A Boat in Restless Seas: Mission from the Margins

Abstract

theme The salt of the earth: mission from the evokes a wonderful picture of the church receiving energy and help from those pushed to the periphery. picture it brings to my mind though, is of a large and secure centre with a smaller, more vulnerable edge, rather like the fringe on the border of a shawl. This doesn't seem to match the reality that there are a lot more people on the margins than at the centre; in other words, the fringe is larger than the scarf. I would therefore like us to explore the same issues with a different metaphor, using the language of the little boat on the vast and restless sea. Listen while I tell you a story we all know, using my own Jamaican language, considered by many to be a marginal patois. One time, long, long time ago, Jesus followers them get into a boat, and Jesus make them sail off without him. Well, friends, big storm blow up when them in the middle of the water. And them frighten frighten frighten. Then just when them feel things couldn't get any worse, them see something coming towards them on the water. Some bawling loud loud duppy! Ghost! Some praying, help we! Where Jesus when we need him? Then a voice say, Calm yourselves. Is me, Jesus! And them recognize him. And them shame shame shame because them wasn't looking to see him outside in the wild water. And Peter, him take brave heart and say, is you, make me come to you walking on the water too. And Jesus say, Come. And Peter get out and was walking good good on top of the water, then him see the waves and start to sink. And Jesus tell him, You was doing alright till you start to lose confidence! And him lead him back into the boat. (1) Now when we were in theological college in Jamaica, a long long long time ago, a wise man, a bishop called Neville DeSouza, used this story as an allegory to remind us that sometimes we, Jesus' disciples, see ourselves in a beautiful little boat with a red cross on the sails, battered by the winds and waves of chaos, bringing Jesus to the people on the edges of the lake. But when we look around, Christ is not in the boat with us. There is something scary out there! It's coming closer! It is Jesus, but we did not recognize him because he is coming from the sea where we never expected to find him. Jesus, the Holy Word, the second person of the Trinity, who was and is involved in creation, cannot be confined. He was and is there in the glorious chaos of the making of the world, so wondrously good, and he comes to us dancing on the tempestuous seas. Our question is, how do we recognize this God, who is not confined to our boat, to our concepts of gender or space or time or even species, who dances to meet us on the waves? We will only recognize him, our dearest friend, if we are attentive and open to hearing and looking and tasting and smelling and seeing strange and unusual things in peculiar places. All our cultures contain our own old testament Another wise man, a bishop called Jonathan from Rwanda, explained to me that all our cultures contain our own Testament. If we pause a moment, we realize that this makes sense. early followers of Jesus interpreted their experience of Christ in the light of the thoughts and teachings about God that they knew best, the teachings of the Jewish people. uniquely Christian collection of books we call the New Testament is full of references to the Jewish teachings and of arguments about how they should be used. Jesus' followers seem to have spent a lot of time arguing about food laws and circumcision, for instance. Even after the Jerusalem meeting seemed to reach a consensus about food sacrificed to idols, Paul still stated his own rather more radical views in the first letter to the Corinthians. early Christians didn't always agree about how to use the Jewish scriptures we call the Old Testament, and indeed we, their successors, still don't. …