On Some Island

On Some Island

It is good to be back at AST and to join you in chapel… especially in this Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, an annual event supported by the World Council of Churches of which the Canadian Council of Churches is a member organization. Midday services have occurred throughout this week, our final service will be tomorrow at St. Matthew’s United at 12:15—all are most welcome to join us. The theme for this year’s Week of Prayer was developed by Christians in Malta—an island nation with a population of about 475,000. 

I have enjoyed this year’s Week of Prayer because the focus passage of Scripture chosen by the Maltese people is Acts 27:19—28:10. I encourage you to take time to read the entire passage which chronicles a terrific storm at sea that left Paul and a ship full of people stranded on Malta. I will note that this passage does not appear in the Revised Common Lectionary, nor the Narrative Lectionary… Which is interesting, here we have a fantastic story that is a central, founding story for the church in Malta and yet most churches in Canada have never even read or heard this story in the context of worship. Unusual kindness… that is how Acts 28:2 describes the hospitality of the people of Malta—unusual kindness…

Enough with the introductions… join me now in prayer.

We will have to run aground on some island…

Our primary lesson today ends as the Apostle Paul attempts to calm a ship of 276 passengers in the midst of a prolonged storm on the Mediterranean Sea. The storm has raged for days… the winds whirled into cyclones… thick clouds concealed the stars and sun—all sense of direction lost… fear swelled—were the winds blowing the ship into the Syris—a zone of shallow waters and quicksand that struck dread in the most seasoned sailors. Already the ship’s crew has taken extraordinary measures to strengthen the ship—wrapping ropes around the hull to help hold the ship together… For more than fourteen days the storm raged and amidst this raging storm, when hope’s last glimmers were about to succumb to the pounding waves, Paul dreamed—perhaps delirious with exhaustion—Paul dreamed and in his dream a Messenger of God appeared… A messenger who assured Paul that all lives would be preserved, even though the ship would not survive the storm… 

We will have to run aground on some island… 

Welcome to the rock… At approximately 9:26 a.m. on September 11, 2001—a beautiful morning over the North Atlantic… Captain Beverly Bass received notice that the airways above the United States had closed, her Boeing 777 passenger aircraft that had taken off in Paris destined for Dallas, Texas was diverted to the sprawling metropolis of Gander, Newfoundland. The diversion was not caused by a storm in the heavens, but by a storm within humanity… a storm of human division and terror…

Bass landed her plane at approximately 10:00 am and, because of security concerns, she had to keep all passengers aboard the plane for the next 28 hours—which sounds to me about as miserable as being at sea in a storm… Finally, Captain Bass, and her passengers were allowed to deplane along with passengers and crew from 38 planes that had been diverted to Gander… all of whom found themselves welcomed by the local people (a small community of about 10,000). Run aground on some island—most of the 6,579 stranded crew and passengers who found themselves on the rock of Newfoundland had no idea where in the world they were… stranded for five days while they awaited the airspace to re-open (they learned the hard way that the options for getting off the island are limited).

Welcome to the Rock, that is the opening song of the musical, Come From Away, its Irish beat has been going through my mind all week as we have gathered for worship services in this week of Prayer for Christian Unity…  You likely know that Come From Away tells the story of the “unusual kindness” offered by the people of Gander to disoriented and frightened strangers following the terrorist attacks on 9/11… the musical tells real stories that capture the best of humanity in a time when most of the world was affixed on images of the worst of our human story…. From Gander—Stories of hospitality, of a small town rounding up enough food and toilet paper for their unexpected guests… of strangers overcoming fear of the other, creating places of prayer for Muslim passengers while a Rabbi in the crowd of strangers helped a local from Gander reconnect to his Jewish tradition… stories of strangers from different nations falling in love, eventually marrying… stories of come from aways taking part in the high holy ritual of Newfoundland known as a Screech-in: kissing a cod and taking a shot of screech, a local rum.

