Seafaring stories have long captured the imagination, and the Bible is no different. People might appear like gods walking on the firmness of Earth, but put them in even the largest ship on the vastness of the ocean and suddenly they seem small. Even the hubris that surrounded the Titanic, the “unsinkable” ship, was found wanting against the uncontrollable forces of wind and wave.
So, of course, we find Paul caught up in a seafaring tale that includes a harrowing dance with death and a dramatic shipwreck. From a literary perspective, Acts 27 is gripping—you can feel the hurricane-like wind that rips them from the safety of the lee side of the island and sets them adrift in the wine-darkened sea, heading helplessly into only God knows where. You can see panicked sailors scrambling up the mast to reef the mainsail, lash cables around the beam, and drop sea anchors into the water to keep the ship from running too fast with the waves. You can feel a ship that is doomed. It feels like something I have read in Patrick O’Brian’s classic sea novels about Captain Jack Aubrey. (He was made famous in the movie Master and Commander starring Russell Crowe.) Sailing didn’t change much from the time of Paul’s adventure through the seventeen hundreds.
What is the point of all of this great writing? The gospel, finding itself in the most unlikely community—Paul, as a living and breathing representative of his savior, in the midst of the saltiest community yet—sailors. It is as astounding as it is unlikely but, then again, God seems to delight in this sort of thing. Join me Sunday as we sail with Paul on a doomed ship and see the mystery of God’s providence and kindness in the strangest of places.
Also, Sunday is a big day! We have lots of people joining, baptisms inside and outside—lashing people to the mast of this local expression of God’s kingdom, made real in Collierville.
Blessings,
Jim