atlantic crossing

recently at a silent auction for my son's school band, i bought a lump of coal.

not just any coal, mind you- this was actual r.m.s. titanic coal (bearing its own numbered certificate of authenticity and everything) that had been collected from the bottom of the atlantic ocean by entrepreneurial excavation crews. i bid against another pastor and eventually won the auction- which, of course, meant that i was no obligated to buy the item... sure showed him!

however, like with most things, this led to that which led to something else and i found myself pondering an image in my heart: all those people, floating in the cold…

romans 7.14-25 speaks of the writer's exasperation with being a sinful man. he has already acknowledged back in romans 3.23 that 'all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God' but what seems to really be getting his goat is the fact that he feels powerless to break his habitual 'falling short'...

no matter how hard he tries
no matter how strong his resolve
he cannot save himself.

if it were an email, he would probably hit the caps lock button before typing verse twenty four, where his frustration with himself comes to an explosive climax:

WHO WILL RESCUE ME FROM THIS BODY OF DEATH?

who indeed?

all those people floating in the cold...

speaking of atlantic crossings, emma lazarus wrote an invitation that has been immortalized by its placement upon the statue of liberty, but which could be very appropriately placed upon any church sign:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

this seems to paraphrase Jesus' words in matthew 11.28-30 about the weak and the tired finding rest. the problem is that, were we to place either the poem or Christ's words on the church sign, the question that would still hang in the air for me is who would come in response to this?

or perhaps, more cynically:
what right have we earned to invite?

rick mckinley, the tattooed pastor of imago dei in portland oregon, said recently to someone from leadership journal that

Our goal is not to create a community of volunteers; the goal is to glorify the king by doing what he’s called us to do. We’re in a story that’s been going on for thousands of years… The story of Jesus putting the world back together through the gospel.

all those people floating in the cold, with a small, fortunate few sitting in lifeboats; fear over what will happen if the lifeboats go back and try to rescue those in the water; dismay of some over the self-centred reticence of the rest in the sparsely filled boats to go back and rescue the perishing; frustration of those in one boat going back with how many have been lost because the rescue took too long to organize, with help and hope coming too late to all those people floating in the cold...

(note: this youtube clip was the best i could find... however, it has been hacked a little and misses some important dialogue between molly brown and the people in her lifeboat regarding social responsibility and fear. it also has, for some reason, been edited to no longer contain the lifeboat leader's key line of regret: "we waited too long". just rent or buy the movie and watch it- the clip serves as a loose reference only! ha ha.)

perhaps this is what Jesus meant when he said
the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few...
(matthew 9.37)

in any event, i don't think i'll ever be able to watch the final moments of titanic without feeling a sense of urgent responsibility for all those people floating in the cold.