Texts: Mat 25:1-13, Is 65:17-25                                               W 27^th Sunday after Pentecost (Last Sunday)

[This message completes a series of four first introduced on May 2, 2005 (2^nd Sunday after Pentecost) in a sermon titled Safe Passage, continued on July 3, 2005 (7^th Sunday after Pentecost) in the sermon Smooth Sailing, and again on October 30, 2005 (Reformation) in the message Mutiny on The Promise.]

End of the Voyage

The ship rolled gently over an easy swell – almost like the rocking of a cradle.  I was at the wheel, the appointed helmsman for our early morning watch; but the wind was hardly more than a breath, just barely filling the sails, so we were making very little headway.  Five bells.  I’d been standing here since midnight and had yet another hour on duty before I could expect relief.  Between my weariness, the swaying motion of the ship, and the relative calm of the wind, I was finding it a real struggle to stay alert.

“Helm!  Watch your heading, mister.”  This was spoken by the officer of the watch who, I was startled to find, was suddenly standing right behind me.  I had dozed off.  A quick glance at the compass confirmed that I had allowed the bow to fall off a couple points to the lee.  “Aye.  Sorry sir”, I replied, now quite awake, and quickly turning the wheel to make the correction.  The ship answered slowly because the wind was so light; but turning sluggishly, in a few moments she was back on course.  The officer of the watch, however, did not move.  He remained standing directly behind me, giving me that uncomfortable feeling of being over-supervised.  Maybe he was waiting for me to say something?  “Course due west, sir, full and bye”.  He chuckled a bit at my discomfort, and then said very seriously, “It’s strange, isn’t it?  How we tremble at the storms, the treacherous reefs, and the other obvious hazards, but we fail to understand that as dangerous as those things are, many more ships are lost due to the inattention and carelessness of their crews.  It’s the lookout not looking, the neglect and poor maintenance of the ship’s equipment, and the lack of proper discipline and drill that destroys ships and drowns sailors.  Or”, he added pointedly, “it’s poor navigation. Did you know that if the helmsman is off just a half a point through his watch, at the end of it we could be ten miles or more from where we think we are and where we’re supposed to be?  You add up those kinds of errors day after day and week after week, and there’s no telling where a ship might end up.  You think it’s all open sea out ahead because that’s what the chart shows; but then, during a night watch such as this, you suddenly run aground off some island inhabited by cannibals that you think is hundreds of miles away.  The natives jump up and down on the beach in excitement whooping and hollering and carrying on while they watch your ship pounded to pieces in the surf and they wait for the survivors to come wading ashore to be the guests of honor, so to speak, at their next banquet.”  Ouch. Nothing like a little sarcasm to make a scolding sting; but he made his point. Feeling sufficiently chastised, I had no trouble staying awake for the rest of my watch.

The horizon behind us was beginning to glow with the first light of the predawn when I was relieved. It blushed dark blood red against angry clouds, promising to make a pretty spectacular sunrise show, so I decided to stay on deck until after breakfast to see it. Standing there leaning against the taffrail in the morning calm, I had some time to reflect upon what the lieutenant had said.  It was true. The greatest dangers to a ship are rarely the threats that come from the outside – there isn’t much a well-handled ship with an experienced crew need fear.  No, the greater dangers lie aboard: apathy, carelessness, neglect, dereliction of duties … these are the subtle and far deadlier dangers.

And sadly, I had seen plenty evidence of them aboard The Promise.  Worse, I had to confess that I had seen signs of them in myself.  At times you could almost feel the ship’s company slipping into an unhealthy complacency.  People were becoming haphazard in the execution of their duties, and less prompt and precise during scheduled drills.  Some were even refraining from going to the Captain’s table on Sundays. They claimed they’d already heard all of his stories and that the food served in the galley was every bit as satisfying and as what the Captain had to offer.  Over all it had a bad effect on morale, and it was showing up in the way people treated each other.  They were often grouchy and sullen.  People complained about others behind their backs, and a few fights broke out below. Then there were a number of incidents that should never have happened.  Like the one a few weeks ago when the wind was freshening a bit and the watch officer ordered more sail bent on to take advantage of it – but the sail maker and his mates had failed to repair that particular canvass after it was damaged in the last storm.  They had just stored it away wet and forgot about it.  So not only was it damaged, it had begun to rot.  When they raised it, almost immediately it tore out its clews and was carried away.  Accusations and counter accusations flew.  The watch officer blamed the sail maker.  The sail maker claimed it was because there was too much wind – that the sail should never have been called for; and then he blamed the top hands who stowed it in the wrong place.  Or there was that other incident a few days later:   a man was working aloft – a man that a lot of people knew was distracted by a number of personal problems – he lost his footing and fell overboard.  Though several people saw him fall and called out, the ship’s company reacted way too slowly.  The man overboard drill is one we practice regularly; but things had slipped so badly that when a real situation arose, nobody seemed to know what to do. In the end, the man was lost.  And these sorts of incidents were becoming common.

