Sermon: Ken McGrath

Sermon: Ken McGrath

Sea Sunday
11 July 2004

1. Man and the Sea.

Let us begin with the blindingly obvious - Humans are terrestrial creatures that have no biological adaptation for the sea. Our survival is impossible for more than a few hours (or even minutes in the frigid waters of the high latitudes) without the vessels we have developed. It is not our natural environment and is therefore a hazardous place. No-one who has gone out of sight of land cannot have missed the sensation of the enormity of the earth and of extreme isolation. An example of how deceptive things can be: the horizon looks to be far off, but is only 5 miles away when seen from the bridge of a ship (at about 25 feet above water). If you were to find yourself floating in the sea, the horizon is about 1 mile away and would only go to 2 miles if you were able to stand on the water. To be put into a boat or to fall overboard and have your ship steam away is a truly frightening experience because she disappears so rapidly and you are left wondering if they will ever find you again.

The modern sailor, no less than his ancient predecessors, quickly gains an awareness of the magnitude of the world and creation with a simple faith developed from a realisation that only god has the power to control such enormity; this is in spite of the general reputation sailors have for profanity and worldliness. Naval church parades are usually well attended or, if compulsory, endured without grumbling! Every sailor quickly comes to understand that the sea is a cruel mistress, and that there is no room for carelessness because the outcome is always most serious.

2. The Jews and the Sea.

If we are to understand the biblical references to the sea (there are nearly 200 of them), we will benefit from examining the historical attitudes of the Hebrew people to the sea. Most Jews knew little or nothing about the sea as we understand it. From their highlands and mounts they could see the vast expanse of the Mediterranean, they remembered the Red Sea from their history, and they were well aware of their large inland waters - the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee. Indeed, the word 'sea' in much of the Bible refers to great waters such as the inland lakes and the Nile delta, not to the ocean. Not until the time of Solomon (when Israel reached its largest extent)did they have a sea coast, so it is not until the First Book of the Kings that we find mention of the real sea. Although Solomon built a port at Aqaba for trade down the Red Sea to Africa and India (e.g. Ophir of unknown location), Israel owned no shipschoosing to hire them from the Phoenicians at Tyre. Throughout the Bible, we get a picture of Jewish dislike and distrust of the sea: Job's words that wisdom does not lie in the sea were taken as literally exact. What the Sea did show was the vastness of God's creation and was a source of admiration, but a close acquaintance with it was taken as undesirable. Most Jews believed that the sea's dangers were best left to the half-witted heathen. They were never a seafaring people.

This dislike is geographically based and not only because of their inland situation; the Palestine coast is a bad one for shipping having fierce on-shore winds from Africa and for the most part, it is very shallow or shoaled. There is but one bay which is rather exposed and, apart from Caesarea (an artificial port built by Herod the Great) and Tyre, there were no ports able to take anything larger than small fishing boats. So almost all of the water activity of the Jews was confined to the Sea of Galilee and before we reach the Acts of the Apostles, any reference to a ship in the Bible is really meaning an open boat. Ships belonged only to foreigners (Phoenicians at first, then the Greeks and Romans) Large inland lakes are notorious for sudden changes in weather and the nasty choppy or steep waves that form on them from the wind that is focussed from surrounding bvalleys and mountains. We have only to recall the reputation of Loch Ness or our own Lakes Whakatipu and Taupo for loss of life to feel the fear of the fisherman disciples of our Lord. Most of the Biblical descriptions of stormy waters are actually of those lakes and large waters rather than the sea. Furthermore, our Lord always means the Sea of Galilee when he is recorded as speaking of the sea.

So it is not until the arrival of the Greeks, and later the Romans, that we find Jewish people travelling by ship outside of Palestine. In the Bible this means that the evangalizing of the Gentiles by St Paul and his team provide the first accounts of such voyages. As we have heard, navigation in the Mediterranean was a perilous business; there were no compasses and no means of complex sail handling (e.g. reefing). The sun and stars provided a rough idea of direction, but no idea of position. The accepted safe practice was to stay within sight of land (to coast, in other words), to avoid passage at night wherever possible and to stick to those portions of the seasons that provided favourable winds. Winter was considered to be out of the question. The problem of a lee shore where a sailing ship cannot sail out of danger, which remained until steamships arrived, was an even bigger problem then as an outcomje of their primitive rigging and equipment, than it was to later mariners like Capt Cook (who was far too skilled to allow himself into such a situation; e.g. West coast of NZ).

3. The Lections

We come then to our lections for today. The portion of the Book of Job follows a long dissertation on the nature of God by Job's youngest counsellor Elihu. God has just begun to speak to Job out of whirlwind to remind him of the enormity of creation and the power needed to control it, in contrast to the weakness and insignificance of man, and challenges Job to answer if he has a righteous understanding of this and if he could exercise similar powers.

