On the Boat, out of the Boat

The chapel at Vancouver Theological Seminary, during most seasons of the church year, displays as a focal point on the north wall a very large fabric banner of a boat. The east wall of the chapel is all glass; through the glass is the Strait of Georgia, just across the street from the campus of the University of British Columbia. On one wall, a boat; on the other, the sea.

The boat is the ancient symbol of the church. The sea is the world. We’re all in this boat together.

Stories with boats in them feature prominently in the Bible. Noah’s Ark, to begin with. Then Jonah, on board a ship trying to sail the opposite direction from the mission to which God has called him.

In the Gospels, the disciples are on board a boat that is about to sink, until they wake Jesus, who stills the storm, and calms the panicked disciples.

Sea travel is also prominent in the Book of Acts, which tells us this is the medium of travel that got the new church moving, and allowed it to spread the Gospel of God’s Messiah throughout the Mediterranean in an astonishingly short span of years.

About ten years ago, I attended a wonderful conference created by St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church in Renton. It was my introduction to the poetic Pastor Kirby Unti, who titled the conference: “Out of the Boat, into the World.” What a wonderful metaphor for what it meant to be Christian in the year 2000. We are called to leave the safety of the boat, and to be involved in the world, to engage with worldly people and concerns, to bring the Gospel outside our walls.

In the past few years, however, I think the context and the mission of the church have taken another turn. I believe people have forgotten that to be followers of Christ means we are in this boat together, bound together in community by a single love, a single mission, and a single purpose.

Our culture’s high regard for individuality and freedom and self-reliance wants to persuade us that life rafts with a few family or friends on each, are a safe and sure way to navigate through life. But Scripture tells us again and again that God’s intention is to form a people, a community, a whole body made up of many individual parts.

The book of Acts – the Acts of the Apostles – is a story of people who are being formed as a community in the Spirit of a shared faith. The Holy Spirit takes people of different languages, cultures, values and traditions, and molds them, not in spite of their differences, but because of them, into a body that is able to visibly reveal the grace and peace of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Out of the sea of humanity, God plucks the believers and places them in this one boat, the church, bonded by God’s love, guided by God’s wisdom, and empowered by God’s purpose.

The joy of living in community, held and shaped by faith, is a privilege the world we live in hardly knows any more. It is an experience that is in danger of being lost. In our Bible study of Acts this spring – Wednesday nights, 6:30 p.m. – we will search God’s Word for inspiration and wisdom. How can we encourage, challenge, and invite our life-raft loving neighbors to come and join us, in God’s boat?

I hope you will join me and your sisters and brothers in Christ in this Bible study. Let us read again the Acts of the Apostles, to hear what God is saying to the Church today.

In Christ’s peace,

    - Pastor Pam