Then at the same time, there was a rising sense of impatience and frustration being expressed by many in the ship’s company.  Some complained about the routines and operating procedures that ordered life aboard The Promise.  They wanted to change everything:  all the cherished nautical traditions that had been handed down to us – throw them all away.  Others complained about the ship itself.  They said, “What are we doing making a voyage in an old, beat up sailing ship anyway? This is the twenty-first century. We should have diesel turbines or nuclear power or something.  In this hunk of junk we’re at the mercy of the wind.  We can’t go any faster than its breath carries us along.  If this were a proper ship, we wouldn’t be dependent on sails.  And we wouldn’t have to face any storms either.  Why if we had the power and speed, we could outrun any bad weather – or just steer around it.”  A few weeks back some of these folks saw their chance when we encountered the Millennium Warhawk at sea. She was a sister ship of The Victory, the mighty ship we had last seen adrift because she’d run out of fuel.  I remember seeing Victory’s hands in the ship’s boats futilely attempting to tow her with the oars. That was always the problem with such naval vessels:  they claimed to rely on their great engines; but in the end, they always resorted to pure manpower.  Anyway, Warhawk came aside and offered to take any hands that wanted to transfer. They claimed to have a developed new secret auxiliary engine – better than all the ones built before.  They called it the “Rapture Drive”. They said that with it they could simply jump over any problems at sea.  No, really!  They said that if a storm was coming they’d just lift up out of the water and come down safely in a place where the weather was fine.  It was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever heard.  But what amazed me was that some of our own ship’s company fell for it.  They packed their sea chests and crossed over to her without so much as a goodbye to The Promise.

            But I think the worst thing that happened was several months back when we anchored briefly to resupply off what were called the Paradise Islands. Oh, they were nice enough:  white sand beaches, coconuts and mangoes, huts made of bamboo and palm fronds, ukulele music in the background.  You’ve got the picture.  What happened there was practically a mini rebellion.  Several of the newer hands – folks who had only recently signed on – along with a surprising number of the more seasoned hands saw what was there and said, “This is really nice.  We think we’ll just stay here.  We’re tired of all this sailing and hard work.  And we’ve come such a long way west from where we started. Surely, this is close enough to the goal.”  Some of the officers tried to persuade them to stay on.  “But it isn’t the destination you started out for; how can you stop now?”  “Leave us alone”, they said, “We’ve done our share.  We’ve come as far as we’re going to.”  They were determined; so, reluctantly, we left them.

            That seemed ages ago – back when the weather was still warm.  Now winter was setting in and there was a definite chill in the air.  And I wondered how those we left behind were faring now as I stood there leaning against the rail thinking about all these things and watching the brightening crimson sky in the east.  Then a thought occurred to me:  what was that old saying?  “Red sky in morning, sailor take warning.”  I noticed all of a sudden that the wind, which had been gently blowing from the starboard bow, was now backing and gaining strength.  Soon it was coming from dead astern, driving us rapidly forward.  It was an unusually cold wind that cut right through my jacket and gave me a shiver I could feel in my bones.

            Then came the cry from aloft, “Deck there! Land!  Fine off the bow.  About five leagues distant.”  We hadn’t seen it before because it had been too dark; but now in the half-light we could make out an ominous mass of mountains that stretched all across the western horizon.  They were composed of jagged crags of black basalt that rose like stairs from the sea, climbing away higher and higher for as far as we could see.  They seemed to go on forever.  There was no sign of life on them.  No trees or shrubs; just solid rock.  And they were blacker than anything I had ever seen – they seemed almost to absorb the light rather than reflect it; and their bases were enveloped in a thick fog that seemed to hover motionless on the surface of the sea.

“Somebody please tell me that’s not the great western shore we’ve been journeying to all this time”, I said aloud to no one in particular.  The Lieutenant who had reprimanded me earlier – who once again I was startled to find close behind me –answered, “No, relax; that’s not our destination.  But to get where we’re going, we have to pass through it.”  “Pass through that?”  I asked, completely astounded, “And just how are we going to do that?”  “By sailing through the Black Straits, of course. It’s a narrow channel that twists and turns and winds its way right between those mountains.  My mouth hung open in disbelief as I stared at those dark, foreboding peaks that reached for the sky like the teeth of a great monster. They looked like they would chew us up and swallow us alive.  And how were we even going to find the channel in the thick fog and mist that shrouded the sea at their foundations?    “Don’t worry”, he said, “The Captain knows the way through:  he’s the one who made it.  He’ll see that we pass through safely.”

