SEA SUNDAY

Grant, O God, that in the written Word, and through the spoken word, we may behold the living word, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.    AMEN

Today, Sea Sunday, we remember not only the mission to Seafarers (previously the Mission to the Seamen) but the seafarer and what kind of life it must be like for a seafarer with all its dangers.  Theirs can be a perilous job.

What do mean by the expression “travelling light”?  It usually means carrying the bare essentials, only those things that we absolutely need.  In our household there is always a debate when we pack to go on holidays or go to Christchurch or Auckland over packing.  I prefer to “travel light” with a small suitcase, whereas Moira travels heavy (there is a permanent red “heavy” sticker on her suitcase.  I am told to take a bigger suitcase than what I consider necessary – You never know what will happen – we may need to come back with more than we went with.  I suggest that perhaps the children should learn to travel with a minimum of toys. My suggestions fall on stony ground.  As it generally happens I tend to pack slightly more than I need.

Packing a family up to go on holiday probably creates enough stress to need another few day’s holiday at either end to get over it all.  Nevertheless once at your destination the worries of getting to the place disappear quite quickly.  Then anxiety creeps in as we prepare to come back home.

Imagine a storm has blown the roof off your house.  Everyone is safe, but the family have to stay with relatives for at least a month.  What does travelling light mean to the family.  What would family members take with them.?  What would they miss?  Some people face these, and harder decisions in their daily lives.

Seafarers travel light by necessity. When they sign on, they often do not know for sure where they will be sailing or how long before they will be ashore again.  This makes it hard for them, to plan what to take.  They leave home for a long time each voyage but there is not room on board ship for many possessions.  Probably only enough room for a holdall to hold their clothes other essentials and prized possessions.  Seafarers can be cooped for months on end and have to share a cabin with their fellow seafarers.

Some seafarers may not have much to take anyway.  Often they come from poor countries and poor families and have only gone to sea because they see this as a way of supporting their families back home.  They arrange for most of their wages to be sent home to feed their wives and children.

We have come a long way since travel by sea was the only way to journey.  Even with modern technology, and the big jumbo jets, the sea is still an essential part of keeping society going.  We need only to look at all those containers offloaded from container ships to see how much we rely on the sea.  Oil tankers are they only way to transport oil. We could not function without the ships and the goods that they carry.

In the hustle and bustle of today’s busy world we probably do not give much thought to seafarers and the life that they lead and how their lives affect us. For the seafarer, days at sea can be long and boring, nights at sea are even longer and lonelier.  As crews get smaller and smaller there are fewer people to talk with and little to do.

A seafarers job is not an easy job.  It can be dangerous.  For most of the time it can be fairly routine, but sometimes they are subject to the elements and there is always the possibility of the ship breaking up and lives being lost.  An oil tanker breaking up has dreadful consequences.  Not only do the seafarers have to cope with a breaking ship but also the consequence of the oil and the effect that will have on the environment.

No one new better how a storm could affect their lives than the disciples when they were on the boat and the storm came and the boat was almost swamped with waves.  They were terrified and woke Jesus saying “Lord Save us”.  His response to them “why are you afraid, you of little faith.  Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the sea and there was dead calm. 

It is quite frightening being in a storm.  I remember travelling to England in the late 50s.  It was a fairly uneventful journey until we got to the Atlantics.  There we met with one of the storms and rough sea the Atlantic is notorious for.  It was very rough and all the furniture had to be tied down.  The decks that were once crowded with people were now deserted as they sought comfort in their cabins or coped with seasickness.  There were not all that many passengers at breakfast in the mornings either.  Some passengers were genuinely scared.  Yet it was the seafarer who cared for us and ensured that we reached our destination safely.

It is times like these that you begin to appreciate how the disciples felt when they encountered the storm.  How galling it must have been for them to be told “do not be afraid you of little faith”.  Yet faith is required of us in our daily lives.  Faith is our commitment to follow the Lord Jesus Christ in the way he commanded us.  “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your mind and with all your strength.

In doing this, and proclaiming the good news to all is a tall order.  Like the disciples, we are sent out to proclaim the news sometimes with little or no training but relying on deep-rooted conviction for God.  It is he who sustains us through our life.

How we live our faith is personal to each of us, and each one of us will have our own interpretation of what faith means to us.  In its most simple form faith in the Old Testament was centred on trust in, or reliance on God.  The focus was not primarily on the individual but on the relationship of the people of Israel to God. This is borne out in the Old Testament stories where the prophets were called by God to lead their people.

Faith is not something that is easily explained to the unbeliever.  How does one justify to the sceptics that you believe in a God who created Heaven and earth in six days and also created man in His own image.  That you believe in the Lord who after a very short life was crucified and rose from the dead on the third day.  Yet this is what we are called to, just as the disciples were.  How adequately were they equipped for their task?  Not very well by all accounts.  Nevertheless they went off and not only proclaimed the good news but also anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them..

The mission to seafarers plays an important role in the life of a seafarer.  Chaplains not only bring the gospel to seafarers, they are themselves the gospel, the good news.  They are probably the only visitors who come to give rather than take.  They give their time, their attention, their concern, their readiness to do anything for those that they visit.  They are there to serve, to welcome, to invite.  A chaplain once said:

The captain of a vessel I visited recently introduced me to other people on board with the words “These are the people who care for us.  Nobody else wants us except for our money

The mission to seafarers crosses all boundaries.  Their mission is for the seafarer and his or her needs.  It does not matter whether the seafarers are religious or not  - the chaplains cater to the seafarer’ needs.

The chaplains and their helpers from the local community, try to respond to the seafarers’ needs, whatever they may be – collecting warm clothes if they are cold, books and videos if they are bored; putting them in touch with people who can help sort out problems on board; helping to keep in touch with their families; offering Bibles and reading material that will help them to stay in touch with God.

As I said before, Jesus told his disciples to go out and tell people the good news they had heard and seen in Him.  He commanded them not to take anything with them but the clothes they stood up in.

It must have been rather scary going out into the unknown.  What if they were hungry? Lost?  Needed shelter for the night?  What if people did not listen to them?  Laughed at them?  Attacked them.

Travelling light like this taught those first disciples to rely on their faith in God, to trust that this was what Jesus wanted them to do, and to depend on the help of people who supported their work.

It’s just the same today.  Jesus is still sending out missionaries to tell everyone his Good News.  And they have to rely on their own faith and our support.

Now to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, be all might majesty dominion and power now and forever.  Amen.