Welcome to the Rock… the musical starts… if you come from away, you’ll probably understand about half of what we say… fish and chips and shipwreks, this is Newfoundland… You are here at the start of a moment, on the edge of the world…

The Irish beat, Welcome to the Rock, has been thrumming through my head all week as we have reflected on the hospitality given to Paul and his shipmates on the Island of Malta… the text of Acts tells us that Paul and the other 275 passengers were the recipients of “unusual kindness”… hospitality that sustained them for three months as they awaited safe passage on their journey to Rome… The text does not give us a lot of detail about these three months in Malta—except that the people opened their lives to the shipwrecked strangers and in turn, Paul offered healing to those in need…

Few other details are provided—we do not know how Paul and company were housed and fed, we do not know if any among the stranded fell in love with a local… we do not know if there were local rituals involving kissing a gilt head bream fish, chasing the kiss with a glass of Maltese wine… In fact, we do not even know much about Paul’s ministry there—the text says he healed those who were ill, but it does not tell us he preached…. The New Testament contains no letter to the Church in Malta. We do know that today some 95% of the Maltese people are Christian… every February 10 they celebrate the Feast of the Shipwreck of St. Paul with parades and fireworks as they process a seventeenth century wooden statue of the Apostle Paul through the streets of their capital. 

No, we do not know many details about the three months Paul and the shipwrecked strangers spent in Malta… but in my own imagination, the “unusual kindness” offered looked something like the unusual kindness offered by the people of Gander… kindness offered to strangers in the midst of storms… 

The final chapters of Acts focus a good bit of attention on the worst of humanity… Paul’s final journey is shaped by stories of religious people in conflict with one another (fighting over doctrine)… stories of broken political systems… stories reminding us that justice is so often out of the reach of ordinary people… But amidst this story of some of the worst of human community, there is this three months of unusual kindness, a story that captures the best of humanity.

As I think of the people of Gander and the people of Malta, I cannot help but think of our calling as the people of Jesus… our calling at a time when storms seem to be raging all around us…

Literally, storms are raging with new fury in the wake of devastating climate change—Acts speaks of whirling winds at sea, recent news out of Australia included reports of fire-whirls, whirlwinds caused by raging fires…  

Political and religious tensions are high in many parts of our world—assassinations, misfired missiles, civil wars, warring religious factions, cartels, human trafficking, Brexit, impeachment, a resurgence of white nationalism… all of these fuelling storms of unrest…

Refugees fleeing dangerous parts of the world—even the good people of Malta are struggling to respond to the wave of migrants fleeing North Africa on unsafe vessels in the Mediterranean Sea… one small storm on the Mediterranean Sea enough to drown an over-crowded raft of migrants…

And while so much of this turmoil can seem distant from the shores of Nova Scotia, we know that even in Halifax we are welcoming immigrants and refugees fleeing the storms of their homelands (and thousands mores remain on waiting lists to come)… surrounded by the ocean, we are rightly anxious about rising waters and changing climates—the recent news of the mill in Pictou a reminder how complicated matters are—positive steps toward environmental and racial justice are made, and yet hundreds of families are left devastated at the loss of employment… In our own city we are not immune to a new storm of loneliness rocking urban communities in the wake of changing patterns of employment and family dynamics… and even the church, long symbolized as a ship afloat the waters, a place of safe refuge… even the church is a ship that feels like it is being rocked by swelling waves it could not have imagined just a generation ago…

Amidst these storms that threaten our neighbours, our churches, you and me… amidst the barrage of news that too often highlights the worst of human community—we need to remember the people of Gander and the people of Malta… they remind us, don’t they, what it looks like to be the people of Jesus amidst the storm. What higher calling do we have then to show “unusual kindness” to our neighbours… to lead the churches we serve to be places of refuge (that is actually the meaning of the name Malta-place of refuge)… the church should be a refuge where strangers are welcomed and the best of human community is found. We should be places of joy, and love, and laughter and healing… reflections of the realm of God.

I watched Come from Away in the West End of London last September… It was interesting being an American citizen who vividly remembers the morning of 9/11 and now a Permanent Resident of Canada who now knows a few Newfoundlanders… it was interesting being an American-Canadian amongst a crowd of Londoners celebrating the hospitality of Gander… people were visibly moved, filled with good cheer by the simple story of humans welcomed with unusual kindness in the midst of an international storm… in a world where storms are raging, people crave islands of unusual kindness where the best of humanity can thrive.

We will have to run aground on some island… my hope is that our churches might unite around a vision of kindness so that we can be islands of refuge for our neighbours—places where community thrives even in the middle of raging storms.

 

*Image is of the annual Feast of St. Paul’s Shipwreck held in Malta on February 10

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