning cruises to the Caribbean, Alaska, and Europe. Small wonder that these excursions are so popular. From what I ve seen and gathered from the reports of others, cruises can be exciting, offering just about everything. Yes, food, entertainment, sports or physical activities, shopping, gambling, exotic locales, and an opportunity to meet new people and make quick new friends. And there s always the possibility of romance! It all adds up to adventure. For us today, cruising is a matter of recreation and fun. Yet in earlier days, it was something much more essential the means to get somewhere where you had to go. No one could ever say that the Bible is a cruise catalogue. Nevertheless, sea cruises figure pretty prominently in the larger sweep of the Bible story. In the Old Testament, as every child knows, we have the story of Captain Noah and his ark. (Genesis 6:1-8:22) What a cruise ship! Although built by Noah, it was designed by none other than God. The Book of Genesis announces the specifications that God demanded to ensure that the boat was both capacious and sea-worthy. As God declares: Make yourself an ark out of gopher wood; make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch [or tar]. This is how you are to make it: the length of the ark three hundred cubits, its breadth fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. Make a roof for the ark and finish it to a cubit above; and set the door of the ark in its side; make it with lower, second, and third decks. (Genesis 6:14-16) A cubit was the average length of the distance between a man s elbow and fingertips, or approximately 17.5 inches. This means that Noah s cruise ship was 437 feet long, 71 feet wide, and about 44 feet tall. That might not stack up over against one of the humongous cruise ships that ply the Caribbean or the Alaskan Coast today. Some of them are as large as 1,181 feet long and 154 feet side. But for Noah s time his ark was a big ship indeed. Moreover, it held a mighty precious cargo namely, the remnant of the human race and animal population that God
wanted to save against the ravages of the Great Flood that was to last for a proverbial forty days and forty nights. Under the circumstances, with the destiny of creation at stake, Noah didn t concern himself with entertaining his passengers. However, I am sure with all those paired animals aboard there were no shortage of things to do. The ark was a veritable floating zoo. What a trip! The second great cruise story of the Bible is also found in the Old Testament. It s recounted in the Book of Jonah. Now Jonah is a short book, comprising only four chapters. We actually read three of these chapters aloud this morning as our scripture lesson. As you undoubtedly gathered from the lesson, Jonah is a man called by God to be a prophet someone dispatched to proclaim God s truth, wisdom, and warning. The only problem is that Jonah doesn t want to be a prophet. This is particularly true when he learns that God wants him to go to the distant city of Nineveh in present-day northern Iraq to warn them against their immediate destruction unless they cease their immoral ways. Jonah is not naïve. He knows the notorious reputation of the Ninevites and his own likely fate if he tries to preach repentance to them. By his own estimates, he ll be lucky to survive. More likely, he could be skinned alive or boiled in oil. Not trusting God with his own destiny, Jonah decides to run the other way. Or should I say, sail the other way? In fact, making haste to the Mediterranean Sea, Jonah boards the first boat that he can and heads west towards Spain, which was then regarded as the edge of the world. It s as far from Nineveh in the east as one can get. If Jonah expected a pleasant cruise all the way, he s sadly mistaken. A huge sea storm comes up and rages on, threatening to capsize the entire ship. One thing that can be said for Jonah is that, while cowardly and less than faithful to God, he is nevertheless honest with himself and others. When the ship s crew asks him if he knows what s making the storm do intense, he acknowledges that it s part of God s effort to impede his escape plans. Moreover, not wanting to imperil the life of the ship s crew or any other passengers, Jonah encourages the ship s crew to throw him overboard in order to save everybody else. The prospect of drowning in the sea is a happy one for Jonah. However, Jonah would probably prefer to drown in the drink rather than confront Nineveh s notorious citizens and what they might do to him. Yet, once again, God s will is not be thwarted. When Jonah is thrown overboard, calming the storm, God sends a big fish, popularly remembered as a whale, to swallow him whole. What s more after several days submerged in the belly of that
fish, Jonah finds himself coughed up on a beach by that same sea creature. At this point, with his cruise truly over, Jonah realizes and accepts that he can t say no to God. However, grudgingly towards God, he now proceeds directly to Nineveh and proclaims God s warning. To Jonah s surprise, the Ninevites do heed his prophecy and repent of their evil ways. Mission accomplished. No less importantly to Jonah, his own life is spared. The best biblical scholars agree that the moral of Jonah s story, including his failed cruise, is that we may run but we can t really hide when it comes doing what God wants and expects. We will continue to be divinely haunted and hounded, either consciously or subconsciously, until we do things right and accept God s guidance. There s also a valuable moral and lesson to the third great cruise story of the Bible. In this case, it s found in the New Testament and involves Jesus. Ironically, this story also includes an attempted escape and a sea storm. Yet this time the storm is more a divine test than an outright obstacle and the escape or get-away is at least