When the boat feels small

You can listen to Matt read this post in audio format here:

8 minute read

From Epiphany (Jan 6) through Ash Wednesday (Mar 2 this year), we’re going to follow the schedule of the Matthew Bible Study. When we gather together around the common table, we’ll discover more about Jesus. In our study of Matthew last week we were looking at the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-6), so this coming Sunday we’ll explore the passage where Jesus talks about anxiety (Matthew 6:25-34).

Was there ever a time when you talked about Jesus with a friend who doesn’t know him, and that conversation brought you and your friend hope?

Let me give you a story to illustrate.

I’ve got a not-Christian friend (more of an acquaintance, perhaps) who used to work at a homeless health clinic in San Fransisco. I saw her a few weeks ago, and when she heard me talk about Spring Church, she immediately grew animated and had a lot of energy around some very specific failings of our current community engagement with people experiencing homelessness. She talked about the failings of the Lighthouse Mission, the inadequacies of the Opportunity Council, and the obviousness of where money should be spent.

I loved the lively conversation, but I wondered how much hope my friend felt for our community.

And, I gotta admit, it does feel overwhelming to look at the immensity of the need alongside the minuscule response. Talking with my friend, I felt a twinge of fear when she clearly described how bad the situation is. Homelessness and poverty is a storm is too big and too powerful for us.

But I know where my hope is: My hope is a person. (Jesus)

artwork by John Cahhana

So the observations I made to my friend were the kind of continual observations we make at Spring Church to help us remember who we are and whose we are. “Look, all these organizations are doing great work, and they need to keep going, and we’re both going to keep supporting them. And yet, as a Christian, I want to walk in the direction Jesus is walking. When I do, I discover that…

Jesus often uses people I overlook, don’t expect, or don’t like to help us do that as a community. We need each other.

So if I simply do things FOR people experiencing homelessness, I’m going to get overwhelmed and burned out. Instead, we’re cultivating a community where people can do things WITH people experiencing homelessness, and put our hope in a person (Jesus) rather than our circumstances.”

And in that moment, sitting with her, we both had the opportunity to sit with Jesus as the one who give us hope, and consider what it looks like to walk in the direction Jesus is walking in. Just to be clear, the moment didn’t last particularly long. I could tell she hadn’t spent much time thinking about reciprocity with people, or walking in the direction Jesus was walking in, as part of a response to an issue as big and scary as homelessness. The twinge of fear I felt was comforted by the reality of who Jesus is and the sort of life Jesus invites us into.

There’s a hope that I felt in my friend’s presence, and she could pick up on that, too.

It was a brief moment, but it happened, and I wonder what our next conversation will be like.

At Spring Church, we define Common Discipleship as “walking in the direction Jesus is walking in.”

That simple definition comes from multiple stories in the bible where people are invited to walk with God if they want to become a disciple. “Follow me” is the thing we do in response to what Jesus is doing. If we think of the issue of homelessness as a storm too big and too powerful for this tiny boat we’re in, then let’s look at a story of discipleship involving hope, a boat, a storm, and discipleship.

Matthew 8:18-27 (translation mine)

And Jesus, seeing the huge crowd around him, gave orders to head to the other side of the lake. One of the Bible Teachers responded to him by saying, “I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus replied, “The foxes have their burrows and the birds of heaven have nests, but the Son of Man doesn’t have any ‘where’ to lay his head.” Another of the disciples said to him, “Lord, let me first go bury my father.” And Jesus said to him, “Follow me and let the dead bury their own dead.”
Then he got in a boat, his disciples followed him.
And check this out! A huge storm hit the lake, so big that the boat was swamped by the waves, but Jesus was asleep. They responded by waking him up and saying, “Lord! Save us! We’re being destroyed!” Jesus answered them, “Why are y’all afraid, O Ye Of Little Faith?” Then he got up, glared at the waves, and peace fell on the lake like a hammer on an anvil. Everyone was gobsmacked. “Who is this guy? Even the wind and the sea obey him!”

I’d like to start by observing that Jesus sees a huge crowd and gives orders to leave.

Jesus could’ve stayed and continued healing and teaching, but he doesn’t do that.

Instead, Jesus gives us a glimpse into what life in his Kingdom is like. I love the way Bruner describes why Jesus would be moving away from the crowds and into the storm: “Jesus may have felt that if the ‘crowds’ of the world were to be helped in-depth, in soul and not just in body and mind, he had to do something deeper than heal; he had to make disciples.” {1} Sailing into this storm was part of his plan for making disciples.

