Church on the Choppy Seas: Man the Rescue Boats! (Titus 3:12-15)

Out on the wide expanse of the Mediterranean. Vivid blue above and below. Ordinarily, the sea would be such a beautiful scene. Over and over again. But over and over again, tragedy has played itself out. Cries of distress. Floundering, flailing. Inflatable boats or small vessels, simply packed beyond what they can reasonably bear. They set out on the journey, but never make it the full way to harbor – not on their own. Aboard, a throng, sardine-tight, of tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The stories they could tell – stories of horror, stories of fear, stories of pain and bloodshed, poverty and woe and starvation, indignity stacked upon indignity. No one can blame them for setting out in quest of a better harbor. But they cannot make it as they are. The voyage is too much. And so the tragic scene plays itself out. Over and over again.

The starboard bow of their little inflatable dinghy collapses. They start taking on water. Some are dead – dead of drowning, dead of disease, dead of dehydration. Panic sets in. What have they gotten into? What has become of their journey? The shrieks rise from the choppy seas. They hadn't been told it would be like this. They had been deceived. Word had been that the journey would last mere hours – that it was scarcely greater than crossing a river. But they had not known boats to collapse this way in crossing a river. They had not seen this in Libya. They had not seen this in Syria. They had not seen this in Nigeria or Sudan. They had not seen this in the old country. It was not so simple. But they gambled all they had on this perilous voyage. Some hoped for safety and protection. More still hoped for prosperity hitherto unknown. None hoped to capsize, fracture, sink beneath the waves. Mothers lift their infants high as Mediterranean blue engulfs their laps.

Over and over again, the scene plays itself out. Not always with the same ending. There are, sorrow of sorrows, tellings of the tale that end beneath the waves. Cries for help drift off into dead air. It's not that water rises, but that their floating world ceases to float. Adrift, they try in vain to swim. But miles, nautical miles, separate them from all behind and all before. The spreading blue surrounds them, soaks them, saturates them. The spreading blue penetrates their lungs. Oxygen cut off, they go cold, they lose consciousness, their brains and hearts cease. Death claims another, and another, and another. The mighty sea has proven itself once more victor over puny man.

Over and over again. But not always with the same ending. There are tellings of the tale that do not end beneath the waves, unheard. Not all cries for help drift off into dead air. There are ships that trawl the blue sea for just such a time as this. In the silver moonlight or the dawning rays of day, they hear the calls and cries. They deploy their rapid-response boats, with two- or three-person teams. They aid the drowning sufferers, giving them words of calm and hands of help. They bring them aboard safely, reclaim them from the sea. The sea will not be victor over these. Intervention has come. Rescue has come. Volunteers – doctors, mechanics, therapists, firefighters, merchants – give of their time and effort to save those they can. Their teams approach on small rapid-response boats and bring those rescued aboard the bigger ship, which takes them toward safety at last, no more to drown beneath the waves. For those who know themselves rescued, they weep with joy, they embrace, they sink to their knees and pray gratefully to God – and, at last, they sleep the sleep of the redeemed.

Over and over again. But not always with the same ending. There are tellings of the tale where cries are heard – and still the story ends beneath the waves. In October 2013, a ship with hundreds of Syrian and Libyan refugees capsized sixty-one nautical miles south of the Italian island of Lampedusa. It had been damaged; people were hurt. For five hours, survivors of the initial wreck used their phones to call authorities, alert them to their plight. But authorities bickered. None could decide whose responsibility these were – the Italians, closer but without agreed-upon jurisdiction, or the more distant Maltese, with their nearest ship over three times as far as the closest Italian one. Some authorities simply refused to help at all. In the end, by the time the Italian authorities relented and permitted their Coast Guard to respond, time had run out for most. The death toll was measured in the hundreds. Dozens of casualties were children. All lost to the sea, not through inevitability or ignorance, but bound and strangled by red tape, consigned to the deep by decision and default.