partially successful because it serves God s purposes. The context for the story is Jesus ministry which is attracting all kinds of attention and huge crowds. (Mark 4:33-34; Luke 8:22-25) So many people are coming to Jesus for healing help that it is almost overwhelming and exhausting him. It turns out that even God s son sometimes needs a break. And that s exactly what Jesus seeks when he directs his apostles to row or sail him across the Sea of Galilee to the far shore where he hopes to spend some quiet, contemplative time with them. As ex-fishermen, the apostles are experienced sailors. But they are caught by surprise and stressed in no small way by a tempest that suddenly arises while they are crossing the Galilean Sea. That famous inland body of water is merely half the length of Lake St. Clair and only half the depth of Lake Erie. All the same, the waves stirred by the storm winds are huge, particularly for a small boat. The apostles quickly become terrified by the danger at hand. It is life-threatening. Imagine the apostles amazement and consternation when they notice their rabbi and teacher, Jesus, still sound asleep in the back of their rocking boat as if nothing was happening at all on their cruise together. Obviously, Jesus sleeping is a testimony as to just how humanly tired he must have been as a result of the demands on his preaching and healing. However, it also reflects Jesus calm, serenity, and confidence in the face of a situation that was terrifying to everyone else. If he was at all worried, Jesus was still following his own advice where he told his followers not to worry about tomorrow because God
will take care of it--and us. To the apostles who virtually rebuke him for ignoring the storm, Jesus asks: Where is your faith? In the face of whatever problems are on the horizon for any of us, it s a great question to ask. Hysteria never helps anybody. Faith in God has and does. In this case, raising up his own hand high in the wind as a sign of command and authority, Jesus actually has success in calming the seas. Unlike some of the recent year Carnival cruises that have gotten caught up in rough-and-tumble hurricanes which ship-wrecked or disabled them, this cruise ends happily. The apostles aboard are finally able to relax and enjoy themselves as the storm and its waves dissipate. Of course, landing on the other shore, Jesus finds still another crowd awaiting him. Consequently, he doesn t gain the rest and contemplative time he anticipated. But that s another story. What matters more to Jesus is the opportunity presented by the storm to teach his apostles the value of faith in God s protective care when adversity confronts them. Come to think of it, all of the great cruise stories of the Bible are about trusting and obeying God. In Noah s case, it s about trusting God s command to build the ark, even though it might have seemed crazy at the time. Noah s trust of God actually saved him, his family, and the widest array of animal life. Likewise, in Jonah s case, the story is about learning once again that God will protect our lives and make living them worthwhile if we walk with God, rather than running away from moral and spiritual responsibility to him, ourselves, and others. The sea or ocean is a great place to learn lessons like this because its sheer energy and awesome immensity can quickly become overwhelming, making us feel tremendously vulnerable. There are sometimes solo sailors who navigate the seas. But it s always better as a matter of safety to have a crew for company, and even divine blessing and help too, because we never know when we ll have to face the so-called perfect storm when the most virulent forces of nature merge and challenge our very survival. For this reason and more, sailing and cruising have traditionally served as wonderful metaphors for our Christian faith experience. As early as the first and second centuries A.D., Christians were describing the church as a Ship of Salvation carrying passengers from earth to the ultimate destination of heaven. The architecture of Christian churches also began to embrace this Ship of Salvation imagery. The rafters and ceilings of churches like our own were often designed to resemble the upside down holds of ships. The pew area where worshippers are seated for services came to be known as the nave an abbreviation of the words navy and naval. The mid-20 th century artist Warner Sallman embraced this same Ship of Salvation theme with a very famous entitled
Christ the Pilot, depicting the risen Christ with his guiding hand on the shoulder of a young man at a ship s wheel in a storm. Overall, I think the notion of the church as a ship of salvation remains a powerful image, just as long as we don t go overboard in confusing it too thoroughly with the pleasure cruisers that are so popular today those ships plying the seas for our own self-gratification and entertainment. Folks, there s no reason why we shouldn t be able to enjoy ourselves in church. Our faith life together in church and out of church should also be an adventure where we are encountering the new, the different, and the unexpected. At the same time, we need to realize that when it comes to God s ship we are both crew and passengers at the same time, which inevitably means that we have work to do! And it s the work of Christian discipleship. Although there are portof-calls along the way, our cruise is life-long and our destination is our final reunion with God. Congregation, I like thinking of you as fellow crew members on a wonderful sailing adventure that s bringing us closer to God. In times ahead, may we together know clear sailing and beautiful horizons. Even more importantly, however, may we always trust that whether the seas we cross are calm or stormy God looks over us and looks forward to that day when he welcomes as voyagers home. Amen.