Faith and Trust
Fr. Tim Nunez
Lent 2
May my spoken word be true to God’s written word and bring us all closer to the living word, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
When I was a kid, despite our not having much money and living in the middle of the state, my parents bought a 30-foot sailboat. We only had that boat a few years, and those adventures are among my favorite memories.
One of my very best memories was the night we sailed from Stuart, Florida to West End on Grand Bahama. Grand Bahama is about 80 miles from Stuart, if you could go straight there. That line is called the “rhumb line” – R-H-U-M-B – which is the direct line on a map between your point of origin and your destination.
But a straight line is not how the ocean works, especially not for a sailboat. You have to deal with an array of variables: wind, currents, tides, and other boats. And between Stuart and West End, the Gulf Stream flows like a river that is 30-50 miles wide. You can’t go straight there.
This was in 1973. There was no GPS. My dad had to plot a course taking all of those variables into consideration. And even though you couldn’t just go in that straight line, the rhumb line is vital because it’s your frame of reference to your destination.
Eighty miles takes a long time in a sailboat, roughly 16-20 hours or more. We sailed overnight to minimize the chance of storms and to make sure we could see where we were going when we arrived. We had to take shifts, and I took one. I was not quite 12. I just had to hold the tiller and keep the compass on the heading dad gave me. I remember the compass, the wind, the dark seas and the bright stars, the lights of other boats and ships. And behind us was a trail of phosphorescence.
But West End was not our final destination. It was a way point to 3 weeks visiting Freeport, Abaco and Green Turtle Key; to lobsters and conchs and coral reefs, to grouper and sharks. The true rhumb line was to the great memories we would build and share for a lifetime.
Abrham was 75 when God told him to move to the land of Canaan. He’s somewhere between 75 and the 86 he will be when Ishmael’s birth comes in the next chapter when God articulates his covenant with these twin promises of descendants and this land for them. He will be 100 when Isaac is born!
Abraham will see Isaac and Jacob born. But he won’t live to see Moses or Joshua or the Temple, or its destruction and the Babylonian Captivity, or the restoration and rebuild of the Temple. All of that is a prelude to Jesus, who will come about 2,000 years later. But those waypoints are on God’s rhumb line.
Since Luke 9:51, Jesus has had his face set toward Jerusalem and the looming conflict to come. He has a lot of variables around him. There are crowds of people with incessant needs. There is treacherous Herod Antipas, the decidedly average son of Herod the Great. Like a fox, he’s a minor, if cunning, annoyance.
But that is not his ultimate rhumb line. It is a literally crucial waypoint but his rhumb line is toward the Kingdom of God. He longs for the joy of reconciling the people with his Father, brooding over them as the Spirit brooded over the waters at creation. He longs to tuck them under his wings as a hen does her chicks. A hen will sacrifice herself to protect her chicks from predators like foxes, fire or freezing temperatures.
And this isn’t just about protection and care, it is in joyous anticipation of our highest potential to be realized in His kingdom.
Jerusalem and all that will transpire there with his death and Resurrection is not the final destination any more than our focus on West End was the end of a 3-week vacation. His eye is fixed on passing through that Valley of the Shadow of Death to his ultimate reconciliation of God with his children in the Kingdom of God.
That is our ultimate destination, too. We set goals and settle into the routines that accompany the various stages of this life for family, career and so on. Those serve as waypoints. And we also have our failures, ailments, trials and surprises; things that knock us off course.
Let’s get back in the sailboat. Early that next morning, we sighted land. That was a relief because you wouldn’t want to miss the Bahamas entirely. Even better, it was West End, Grand Bahama Island, straight off the bowsprit. My dad had plotted our course perfectly, accounting for winds, currents, the Gulf Stream – all of it.
Be honest with yourself. Where is your ultimate rhumb line set? If it’s set on your family, job, retirement or nowhere, that is where you are going. I suggest you regard your life’s goals as waypoints. Waypoints are helpful. (If you don’t have waypoints, you should develop some.) But they cannot substitute for the ultimate destination of Jesus and his Kingdom. There are lots of variables for which we have to adapt our course. We tend to get off course and we have to tack back.
And even now, when I awake in the wee hours with a thousand thoughts running through my head, I sometimes put myself back on that boat and slowly remember every detail about it. I can see every inch of it. And soon I sail off, back to sleep. I know where my rhumb line ultimately goes.
One thing have I asked of the Lord; one thing I seek; *
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord forever. (Psalm 27:5)
With all that in mind, let’s pray through Palm 27 again and tack back toward our rhumb line, together, in unison, as One in Christ.
AMEN