Since mid-January, we've been exploring what Paul's letter to Vice-Admiral Titus, commander of the church fleet of Crete, tells us about the voyage of the church. Titus' fleet then, and our church now, has to sail through choppy seas filled with toxic and polluted waters. We can't make our voyage without the culture being there – and yet its pollution is a danger that can make us spiritually sick if we don't maintain a healthy spiritual diet and don't swab the decks clean of contaminants like false teachings. On our voyage, we have the truthful promises of God as our sure anchor, since we have a God who never lies. We have a hull that's been cleansed and sealed by the Holy Spirit through the baptismal waters. We see, piercing the fog and darkness, the light of grace from the lighthouse of Christ, who beckons us toward the safe harbor of his promised land, the new creation. In the meantime, we have, I hope, officers aboard the ship who maintain discipline on deck and steer our ship well; we aim to steer clear of the crags that would endanger and divide us; and we look upwards to the star-chart of the pattern of Jesus' life to see the way we should navigate the open waters of this world.

All that would seem to answer all our basic questions about the voyage we're on – and, make no mistake, there is no way around it, the church is on just such a voyage. If you are really on-board, so are you. You are part of this crew. You have responsibilities as part of this crew. You have something to do to help all of us make this journey a good one. Don't go sailing off aimlessly on your own. Don't go diving for a needless swim in toxic waters. Don't take hatchet to the cabins, don't make a mess on the deck, don't be absent from Sunday roll call. We are on a voyage. And we're in it together. We're aboard this ship, a particular ship of our own, but not of our own property. We belong to a greater Commander, whom even Admiral Paul and Vice-Admiral Titus serve. And we belong to a fleet – in our case, the EC fleet, and the local flotilla – as well as to a far greater navy – the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.

In this fleet, in this navy, each church-ship is aimed – or is commanded to aim, at least – for the same ultimate harbor. That's our goal, in the end: to make it, not just to any land, not just to a dry and desolate wasteland, not to any old hellscape – and that's what so many destinations would prove to be – but we aim to find harbor at God's promised land, his everlasting rest, where in his presence is fullness of joy and in his hand are pleasures forever (Psalm 16:11). We hear the voice of the inspired exhortation: “There remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God … Let us therefore strive to enter that rest” (Hebrews 4:9-11). And that is the hoped-for end of our voyage. We know the day will come when the navy has been fully docked, and all aboard will disembark into the arms of God. But we have the responsibility of guiding our church, in conjunction with its local flotilla and its denominational fleet, toward the harbor.

And yet there are questions we're left with. Not every aspect of our voyage has yet been covered by the Apostle Paul and his instructions. And he's got fewer verses left than I've got fingers on one hand! What's more to tell? What else did Vice-Admiral Titus near to hear? What else can we benefit from gleaning from this manual of the Navy of Christ?

Paul leaves Titus with some key personal instructions: “When I send Artemas or Tychicus to you, do your best to come to me at Nicopolis, for I have decided to spend the winter there. Do your best to speed Zenas the lawyer and Apollos on their way; see that they lack nothing” (Titus 3:12-13). Titus' service as Vice-Admiral of the Fleet of Christ in Crete was drawing to its end; he had another assignment, a new posting, of which he was being notified. He was to join Paul at Nicopolis, on the western coast of mainland Greece, to do work there for the coming winter. Titus had perhaps a month or two to finish his work in Crete before passing the baton. He'd know the deadline had come when either Artemas or Tychicus dropped by with the latest orders. Of the former, we know nothing; Tychicus gets mentioned in Acts and four of Paul's letters. He's from Asia Minor; he sailed with Paul on his later journeys (Acts 20:4); he was the messenger who delivered Paul's letters to the Ephesians and to the Colossians, since he was from that area to begin with; Paul calls him a “beloved brother and faithful minister and fellow servant in the Lord” (Colossians 4:7). But probably Paul sent Artemas to Titus, because not long after this, Paul sent Tychicus back to Ephesus (2 Timothy 4:12).

In the meantime, Titus could expect to see some other faces. Apollos was an outstanding missionary; I suspect, though don't take this as gospel, that he's the author of Hebrews. Luke describes him as “an eloquent man, competent in the scriptures,” whose learning was a mighty flame because he was also “boiling in the Spirit” (Acts 18:24-25). Wherever he went, “he greatly helped those who through grace had believed” (Acts 18:27). Of Zenas, we know nothing but that his legal training, whether Roman or Jewish, would have been helpful in a place like Crete, filled with “quarrels about the law” (Titus 3:9) and a place where Paul had to stress that Jesus came to “redeem us from all lawlessness” (Titus 2:14). Maybe Apollos and Zenas carried Paul's letter to Titus; but they couldn't stay long, they had other places to be.