Personally, I wish he would use calm, warm, easy-breezy sailing to make disciples.

So if Jesus is going to use this storm to show us how he makes disciples, and if we define discipleship as ‘walking in the direction Jesus is walking in,’ then what is the next thing a disciple should do after Jesus gives this order? Get it in the boat. Seems kinda obvious, right?

If our hope is in Jesus, and not in our circumstances, and Jesus is getting in the boat (and orders us to do the same), then we should get in the boat too.

Well, that’s not what happens. Instead, we have two would-be disciples who demonstrate two things that compete for our hope in Jesus. I find both of these responses attractive when I feel hopeless. Many of us do.

First, the Bible Teacher (Some translations call this character in the story a “scribe” or a “teacher of the law,” but I think “Bible Teacher” captures this role in modern terms pretty nicely) doesn’t respond by getting in the boat. The Bible Teacher responds with a grand gesture of eloquent words. Jesus gives orders, and the Bible Teacher says he’ll go wherever, and Jesus says he doesn’t have any ‘where.’

The ‘where’ that the Bible Teacher is inside the boat, but the Bible Teacher doesn’t want to get in.

I find this response incredibly attractive, especially when I think about the storm of homelessness in our community. I love grand gestures, I love planning strategies, I love meetings with people who share this passion. And all that is important, to an extent, sometimes Jesus is inviting us to draw closer to the storms of life, and the people we find there, and the boat Jesus offers us seems teeny-tiny.

Second, one of the disciples (Not one of the Twelve, but someone the story identifies as someone who had been walking with them. There were more than just the Twelve traveling with Jesus in many of these stories!) gives an incredibly good excuse. One of the best excuses a person in this time period could give for not getting in the boat: honoring his father through burial.

I find this response incredibly attractive as well, in light of the storm of homelessness in our community. When the storm feels huge and the boat feels tiny and hoping in Jesus isn’t quite up to the task, all of a sudden I find myself focusing on all sorts of other important priorities. Many of them are in alignment with scripture.

The Faster Scale calls this “Speeding Up,” and it’s a way that I can numb myself with work rather than draw closer to the scary places Jesus invites me.

Instead of those two responses, Jesus’ disciples (probably the Twelve, as well as others…. we don’t know how many) get into the boat.

At this point in the story, I’m reminded of one of my favorite quotes, from John Swinton…

“The fragile boats of middle class friendship are not built for the storms of life.”{2}

As I sat with my friend, and as I experienced this tension of both wanting to do more for the homeless while feeling awe and fear at the size of the issues, I could feel the disparity between the size of the boat and the size of the storm.

How might Jesus be inviting us into the little boat and closer to the storm?

Well, I certainly want something stronger than the flimsy boats my common friends are sailing in. God so often uses the invisible, the unexpected, and the overlooked to disciple us, and if I’m going closer to a storm, that’s who I want to go with. I have so much to learn from my friends experiencing homelessness about honesty and vulnerability in the broken places in life. I have so much to learn from my friends with disabilities about unconditional love and the gentleness of God. My older friends teach me about delight, and my younger friends teach me about patience. And there’s a place for me among these friends, too.

This is the kind of boat I want to be in. And, hey, gotta be honest, it still feels teeny tiny compared to the storms of life.

But there is hope in this boat, tiny as this boat may be. Not because of us or who we are or what we’re doing, as important as those things may be. We have hope because of Jesus. When I talked with my friend about homelessness in Bellingham, things felt pretty hopeless until I brought up Jesus. In talking about Jesus, I was able to point my friend towards a love that is bigger than the storm of homelessness in Bellingham.

As Jesus sends us out into our community, I wonder how Jesus might be inviting us to discover how to talk about him in a way that brings his hope to relationships around us?

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Footnotes

{1} Frederick Dale Bruner, Matthew: A Commentary. Volume 1: The Christbook - Matthew 1-12. Eerdmans: Grand Rapids MI, 2nd ed. 2007, p. 393

{2} I looked through my books by Swinton, and couldn’t find it in his writings. He said this in a class I took with him at Regent College, called “Re-imagining Disability and the Church” from 13-17 May. I love this quote, as it succinctly captures something profound: The people with the best ‘boats’ for vulnerability and authenticity are the people in recovery, not the mainstream people.