Words for Worship

Ministry Today

Sermon: Sea  – Seas that are seething!

 

Text: Genesis 1.1-10

         Mark 6.45-51

 

 

It has been a big issue in the States and also starting to be a significant one here. And I am talking about the creationist verses the evolutionist debate.

In other words, was the world created more or less in its current form at some definable date in the past? Or alternatively have we and all our fellow creatures evolved over billions of years from single cell amoebas?

 

And fundamental to our view on these arguments is how we see the book of Genesis. Was it based on some ancient scientific treatise from some long forgotten civilisation as advanced as our own is today?  Or is it the deeply held account of a holy people as to how humanity came to be the temple of God’s power and purpose for all his creation.

 

 

Well, actually I don’t intend to go into that can of worms now, but simply to point out the primal position of the sea in both theories. Because it was out of the sea that our ancestors emerged no matter which theory of life you support.

 

Let hear again something of that account now by reading Genesis 1.1-10

 

 

Well I suspect most of us  follow the Darwin doctrine.  Yet evolution does pose

a distinct challenge to the Christian view of a God of Love. For there is no doubt that the science of change involves pain and so suffering would appear be at the heart of growth. However, the gospels tell us quite clearly

of instances when Christ directly intervened in nature and showed his supernatural power over it; power to subdue and surmount even that most primeval of elements the sea. Here to relate one such incident is……………………..

Mark 6.45-51

 

When you start  your divinity course  you are allowed into  a few trade secrets.

 

The first is that Knox was an Anglican,  second he spoke with an English accent

and third is that the literal translation of the first verse of the Bible is. - In the beginning the gods created the heavens and the earth.  Now leaving Knox’s national proclivities aside, the Genesis use of the plural  for God is thought to be no more than a way of amplifying  his powerful majesty – a bit like the royal we.

 

However, this pole-position book leaves us at least in no doubt of the divine action in bringing the seas into existence.

 

Now a few weeks back we looked at Paul’s experiences at sea and saw troubled waters as a useful metaphor for the external storms that can beset our own lives. But today, on this sea Sunday, let’s look at that sometimes placid  sometimes awe inspiring phenomenon that we call the sea in its own right.

 

Let us see what it teach us of God, his creation and the pinnacle of that work – humans themselves. Let us see what we can see  at sea.

 

Well whilst WS Gilbert reminded us that we should never go to sea  if we wanted to be rulers of the Queen’s Navy, his namesake the explorer Humphrey Gilbert said that we are as near to heaven by the sea as by land.

 

Yet I beg to differ  and suggest we are closer to heaven  by the ocean than deeper in land.  And my reasoning is this.  It is the waters of this planet that connects its continents and islands;  it’s the means of communication

between them and it is the one common factor between ever land mass.

 

It therefore is a superb reminder of the common factors linking all human beings; our aspirations for freedom and creativity; our desire for peace and prosperity; our need for community  and the living by the rules of higher ideals.  For this is the ocean that we all live in less as physical entities

but as moral and spiritual beings.  Indeed, as true children of a benign creator God.

 

And it was from his deep understanding of how humans live under duress

that Terry Waite could offer aid to the then kidnapped journalist Alan Johnson over the radio;  for he gave the advice  in an interview for the world service

that Alan would find  hidden strengths within himself.

 

And it is our common understanding of just living that we too can understand Alan’s joy now in being free and feeling the wind in his face. A joy which today we willing join him in!

 

 

A friend has recently returned from a holiday in Australia.  And his photographs show how so much of that continent is very different

from our own bonnie Scotland. This is no surprise because the differences

in our globe’s continents are literally breath taking.  Yet their surrounding ocean when away from land looks remarkably the same  no matter what its mood.

 

 In fact, seas the world over  are subject the same complexions whatever their latitudes; its leaden greasy movement under sullen skies  and its thunderous waves when whipped  by violent winds. And so also it is in our mutual human nature.  

 

For who has not known moments of when the heroic impulse is overpowering;

who had not moments when our inner peace would rival any saint and who has not been kidnapped by  moments of such volcanic temper that a hurricane

would pall in comparison.

 

 

And it is that shared knowledge of what we personally are capable of that we can find the start of understanding of the events of last weekend.

 

Certainly, we can empathise with even we may never emulate the bravery of the police and bystanders who tackled the terrorists at Glasgow Airport.

But our collective experience  of our own stormy and fast flowing emotions

also gives warning from the bombers behaviour.

 

In essence,  they illustrate what we are capable of when we cast ourselves loose on the vast seas of anger. For then we treat our fellow children

as objects for our wrath. For then we want force everyone to behave and look

and believe as we do.  For then we want to visit perceived injustice on the most innocent and vulnerable and unknown. For then we want to kill those we do not know  yet cure those that we do. Because then in the violent waters of our soul we have sunk our interconnecting humanity, drowned our better personality and even crucified our drop of divinity.

 

But if we acknowledge  the balmy ocean  of human aspiration  and possibility

yet feel swapped by the tempestuous seascape of overpowering emotions - where then lies our hope of rescue from being all at sea?

 

 

Well, the account of Jesus walking on water  is I suspect the most famous miracle  of them all.  Moreover, it has always been  a rich source of humour

to lampoon  your minister or vicar with . And may be the jokes  reveal a strange fact about this miracle above all others – and it is how unbelievable

we find it.  The healing of the sick, the feeding of the five thousand

d even the raising of the dead all seem somehow more plausible than this one.

 

A full grown man not just floating  but actually walking on water – oh come on! –  we say. Yet it is in our incredulity that we find Christ’s answer  to our gales of feelings.

 

For if a miracle only did the possible  in a magical way then it is no more than

a conjuring trick.  But if a miracle  does what we believe  is utterly impossible

then it is a triumph –  triumph of hope and a triumph for faith and triumph in Christ.

 

Because then the miracle shows Jesus’ unlimited power over creation

including oceans within and without; his unlimited power to change

what we think immutable and his ability to bring us back from the violence

within us that endangers our all-to-frail grasp on the living waters

of our altruistic,  compassionate even self-sacrificial humanity.

 

Last weekend at the concert for Princess Diana,  Rod Stewart crooned

his famous hit – Sailing.  Now you may feel its lyrics hardly stem from high culture or classical poetry. And doubtless that is true!

 

However,  they are at least relevant  to us on sea Sunday.  Because the first verse  quite well sums up  our better nature which is common to all of us trying

to cross the very contrary currents and waves of anger, intolerance and even violence that assail us.

 

 

Here are its words:

 

I am sailing, I am sailing,
Home again cross the sea.
I am sailing, stormy waters,
To be near you, to be free.

However, the common experience of our own internal emotional strife

in so similar the physical struggle of the disciples bent over their oars

on that night upon the storm tossed water. Yet they found the solution which is open to us too. And that is to find not just the resources within us

but the miraculous impossibilities that lie within Christ; that man who walked

upon the waters and showed who was master of them; that Saviour

who was son of he  who created the waters and the wind in the first place.

 

The one how is ever  open to fervent prayers  from our coracle  of endangered humanity when we pray of freedom from self.  The sort of prayer that could

strangely be modelled neatly  on he last verses of Sailing. For it goes;

Can you hear me, can you hear me,
Thro the dark night far away.
I am dying, forever trying,
To be with you, who can say.

Oh lord, to be near you, to be free.
Oh lord, to be near you, to be free,
Oh lord, to be near you and to be free.

 

Amen