Sailing

(Note: this is a précis of a homily delivered without manuscript on 6 Easter, May 25 2014)

http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Easter/AEaster6_RCL.html

Today we're surrounded by sailors.

This fourth Sunday we celebrate a Celtic Mass as is our custom. We're in the midst of a kind of "long octave" of Celtic sailor-saints. Coming up soon on June 9 is our old friend Columba, voyager to Iona, who first came to us 12 years ago and has caused us a lot of grief and upset ever since. Outreach, intentional spirituality, breaking down the walls between us and the neighborhood and all.

But just past us on either May 16 or May 21 is St. Brendan, Brendan the Navigator, Brendan the Bold. Many of us has heard version of his story: how he set out on his long sea-voyage to seek the Land of the Blessed, Tir Na Na'Og, past the setting sun in the West. The story of this voyage became the first travelogue and science fiction novel of the Middle Ages. It had everything: monsters, a heroic journey, strange sights, and a good dose of religion and spirituality thrown in too!

The story says that Brendan made two voyages.

The first was done classical Celtic monastic style. The faith of those early Celtic Christians was desert-shaped, influenced by the desert Fathers and Mothers of Africa and Palestine. So the Celtic monks longed for their own desert. Most of Ireland was too green and fertile to be very desert-like, so the sea became their desert.

Like others before and after, Brendan set out with a few companions in a hide boat. Once clear of the shore and the surf, they shipped the oars and rudder and let the wind of God take them where the wind willed.

It seems like they bobbed all around the British Isles, coming ashore in Wales and Brittany, even bumping into St. Columba on a small Scottish island hermitage. They reported seeing Hell rise up out of the sea and demons throwing burning boulders at them. Some say this means that Brendan drifted close to Iceland and its volcanoes.

They got back to Ireland, filled with a bunch of new stories, which makes any Irishman's heart glad. But Brendan was not done.

He wanted to go somewhere with purpose. He wanted to sail to the Land of the Blessed in the West.

Brendan went to his soul-friend, a very powerful older woman named Ita. Ita told him to do this journey right. Build a proper wooden ship, she said, not a little hide boat. Take some proper sailors with him, not just some dozy monks. And sail with purpose to the West, and not just be blown around by what she called "the lunatic wind."

And so Brendan did just that--built a proper wooden ship, signed on some sailors who knew what they were doing, and brought along with the usual monks and a bishop or two some craftspeople, fisherfolk to help supplement their stores, singers and entertainers because the voyage was long, and even, so the story says, "three unbelievers at the last moment", just because, since hey, it's a good post-modern thing to do, why not?

They set their sails and, after many other satisfactory adventures, made it to the shores of the Blessed Land. There are those who say there is truth behind Brendan's tale, and that the golden-skinned people who greeted the monks and showed them hospitality were the same who, centuries later, met the Spanish conquistadores who came not in peace but with muskets and swords. Pity the Irish monks were not the permanent settlers rather than they.

At any rate, Brendan's tale is important still as voyage is an image and a reality that has accompanied the Christian project since the beginning. Anchors and boats are found among the images in the catacombs of Rome. The very church is which we sit is built Western-style as an inverted ship complete with keel and ribs. We sit in the "nave", the ship, and if one is in the Navy one sails in a "navum", a ship, and proceeds to "navigate."

A ship is meant to sail. One of the most forlorn sights I know is seeing a ship rotting in a forgotten dry-dock. It has lost its purpose, and perhaps it has even forgotten how to sail.

A church is such a ship.

A church is meant to voyage, to go out, and not stay in dry dock where it would seen to be safe where in reality it slowly rots. A church is meant for the open water, sailing towards a promise, a new people, a new test of faith, a new horizon, where we do not know what awaits.

Paul chooses that same sort of voyage today as he preaches on Mars Hill in Athens. He has sailed far, has Saul the Pharisee, and he is a long way from Judah with its fiery zealots and its Temple observing the sacrificial law of the Torah. He is in Gentile-town, Goyim City. Surrounded by idols of every shape and description, highly questionable sexual morals to an upright son of Israel, a babble of ideas and philosophy and poetry and debate, and probably there was pulled pork in the food carts by the road. Athens. Makes you feel ritually impure just to say the name. A lot of his brothers would have spat on the ground and walked out, looking for some kosher food and the company of some decent monotheists.

Not our Paul. He launches out into this choppy Gentile sea, speaks to the opportunity presented by that poignant altar "To an Unknown God", quotes their own poets to them. He takes that voyage. Moments like this preserved the Gospel from dying in the second century as some obscure Jewish cult.

And today we approach the great sea-launching of the church, the feast of the Ascension. On that day we remember that the early Jesus-movement needed to learn to sail without their captain visibly present at the helm. The mystery of the Ascension is one of absence, of the early movement finding themselves apparently alone at sea, with the next direction theirs to choose.

It matters how one navigates, to not be blown around by the "lunatic wind." And so we get our sailing instructions today. "Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence." "If you love me, keep my commandments." The church is blown about by the lunatic wind if we allow fear or resentment or nostalgia to take the helm.

Our lives are such voyages. As we each raise the sails each new day, take the commandments of God, the power of the Gospel, as sailing-instructions. Sail with purpose.

Our congregation is on such a voyage. For some years we bobbed about like Brendan drifting around the British Isles on his first voyage. We stayed attuned to the wind. It was hard work and not an easy time. But it was an important time.

But now we sail with purpose. We have a horizon at which we aim. Our vision, a "re-birth" as a bi-cultural and bi-lingual congregation, is a purpose and a goal. There will be a lot of sailing-time involved. We do not know what lies beneath the horizon-line in the West.

But we sail with purpose. So let's make sure we take the sailing-instructions we need. The commandments of God, the strength and promise of the Gospel, the promise of the Advocate, the Spirit who comes richly to those who wait and pray in faith. Let's take all of us, with all of our gifts. Let's take the many friends we have made in our life lived here, whom we do not see on Sundays but who support us and give us encouragement. Like Brendan let's take 3 unbelievers along too, just because, and besides they keep us honest and we like them. "Gentleness and reverence" are the order of the day.

And let's take Brendan the Bold, and crusty old Columba of the misty isle, and all those who wish to join our company and add their strength and their faith. They are a strong and wise company. They speak many languages--lately they've been speaking as much Spanish as English and old Gaelic.

We sail with purpose. We do not know the land to which we sail. But we know a land has been promised.