What Titus is facing is the reality of transition. Soon there'd be a new vice-admiral for the fleet of Christ in Crete. Even now, he saw helpers come and go. They all served in the same navy, but – as orders were given – they moved from one fleet to another, from one ship to the next. That happens sometimes: people transfer from our ship to another, and from another to ours. Ideally it should be rare – each ship's crew has work to do on that ship. But sometimes transfer orders come and have to be answered. We need to recognize that we're all of the same navy, if we all answer to the same Christ Jesus, if we're all baptized into the same Spirit (Ephesians 4:4-6). We've seen transitions, we will see transitions. All we can do is to bid each other well, to help each other get where God needs them to be, and while they're with us, “see that they lack nothing.”

Our ship should never be at odds with other ships in the same navy. I'm not talking about those pirate ships that falsely fly our colors, so that they can delude us and rob us of the riches of our faith – you know the sort I mean. But I mean that our church is not meant to see other churches as competitors. And too often, we lapse into that kind of thinking. We view members as a finite resource, and freely poach from other ships – well, our business is not to grow via 'sheep stealing,' is it? Nor, I pray to God, will other bigger ships poach from our crew and call it victory. We are not to divide church from church, ship from ship. For this reason, Paul ends his letter with those simple and lovely words: “All who are with me send greetings to you. Greet those who love us in the faith. Grace be with you all” (Titus 3:15). Paul had no vision of disconnected churches; his letters weren't his alone. They were a connectional system, meant to tie the fleet here and the fleet there, this ship and that ship, with the bonds of the love in the Spirit that made them seaworthy from the first.

And yet one question remains – an obvious question, but one maybe we've asked once or twice. Why is there a voyage at all? Why does it take so long to get from Point A to Point B? Why does the wind not come and blow us breakneck to the harbor? Why are we left to sail by day and night for these long years? Or, to step back from the image, why aren't we all just snatched up to heaven after we're saved? Or why hasn't Jesus come back yet? Or why hasn't God chased away all death, all disease, all despair? Why must the voyage be so long and so hard? The Psalmist spoke for many a Christian sailor: “How long must your servant endure?” (Psalm 119:84). “O LORD, how long shall the wicked, how long shall the wicked exult?” (Psalm 94:3). “How long, O God, is the foe to scoff?” (Psalm 74:10). “How long, O LORD? Will you hide yourself forever?” (Psalm 89:46). “How long, O Lord, will you look on?” (Psalm 35:17).

And so Paul writes one more verse, the only one we've saved 'til the end: “And let our people learn to devote themselves to good works, so as to help cases of urgent need, and not be unfruitful” (Titus 3:14). And that is the answer to all these questions. “How long must your servant endure?” As long as there are cases of urgent need. Why is the voyage so long and so hard? Why aren't we all snatched away from the earth? Because there are cases of urgent need. And because these are the open seas on which we're to be fruitful. We will reach our promised land, our safe harbor, in the end. God will purge away all death, all disease, all despair; those former things will be no more. How long? Until we've borne all the fruit that's ours to bear here. How long is the foe to scoff? Until our good works have silenced his scoffing.

Cases of urgent need surround us. We know of physical cases: Sailors saw them bobbing in the Mediterranean – men, women, and children adrift and at risk of drowning. But so there are physical cases of urgent need here, in our midst, in our neighborhood. Are there none outside our walls who sorely languish? Are there none among you who need help in this critical hour? Dare we risk hearing those fateful words: “I was hungry, and you gave me no food; I was thirsty, and you gave me no drink; I was a stranger, and you did not welcome me; naked, and you did not clothe me; sick and in prison, and you did not visit me” (Matthew 25:42-43)?

