Lenten Bible Study, Holy Saturday; Acts 27

Acts, Chapter 27 (NRSV)

Sitting here at my desk, watching the sun rise over Narragansett bay, I find myself struggling to not get caught up in the eyewitness details of Paul's final sea voyage. The language and images are very familiar. A ship, caught in the teeth of a winter nor'easter, begins to break apart in the heavy waves. Cargo and tackle are thrown overboard, sea anchors are dropped and soundings taken. All details that anyone here in the Ocean State would recognize. But this is more than a sea adventure. This is an allegory about the Church and a proof of God's power that is particularly resonant on this Holy Saturday morning.

To the ancient Israelites the sea represented the forces of chaos. The sea's protean surface recalled the state of the cosmos before God began to order Creation and the story of God's people began. The psalms sing of God's power in setting the sea within bounds that it could not escape. The people of Israel were desert people and as such they had little interest in sailing and treated all water with respect, awe and a little fear. (We hear echoes of this in the language of early Church that describes baptism as a drowning and a death in the waters of chaos.) To the gentile nations along the Mediterranean coasts the sea was their highway, but it was mercurial and could turn in an instant on anyone - particularly on anyone who angered the gods.

Sea voyages were fraught with the interference of the gods. It was customary to sacrifice to the gods before the voyage began and during the voyage the crew and passengers were all very intentional in avoiding an behavior that might anger a god. At best it was hoped the gods would not notice the people pushing out into deep water because if they did they might unleash the winds and send a great storm to destroy the boat that represented the traveler's island of safety. Just as we read in the story of Jonah, when sailors discovered that a particular person on board a ship had angered a god, they felt no remorse in heaving that person overboard to suffer the god's wrath directly.

In the early church the symbol of the Church was the boat. The story of Noah and his safe passage in the ark while the created order was being destroyed by the rising force of the waters of chaos was read as an allegory of the Church that brought the faithful safely to the new Creation that God inaugurated on Easter Day. Isn't it striking that we still call the main hall of a church building the "nave", a word which comes the latin word from ship "navis"?

When you read the details of this sea voyage in that light, there's much more here than just a grain ship, carrying prisoners to Rome, being destroyed by an winter gale. Paul proclaims that this particular storm represents no judgement on the part of God, just a poor judgment on the part of the ship's owner. And the God who Paul proclaims is going to intervene to save all the people on board the ship. It's proof that this God has power over chaos, is greater than the pagan lord of the sea, and is actively protecting Paul and his companions. To the pagan cultures of Paul's time, this would have spoken volumes.

But look also at the how God uses the ship in the story. The ship carries the whole company through the storm though it is scoured by the wind and the waves, loses much of its cargo and tackle and in the very end breaks apart just before they find a safe shore. I'm rather taken by the image of the jettisoning of anything superfluous as the ship tries to hold together in the nor'easter. There doesn't seem to be much reluctance on the part of the ship's crew to get rid of anything that wasn't helping. Paul spoke to them all in the midst of the storm with a promise from God that no one would be lost. But the ship would not be saved. Yet it played its appointed role in bringing people to safety.

What parallels are there for us in this tale and our present experience of the Church this Holy Saturday morning? I expect that you are recognizing many. God has promised that we all would be saved, and we try to trust in that promise in the midst of great storms. We too are being asked what we need to lose to be able to keep moving forward toward our goal. We too are being told we must eat the food that gives us strength to see our voyage through to the end. We too have heard an angelic message. And there are so many more…

On Good Friday the church naves were stripped and bare. The storm broke upon us. This morning we awake to gray skies and silence. We are reduced to the essentials needed for our journey. But the shore is in sight. We need to make our way through the surf, through the water to reach the goal.

Keep all this in your mind tonight if you attend an Easter Vigil. Listen and remember the role the water plays in the stories. Watch the light come into the darkness. And find the shore underneath your feet even as you are dripping from the holy water of baptism.