The story begins in the late afternoon or early evening.  Jesus has just fed the multitude. He sends his disciples across the lake in a boat and he stays behind for some solitary time with God.  He finds a quiet place to pray and there he stays until the early hours of the morning.

 

His disciples in the boat are having a hard time of it. The wind is blowing directly into their faces and they are rowing with all of their might and not making much headway in spite of their all-out efforts. In a real way, at least for the time being, they are stuck at sea and there is no way out.

 

Now they look up and see an apparition, something that looks like a ghost and the ghost nearly scares the life out of them. They are terrified. First the wind on the water and now a ghost. Will God have no mercy?

 

They look again and discover that the ghost is Jesus. In their moment of fear and frustration, Jesus has crossed the water in an impossible way, and he has gotten into the boat with them. And the wind dies down and they make their way towards their destination.

 

Let’s stop here for a moment. What happens next will make all of the difference in the world. The question you next ask will either allow this biblical witness to speak directly to your heart or it will block you from hearing what God may want to say to you.

 

So I first offer you a question to ask.  “Lord, what are you trying to say to me, here in Topeka, in the year 2006?”  And this is my personal answer. When the wind was strong and they were stuck at sea, Jesus got into the boat with them.  Rather than ignore their plight, rather than leave them alone at sea, rather than pass on by, he got into the boat with them. 

 

I think that message is that whenever you find yourself stuck at sea and you cannot seem to make any headway with the wind and waves in your face, look up and look out and you’ll find Jesus sitting in the boat with you.

 

I will say this knowing that I may disappoint some; this is not a witness about the laws of physics. It is a witness to the determination of Jesus to be in your boat with you, especially when the wind is blowing and the storm is raging.

 

And if that is the character of Jesus, then that is the character and behavior to which Jesus calls us.

 

May I speak personally?  In recent years, both of my parents went home to be with the Lord. Before their deaths, both my mother and my father were hospice patients. As we accepted the inevitability of their deaths, the hospice people came into my parents’ home and began to serve.

 

It is not an easy thing, growing a genuine loving relationship with someone that you know is going to grow sicker and sicker and then die. When the hospice people began their service to my parents, they knew beyond any reasonable doubt that just as they began to know them and just as their love for them began to grow, just as the attachment would become strong, then death would intervene and snatch them away. Every hospice person, both volunteer and professional, knew that he or she was setting herself or himself up for some serious emotional pain. Even when you know that it is coming, it hurts to lose someone that you like and even love. Knowing that at the end of the process, a piece of their hearts would be torn out, knowing the pain that was inevitable, the professional and the volunteers came and one by one, each one got into the boat first with my mother and later with my dad. They got into the boat and each one helped to calm the seas and in the end they cried because they had, in some way large or small, loved.

 

I love an Anne Lamont story that comes from her book, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith.  In her little Presbyterian church, she noticed a need for a Sunday School and was persuaded that she was the person to start it. In her planning, she imagined all kinds of creative activities that would teach the children the truths of the Bible. In one game that she invented, or stole, she asked the children to toss a beach ball from one to the other and with each toss, quote a line from the memory verse of the day.

 

The first person would toss the ball saying, “Come unto me all who are weary” and the second would catch the ball and  pass it on saying “And I will give you rest.” What she did not count on was that the memory verse game quickly became a game of “hurt your neighbor” and the beach ball became a missile that was used to raise welts on the arms and legs of those who were hit.

 

The game ended, I believe, when Ms. Lamont tried again, throwing the ball to a girl saying, “Come unto me,” and the girl froze and the ball slapped the child squarely in the face and we can imagine what happened after that. 

 

We could guess that Ms. Lamott missed the boat. Later, she found a way and entered into the lives of the children in significant ways.

 

I just read Elie Weisel’s little autobiographical book entitled, Night.  For what it is worth, it is a part of “Oprah’s Book Club” and it is a great little book. In simple and straight forward language, it tells the story of Weisel’s experience in the Nazi concentration camps. Unlike many contemporary works, he tells us enough to know what is happening, but he does not tell us so much as to be repulsive.

 

I want to read a passage from the “Foreword” written by a French writer, Francois Mauriac. He refers to a passage in which a young boy is hanged by the Nazis. Weisel reflects on that atrocity with these words.

 

“For God’s sake, where is God?”

            And from within me, I heard a voice answer:

            “Where He is?  This is where – hanging here from this gallows.”

It is not surprising that for the young Weisel, God died that day. God died with that child in the Nazi concentration camp. He wrote,

 

“I no longer pleaded for anything. I was no longer able to lament. On the contrary, I felt very strong. I was the accuser, God the accused.  My eyes had opened and I was alone, terribly alone in a world without God, without man. Without love or mercy.”

 

At the end of his essay, his “Foreword”, Mauriac gives his response.

 

“And I, who believe that God is love, what answer was there to give? What did I say to him? Did I speak to him of that other Jew, this crucified brother who perhaps resembled him and whose cross conquered the world?  Did I explain to him that what had become a stumbling block for his faith became a cornerstone for mine?   And that the connection between the cross and human suffering remains, in my view, the key to the unfathomable mystery in which the faith of his childhood was lost?”

 

It is only fair to say that, in the years that followed, Weisel connected again to faith of his ancestors, but that is another story.

 

As I understand him, what Mauriac wants to say is simply this; God was in the concentration camp boat with the victims in the same way that God was on that cross that held Jesus two millennia ago. God lived in the suffering of God’s people!

 

Then why didn’t God stop it?  Nobody knows the answer to that but this is my best guess. When God blessed the human race with freedom, the freedom to grow as God’s children, the freedom to love one another and serve God, at the very same time, God allowed the evil that was made manifest in the Nazi regime. Rather than curtail the freedom that is ours, he allowed that hellish evil to spread. It is the best that I can do. But to strip human beings of our moral and ethical freedom would be to strip the humanity out of the human being. And it appears that God would rather risk our freedom that strips away our humanity, even when portions of the human race sell themselves out to the forces of Hell itself.

 

This is the essence of the Gospel. In Jesus Christ, God got into the boat with us. Listen again to these familiar words from Paul’s letter to the Philippians. He is talking about Jesus:

 

⁶  Who, though he was in the form of God,

did not regard equality with God

as something to be exploited,

⁷ but emptied himself,

taking the form of a slave,

being born in human likeness.

And being found in human form,

⁸       he humbled himself

and became obedient to the point of death—

even death on a cross.

(Philippians 2:6-8 (NRSV)) ^[1]

 

 

“Taking the form of a servant, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” Even at the point of death, he got into the boat with us. Even with the most extreme form of suffering ever devised by the evil genius of humankind, Jesus got into the boat with us.

 

And in getting into our boats, he taught us how to live with one another. He taught us to get into one another’s boats.  Paul said it another way when he called upon Christian brothers and sisters to rejoice with those who rejoice and to mourn with those who mourn. When things are going well, laugh and play and rejoice together – rejoice together. But when the sea is choppy, even if it means leaving the safe harbor in which your personal boat is anchored, get into the boat with your neighbor because you may be the presence of God for her.

 

I say that, knowing that most of you already believe it and live it. Here at First Baptist, we have been taking care of each other for a long, long time. Thank God for that. But God has other children and from time to time, we are invited to get into their boats, too.

 

What an amazing story. God looked down from heaven and saw the suffering of his children. So God said, I’ll send my Son and he will share in their suffering. He will be exempt from none of it. And he will show them how to live again.

 

So Jesus got into our boat and he has been our constant companion and teacher ever since. He is in your boat now. Open your heart to his presence and to his power and to his grace.

 

Amen