But all around us, just the same, are spiritual cases of urgent need. Men, women, and children adrift and at risk of drowning in worldly waters, in the wells of themselves, in the great sea of mere existence. All around us, people are drowning. They are drowning in sin. They are drowning in self. They are drowning in death, and drowning to death. They are drowning no less truly than any of the tens of thousands who try crossing the wide Mediterranean crowded into failed dinghies. Their inward calls for distress sound loud and clear for those with eyes to see and ears to hear. Around us, they drown; around us, they die! One ship cannot reach them all; but one ship can reach some, if we listen to the radio for distress signals and sail toward the urgent need we find, if we deploy rescue boats and pull them up from the waters and into the body of Christ.

But we must decide. For over and over again, the tale is told. But some cries go unheard. But worse, far worse indeed, are those cries we hear – and ignore. Far worse are those we see drowning, those we see succumbing to the spreading blue, and yet we stand aloof and take no action. Far worse are those we hear and watch die, and are yet unmoved. Far worse are those good works of rescue to which we are not devoted, in which we do not engage, and let cases of urgent spiritual need become needless casualties. Far worse are the wreckages we let wash up on the coastlines of hell, when we could have brought them aboard to sail with us for a better harbor.

Nearly 160 years ago, a Scottish pastor named Horatius Bonar saw the inaction of the church – like the inaction of coastal authorities a few years ago who squabbled over responsibility until time ran too short – and Pastor Horatius asked us, “Do we believe there is an everlasting hell! – an everlasting hell for every Christless soul? And yet are we languid, formal, easy in dealing with and for the multitudes that are near the gate of that tremendous furnace of wrath! Our families, our schools, our congregations, not to speak of our cities at large, our land, our world, might well send us daily to our knees; for the loss of even one soul is terrible beyond conception.” Well might it send us daily to our knees, but better might it send us to where the urgent need is!

Another pastor, a missionary named C. T. Studd, famously said – decades after Horatius wrote – that the call of Christ to us is “to raise living churches of souls among the destitute, to capture men from the devil's clutches and snatch them from the very jaws of hell, to enlist and train them for Jesus, and make them into an Almighty Army of God.” Studd urges us, “Nail the colors to the mast! … What colors? The colors of Christ, the work He has given us to do – the evangelization of all the unevangelized. Christ wants not nibblers of the possible, but grabbers of the impossible, by faith in the omnipotence, fidelity, and wisdom of the Almighty Savior who gave the command.” As for himself, Studd thundered, “I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of hell.” Do we? Are we deploying to the cases of urgent spiritual need within our reach? Are we willing to dive within a yard of hell, to snatch the souls of God's image-bearers from its very jaws?

Because make no mistake, this is the point of the church's prolonged voyage. The church is not a cruise liner. The church is not a luxury yacht. The church is not out for a three-hour tour. The church is fitted as a rescue vessel – such is the function of all the fleets of Christ – and has rapid-response boats ready to be deployed. This is why God calls his church across the choppy seas. This is what our voyage is for, and if we'd rather pretend we're out for a cruise, we may get a rude awakening when we make it to harbor. If the names of Bonar and Studd are too unfamiliar, consider what the lately heavenbound St. Billy had to say 44 years ago: “Evangelism and the salvation of souls is the vital mission of the church. The whole church must be mobilized to bring the whole gospel to the whole world. This is our calling. These are our orders. … The harvest is ripe! But harvest time only lasts a short time. What we do, we must do with urgency.”

And, I'd add, we do it with urgency because we see, hear, and realize the urgent spiritual need of lives that are being wrecked, not merely in the age to come, but here and now. All around us, if you listen, if you ask, you can hear the distress calls, you can hear the cries, you can hear the shriekings and the blubberings of the spiritually drowning, right in our own backyard, and in all the places our motor can reach. This is the point of our voyage. This is why the lighthouse is shining on us; this is why our hull is cleansed; this is why we maintain the rest of our discipline – so we can do the 'good works' of God to rescue those in urgent need, even for those within a yard of hell. So nail the colors of Christ to the mast! Man the rescue boats! Deploy, deploy! Full speed ahead! Find 'em, bring 'em aboard, bring 'em to harbor! Sail on, O church, to the rescue – sail on! Amen!