CHRISTIAN VIEWPOINT: We sail on one vessel, at times taking guidance
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I loved Pittenweem harbour when Lorna and I came across it during a recent visit to Fife. The long, protective breakwater thrusts far out into the churning waters; a beacon guides boats to safety; other lights give warning of rocks close to the channel leading to the still waters of the inner basin.
It reminds me of some once-familiar metaphors of the Christian journey. The destination: a heaven-haven. The boats: our fragile lives, fraught with peril as we seek to out-manoeuvre the surging waves of temptation and doubt. The rocks: the habits and attitudes which destroy us if we yield to their allure. The lights: the wisdom of Scripture on which we fix our minds.
It’s still a powerful picture, and still holds truth, but I now see these metaphors have limitations.
Their emphasis seems to be on ‘getting to heaven’, with the here-and-now something of a trial to be endured. In fact, Christian faith is about much more than dutiful navigation. It’s about joy, about seeing the wildness of God in the storm, about the ecstasy of watching the bow repeatedly plunge into the waves and rise again.
Christian faith seeks not escape to a future heaven, but partnership with Jesus in bringing something of the reality of heaven into this world. Always there is a hand on the tiller alongside ours.
But it’s also true at times we can be overwhelmed by waves of doubt, of theological questions, of pain and grief, mental health issues, trauma resulting from abuse. Some boats are swamped far out to sea, and slip beneath the surface. It’s simply not enough to shrug and say: ‘Ah well, they took their eyes off the light.’
The old metaphors describe individual boats, individual voyages, whereas voyaging with Christ is a together thing. To change the metaphor, we sail on one vessel, the great liner known as ‘The Church’, a community of God’s mutually-supportive people, taking guidance on our better days from the Captain who stands on the bridge.
The last thing I think about before I turn to leave the quayside is Crossing the Bar, a poem by 19th century poet Alfred Tennyson. For him, a harbour in southern England symbolises the security of life as he knows it – ‘our bourne of time and place’.
He imagines death as crossing the sandbar at the harbour-mouth as the tide swells high, and being carried into the ‘boundless deep’. ‘Twilight and evening bell, and after that the dark.’ And yet there is hope, hope that perhaps at the very start of this voyage into mystery he will meet someone he has come to know:
‘I hope to see my Pilot face to face, when I have crossed the Bar.’