Mark's gospel gives us the account of the sorm on the Sea of Galilee that caught Jesus and His disciples in their open boat a matter of days after these disciples were chosen. The fishermen disciples grew ever more anxious as the boat is threatened with being swamped whilst Jesus was peacefully sleeping in the safety of the stern. They wakened him with their concerns of His apparent san froid in the face of such danger and to their astonishment He exercised the very powers spoken of in Job by subduing the wind and the waves to utter calmness. Thus in one of the most graphic descriptions in the gospels, He shows to His disciples, and to us, His sharing of God's powers.

The passage in the Acts of the Apostles is one of the most compelling descriptions of a ship's progress into extreme difficulty ending in shipwreck. Many authorities believe that Luke (the author of Acts) m ust have been present to have written such an eye-witness account. After Paul's arrest and his insistence that he be tried at the court of the Roman emperor, he was placed into the custody of the Centurion Julius sometime in August to be conveyed to Rome. The original intention was to sail from Sidon to Mysia (NW Turkey) direct, then to Macedonia to cross by land to the Adriatic and then by ship to Italy. But they were beaten by a strong NW wind down along the southern coast of Cyprus until they managed to work their way into the port of Myra in Lycia (SW Turkey). There the decision was taken to take passage in a grain ship bound for Italy direct that had also been put out of its way by the wind. When they left Myra, the equinoctial NW gale, known as the Etasian, was still blowing (as it often does from late July through the whole of August) and it took them 2-3 weeks to sail the 120 miles to Cnidus (on the SW tip of Turkey) going north about Rhodes. Coming out of the lee of the land because they were unable to make port in the wind, they were blasted southwards to the eastern tip of Crete whose lee enabled them to coast along until they again risked coming out into the gale again at the central Cape Leonda, so they anchored at Lasea. With his previous experience of 3 shipwrecks, Paul advised against proceeding as the date was already about the 1st of October - the end of the safe sailing season. But the Master and owner decided to press on to Phenice a short way further along the coast as a safer harbour to winter over. Straightway a gentle southerly wind blew as they set off to make the 34 miles westward. No sooner had they left the shelter of the cape than the wind turned suddenly and violently to the NE from across Crete, which forced them to run before it in a SW Direction. As they passed around the little island of Clauda, there was a brief lull that enabled the recovery of the boat they were nearly towing underwater and to frapp the ship (to strap the straining hull against further leakage). Under storm sail to stop them making leeway onto the sandbanks at Syrtis (Off Nth africa), they lightened ship of its cargo because it was making water. After many days without sun or stars to show their direction, they had no idea of their position being out of sight of land. The 276 men on board began to lose any hope of survival with no sign of abtement of the storm and continued leakage of the tortured ship. Paul, meanwhile, had spent the night in prayer (not for himself, but for all the souls on board) and had a vision in reply. The next morning he told the company that in spite of their foolishness in sailing from Crete, he had reassurance from God that none would drown, but that the ship would be lost on an island. On the 14th night, having beendriven across the southern end of the Adriatic Sea, the sailors sensed land, probably by hearing breakers on the shore. This was confirmed by the rapid reduction in soundings taken of the bottom, so they dropped the sail and let go stern anchors to avoid running ashore by night. At daybreak they saw and island they did not recognisse, which we are later told is Melita-our modern Malta. Seeing a bay with a beach they resolved to run the ship ashore there, cutting away the anchors and setting the rudders to steer there with the assistance of a hastily rigged sail. As they ran into the bay, what they took to be a northern arm of the bay was a small island round which broken seas raged to meet with the main set such that when the ship ran onto an unexpected shoal short of the beach the bow was lodged fast and the stern was smashed to matchwood by the confused sea. We naturally wonder why the soldiers heartlessly resolved to kill all the prisoners: Roman Law was strict on this point, for capital punishment awaited any soldier who allowed his prisoners to escape.

Julius the Centurion had come to respect Paul and quickly forbade this action which, given the support he had given to all throughout the ordeal was not begrudged. So it was that all made to shore and rescue by the inhabitants. We have here a wonderful example of the power of prayer and the benefits of concern for others.

The Psalm encapsulates the whole matter for us: vs 24 states the revelation to sailors of both the works of the Lord and the wonders of the deep. Vss 25-27 relate the power and violence of the sea and the helplessness of man. Then Vss 28-30 tell of the prayers offered by distressed sailors and the Lord's response with His power to quell a storm so that they can reach their safe haven. Finally, it tells them to praise the Lord for His goodness. Every sailor I have known has heard these words more times than any of us can recall and most have teken it to heart. We, too, cdcan take this message to our hearts, for even landlubbers suffer storms and vicissitudes in our daily lives which the Lord in His mercy helps us to weather. Let us be sure that we always have in our minds and prayers those in peril at sea and that we always praise the Lord for our preservation from the dangers of life ashore.