I want to welcome all of you aboard our ship today. You probably did not know that you had boarded a ship this morning when you came through those doors for worship, but you did. Most of you are seated this morning in the part of the church that is called the "nave." In Latin, "nave" means boat, and the large, central section, where most of you are seated, is known as the "nave" in church architecture. You can see this yourselves if you just look up to the ceiling and in your mind flip this building over. The beams look like the bottom and sides of a ship.

I was watching a National Geographic documentary a couple of weeks ago about famous shipwrecks. The one that caught my attention was about the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Why the Edmund Fitzgerald? Because I never really understood that song by Gordon Lightfoot entitled, "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." If you have heard it even once, it is probably lodged some-where deep in your memory banks. It is over 25 years old now, but it is the kind of song that is either a cherished memory or a quirky piece of 1970s trivia that you will always carry with you.

The Edmund Fitzgerald was a 729-foot freighter that carried raw materials for the factories on the Great Lakes. On November 10, 1975, she was carrying a load of iron ore pellets from Wisconsin across Lake Superior to automobile manufacturers in Detroit, Michigan. An early winter storm unexpectedly arose that produced winds of up to 100 mph and waves of 30 feet. As the storm worsened, the captain changed course to the Canadian side of the lake for the more protected waters of Whitefish Bay. Eventually, the ship's radar systems were knocked out. Another ship, the Arthur M. Andersen, which was about 10 miles behind, provided the only remaining link for the Fitzgerald. At 7:25 pm, the Andersen lost its radar image of the Fitzgerald. The Edmund Fitzgerald sank to the bottom of Lake Superior, breaking in two, and taking the lives of all 29 crewmembers.(1)

Now, this is where the song comes in. Singer and songwriter Gordon Lightfoot read about the shipwreck in a Newsweek article a couple of weeks later, and he was inspired to write his ballad "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." Believe it or not, the song eventually reached #2 on the Billboard charts. If you look and listen hard enough, you can find theological questions almost anywhere. I looked up the lyrics of the song and found this line: "Does any one know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?"(2) At one level, this line addresses a very real situation for the sailors of the Fitzgerald: "Where is God when death is imminent?" At another level, this line addresses all of the fears and doubts that we have when storms arise in our lives. When the pressures of our jobs and personal relations overwhelm us, it does seem that "minutes turn into hours." Where are you, God, when we need you most?

That question comes up in our scripture today from the Gospel of Matthew. The story is a familiar one. After the miraculous feeding of the five thousand, Jesus instructs his disciples to take a boat to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, while he stays behind on the mountain to pray. As they make their way across the waters, a storm suddenly arises. A great headwind whips up the waves and traps the small fishing boat and its crew. The disciples are filled with the fear of death. Sometime during the fourth watch, between 3:00 and 6:00 am, the disciples spot Jesus walking on the water towards them, like some kind of ghost from the depths. "Take heart, it is I, do not be afraid," Jesus says (v. 27).

Now, Matthew adds something to the story that we don't find in the account found in the Gospel of Mark. Peter, the leader of the disciples, the model for all those who follow Jesus, does something audacious. First, he tells Jesus, "Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water" (v. 28). So Jesus gives the command, and, behold, Peter is walking on the water toward Jesus. But there is a problem. Once he gets out there in the middle of those turbulent seas, Peter starts to doubt. He notices the strong wind and high waves, and becomes frightened and starts to sink. "Lord, save me!" he cries.

"Does any one know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?" That's what Peter must have been thinking as he began to sink below the waves. I don't know anyone who has not experienced doubts about God's presence when times are tough in their personal lives. It is a normal human response. So, Jesus reaches out, rescues Peter, and says, "You of little faith, why did you doubt" (v. 31). I don't believe that was meant to be a condemnation of Peter. Jesus is commenting on how difficult it is for anyone to follow him, that all of us who call ourselves Christians are people of "little faith." The irony is that when we encounter the biggest crises in our lives, when we experience the greatest amount of fear and doubt, our "little faith" is enough to save us. God is so merciful that we do not have to be perfect to be saved, we only have to be willing to take a few steps in faith.