As if on cue the Captain’s cabin door opened and he stepped out on the deck.  He climbed to the quarterdeck, surveyed the situation calmly, and consulted briefly with the Sailing Master.  When the latter had been instructed, he reached for his speaking trumpet and called, “All hands on deck.  Prepare to wear ship!  Bos’n:  send a leadsman to the chains to begin sounding depth.  And everyone stay alert:  we’re going in, lads!”

What was only frightening at first became downright terrifying as we drew closer.  The black, threatening pinnacles seemed to tower over us. They rose directly up out of the sea, and we knew that many more, not quite as high, were concealed beneath the surface.  At any moment we might run aground on one and sink in the icy water.  I couldn’t understand what landmarks the Captain was using to guide us.  The jumbled pillars all looked the same to me, but he seemed to have an uncanny sense of direction.  From time to time he would order a course adjustment, and though no one else knew why or how he made these judgments – for none of us could see anything clearly in the impenetrable fog and shadows – we kept moving steadily forward. Occasionally there would be a thinning gap in the fog and we could see more clearly – but what we saw made us wish we hadn’t.  The place was a graveyard of ships and vessels of all descriptions that wrecked upon the rocks.  Some had rotted here for ages.  Others seemed to have piled up on the rocks only days before.  At a few of them we even shouted to see if any survivors would respond; but there were none.

            Midnight again, and I was back on duty – back holding the wheel.  I clung to it tenaciously for we were in the Black Straits now.  And I could see exactly nothing in the direction we were going.  A cold drizzle had begun to fall adding to my misery and from time to time I trembled – whether from fear or cold or both, I can’t say. Now it was the Captain who stood directly behind me.  There were times I could see his face reflected in the dim light of the binnacle lamp; but even when I couldn’t see him, somehow I could feel his presence there and it strengthened me.  In a very soft voice he’d issue instructions to me:  “Steady there.  Good. Now come right a point.  Hold her there.  Now, easy back to port.”  So it went for the whole long watch.  Once or twice in the midst of all this I was gripped in an unexplainable panic.  I felt like shouting, jumping overboard, doing anything but this – and somehow he could sense that feeling rise in me. When it happened he would place his hands directly on mine on the wheel.  I could feel his weathered, chapped skin, and the scars on his palms. These things filled me with a sense of warmth and calmed me until I could catch my breath again.  In this way we continued, until suddenly, everything went totally black and silent …

            Then, just as suddenly, as if a curtain had lifted, we sailed into the light – light so pure and brilliant it was like seeing everything new for the first time.  And what I saw was absolutely breathtaking.  I looked about the ship and was amazed.  The old Promise no longer looked worn and weather-beaten. It looked like it must have the day it was christened – everything so familiar and yet now, so perfect.  I looked astern and was surprised to see that the black mountains had vanished.  “Where did they go?”  I asked. The Captain pointed behind us: you see that little shoal there, where some of the taller waves are breaking?  Those are your dreaded mountains.”  “How is that possible? I asked.  He said, “Here, on this side of them, you see them in the true light. You see them as they really are. Here you’ll see everything as it really is.

            Then I turned and looked ahead toward our destination.  There before us was the celebrated western shore:  the land of all our hopes and dreams.  It was an endless coastline of dazzling white beaches – sand that didn’t just reflect the light, but that actually seemed to be lit from within.  I could see fertile hills and valleys rising in the distance, vineyards, orchards, and groves of all descriptions.  I could see rivers, waterfalls, and snow capped mountains in the distance.  And there dead ahead was a magnificent coastal city of glistening white marble and alabaster.  Domes of burnished gold crowned its buildings.  And as we approached the harbor, the city’s bells began to peal to announce our arrival.  People were flocking to the quay to welcome us ashore, and it was the strangest thing: there were people there I knew; people who had made the voyage before me – and there were many more I had never met; but somehow I knew them too.  It was like we were all part of the same wonderful loving family – and so, I guess, we always were; it’s just that I hadn’t seen it so clearly before.  But now for the first time in my life, though I’d never been here, I knew I had truly come home.

            There’s more, of course:  how I thanked the Captain for all that he’d done with tears of joy streaming down my face, how I went ashore and became acquainted with friends and family new and old, and how I began to get settled into this new life that for you still defies description.  I’d tell you more, but I’m afraid you really can’t yet see or understand.  You’ll just have to wait until you arrive here at the end of your own voyage aboard The Promise.

Soli Deo Gloria!