1 Samuel 17.57-18.5, 10-16, Mark 4.35-41
Bridestowe, Lydford, Trinity 3, 24/6/2012
What sort of boat did Jesus use to cross Lake Galilee?
I shall return to that question very soon. But first, an observation.
People love an underdog. A David defeating a Goliath. The unexpected victor. Managers of England football teams like to play up their underdog status, partly to protect themselves against the backlash when they lose, partly because it adds greatly to the celebrations if they win.
People love to see a shepherd-boy become a king. We enjoy watching the process through which David initially wins the trust of King Saul, and eventually usurps him. All Israel and Judah loved David, during, and long, long after his lifetime. Every political and military triumph those nations enjoyed has been in some way credited to him. Even today in Israel every death inflicted on their enemies is seen as a triumph of David. People love an underdog who shares their values and wins their battles for them.
But people are far more ambivalent about underdogs who refuse to do things in the accepted way.
Take pirates, for instance. The underdogs of the waves. Men who had been brutalized at the hands of cruel masters, rebelling against their cruel treatment, taking over their ships and introducing a new regime, more equitable and humane than the regimes which the royal and merchant captains had run. Society demonised these pirates, unexpected victors against unjust employers. Society was scandalised by their violent plundering of goods not their own, although they were only mimicking the activity of their establishment masters. But society was more scandalised that they’d rebelled against the establishment, society was disturbed by pirates because they’d judged their former paymasters to be rotten to the core, and established a Pirate Code which was far more humane than anything they’d ever been subjected to before - which treated men as equals, protected the vulnerable amongst them, ensured fair shares for all.
Pirates are ambiguous underdog heroes not primarily because of their brutality - for the kings and corporations were even more brutal in maintaining their rule of the waves. Pirates are ambiguous underdog heroes because they pronounced themselves dead to the ways of the kings and corporations, and alive to a new way of living. People are ambivalent about pirates, underdogs who refuse to do things in the accepted way.
Many of our churchyards have gravestones which contain the image of a skull. Standing before one of these one day a schoolboy asked me, ‘Was that person a pirate?’ For the skull is implanted in our consciousness as a pirate image. I explained the difference between the Christian skull and the pirate skull. The skulls on Christian gravestones have wings - pirate skulls do not. Skulls with wings express the Christian faith in an afterlife, the dead rising to live in eternity with God. Skulls without wings, pirates skulls, simply say, ‘we are the dead, we are dead to this world and its ways, its death threats no longer trouble us because we have found a new way to be, which has liberated us’.
Pirate ships fly the Jolly Roger, the skull and crossbones, to announce that they have freed themselves from the shackles of death - the ways of a corrupt world - and though they expect to live only a short while longer, their Pirate’s Code ensures that they will live freely, equally and liberated. Today’s creaking world economic system is based on the exploitation of the poor for the benefit of the privileged and rich, and seeing this, feeling it deeply, many people’s ambivalence about pirates is becoming admiration, many people are yearning to remove themselves from the shackles of this terribly unjust system to find new ways of being human, and humane.
And so I return to the question with which I began this talk. What sort of boat did Jesus use to cross Lake Galilee?
The answer, I suggest, is that the boat which Jesus sailed in was a pirate boat.
I suggest this because in Jesus’ boat death - and the fear of death - had no power, no force. In Jesus’ storm-tossed boat some cried, ‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?’ And he challenged them to embrace faith, faith which overcomes mortal fear, faith which eclipses death. The occupants of Jesus’ boat are to live as if death is not...
I suggest that Jesus’ boat was a pirate boat because his way opposes the ways of a corrupt world. In the extract from Mark’s gospel we heard today Jesus says to his disciples, ‘Let us go across to the other side’. Geography and movement are symbolically significant in Mark’s gospel. So, ‘Let us go across to the other side’: let us leave behind us the ways of the empire, its kings and corporations and priests, its exploitation of the poor for the benefit of the privileged and rich, let us direct ourselves towards another way of living where we treat each other as equals, where we free each other to be fully ourselves, where we are encouraged in fellowship, sustained in community.
The teachings of Jesus are pirate teachings. People are ambivalent about them because whilst they find them attractive they fear making the crossing which Jesus demands. It’s a deep, deep, challenge, being an occupant of Jesus’ boat and learning how to live as if death is not...
... and yet more and more people are willing to face that challenge today. Changing their lifestyle to detach themselves as much as possible from the demands of capital; changing their attitude to embrace others into lives no longer limited, privatised, enclosed.
One of the stand-out songs of the influential American gospel musician Larry Norman contemplates Jesus’ pirate status. It begins,
Some say he was an outlaw, that he roamed across the land,
With a band of unschooled ruffians and few old fishermen,
No one knew just where he came from, or exactly what he'd done,
But they said it must be something bad that kept him on the run.
They would say that, those who were challenged by his rebuttal of their deathly ways. They would say that, those who wanted to place Jesus in the line of David and make him a messianic king. But it wasn’t anything bad that kept him on the run. It was something extremely good - his and his Father’s care for their creation, his liberating love for all humankind, his desire to establish the rule of the kingdom of heaven on earth.
This is where Jesus moves beyond piracy, for his ways are not of violence but of peace. ‘Peace! Be still!’ He rebukes the winds and waves and there is dead calm.
Hear him speaking those commanding words into the storms of today - ‘Peace! be still!’ to Syria, to Palestine, to the rocking waves of the global economic market. Hear him speaking those commanding words into the storms of your heart - ‘Peace! be still!’ to you and all that you fear. Pirates shook their fists at death and raised a flag in defiance of those who use death threats to hold on to power; but Jesus gave himself up to death so as to completely overcome it - his resurrection releases a whole new power into the world, enabling us live as if death is not...
So hear him speak peace to those who want to make the crossing, to begin to explore a new way of living, a new way of being, but fear taking the first step: ‘Peace! be still!’ he says, embracing them as they climb aboard the imperishable vessel of the everlasting kingdom.
Note
This talk owes a lot to the influence of Kester Brewin’s book, Mutiny! Why We Love Pirates, And How They Can Save Us. Also a nod in the direction of Jack Nelson-Pallmayer’s Jesus Against Christianity: Reclaiming the Missing Jesus. Listen to Larry Norman's The Outlaw on YouTube.
Comments