This gospel story does have a happy ending: Peter is saved, the storm is quelled, and the disciples in the boat all worship Jesus as the Son of God (v. 33). The connection between the boat filled with Christ's disciples and the church seems to be clear, even in Matthew's time. As we think about the boat in this story, I am reminded of our Lenten speaker from this year, Jonathan Reed. Jonathan spent four evenings talking with us about the top ten archaeological discoveries for understanding Jesus. The one that stands out for me is the fishing boat from the Sea of Galilee, also known as "the Jesus boat."(3)

In 1986, a few years of severe drought had reduced the water levels of the Sea of Galilee to historic lows. One day, two brothers walking along the shore saw the outlines of a boat in the mud. What archaeologists finally recovered was a 2,000 year-old wooden fishing boat that had been stripped of most reusable materials and left to sink in the lake. Now, what makes this discovery important is not whether Jesus and the disciples actually sailed in this particular boat; that fact is impossible to know. What is interesting is to note how the boat was constructed. It was made up of many different types of inferior wood, some of it salvaged from previous boats. Over time, the timber that was used began to rot, causing the boat to literally come apart at the seams. This tells us that fishing was not a lucrative profession on the Sea of Galilee. These fishermen simply had to make do with what little raw materials they had.

I believe this is the kind of boat we need to think about when we think of the church. Congre-gations are usually not like the Queen Mary docked down in Long Beach. They are usually made up of different kinds of wood patched together. Churches spring leaks frequently and sometimes we wonder if we can reach the other side safely while in them. Yet overall, they function and do important work on a daily basis. And they are a place where we can take our doubts and fears and present them to God, praying for answers and guidance.

As you may know, the stained glass windows in our sanctuary tell the story of Christ in pictures. The story starts on my left and works all the way around to my right. The last window in the sequence shows the ascended Christ, who rules over the world. At the very top of this window is a boat holding a cross on a blue sea. Over the boat is written the Greek word oikumene, which means "the whole inhabited world." It is from this Greek term that we get the word "ecumenical." And at the very top of the panel is the name of a group: The World Council of Churches.(4) The World Council of Churches was founded in 1948. It currently is comprised of 340 different denominations in 120 countries around the world, representing over 400 million Christians. Its mission is to "pray for and pursue the visible unity of Christ's church."

A lofty goal, to say the least. With all of the different styles of worship, different ways of reading the Bible, different theologies, different rules governing our church life . . . how is Christian unity even possible? Can the church ever be one?

The German pastor and theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, is helpful in answering this question. He is best known for his involvement in the conspiracy to assassinate Hitler in an effort to end World War II, resulting in his execution in a concentration camp in 1945. Yet, he was a brilliant thinker before he joined the conspiracy; he earned his doctorate in theology at the age of 21. His dissertation is entitled, "Sanctorum Communio," or "The Communion of Saints." One of the main topics that Bonhoeffer addresses in this work is how do we define church?

For Bonhoeffer, church is not just a religious community. Because Christ has created a new humanity through his death and resurrection, "the church is in him and he is in the church."(5) And the unity of the church is not based upon the unity of human spirits, but upon the unity of the Holy Spirit that gives the church its life.(6) The one church of Christ is already a reality in every local congregation and parish; it is "Christ existing as community."(7)

So, when we say we are a member of a church, it is far greater than being a part of just First UMC of Santa Monica or the denomination known as The United Methodist Church. Once we are baptized, we become members of Christ's universal church that encompasses the whole world. When we understand the church as being the living, spirit-filled reality of Christ himself, we can separate what is truly important from what is not. Ultimately, I don't believe that God cares whether you say "debts" or "trespasses" in the Lord's Prayer, or what method we use to serve communion. What does matter is that we live out our lives as the body of Christ, loving God with all our heart, soul and mind and our neighbors as ourselves.

So, here we are, gathered together in this big, upside-down boat every Sunday, attempting to worship God and live out our lives as Christ would have us do. And we know that we fall short often, but that is nothing new. Remember that Peter started to sink when he doubted and feared, and Jesus saved him. Christ saves us and pulls us back into the boat called church, too. "Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid," Jesus told his fearful followers. Take heart, friends, Christ is here.

Amen.

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NOTES:

1. This historical overview of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald can be found on the web at www.msu.edu/bell/history.html.
2. Gordon Lightfoot, "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," originally recorded on Summertime Dream, 1976.
3. John Dominic Crossan & Jonathan L. Reed, Excavating Jesus: Beneath the Stones, Behind the Texts (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2001), 85-7.
4. See The World Council of Churches website at www.wcc-coe.org.
5. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Communion of Saints: A Dogmatic Inquiry into the Sociology of the Church, trans. R. Gregor Smith (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), 100.
6. Ibid., 138.
7. Ibid., 160.