Skip to main content

Parable of the Rescuer at Sea

On a sunny, summer day, the disciples and their master sat talking on a grassy knoll in the Welsh town of Hay-on-Wye.  One disciple told the others about some trustees of a diocese who would not release finances for ministry.  A young man had been encouraged to explore ministry in the diocese and had arrived to begin his training and work, but the wealthy diocese would not put up any funds for his accommodations, let alone a stipend or even funds for education.  'The trustees appear to have understood their role to be to guard the diocese’s investments, not to deplete its funds through expenses incurred for actual ministry,' concluded the disciple.

‘I will tell you a story that I heard as a schoolboy,’ said the master to his disciples.  ‘There was a dairy farmer by the name of Wolraad Woltemade living in the Dutch Cape Colony of South Africa.  In the early hours of the 1st of June, 1773, one of the Cape’s violent storms put the Jonge Thomas, anchored off Table Bay, at great risk.  The captain fired his cannon to alert those on shore of his ship’s distress.  Woltemade heard the cannon, saddled his sturdy horse, and hurriedly headed to the bay.  Meanwhile, the ship broke from its anchor and wrecked on the rocks, breaking in two.  Soldiers stood along the shore, helplessly witnessing the catastrophe.  They feared for their lives were they to attempt a rescue.  Woltemade, however, pressed by them and coaxed his faithful steed into the turbulent waters.  His horse swam out to the wreck, and Woltemade called for two seamen to jump into the water and grab the horse’s tail.  Two hesitant sailors abandoned the sinking hull, dove into the sea, grabbed Vonk by the tail, and were pulled through the waters to the safety of the shore.  Woltemade and Vonk repeated this rescue again and again, until fourteen survivors were rescued by them.  Woltemade and his horse entered the stormy waters an eighth time.  When they reached the Jonge Thomas, the remaining shipmen feared that Woltemade would not be able to return again.  The battered hull of the Jonge Thomas was breaking apart.  Too many of those still stranded at sea, however, jumped ship for the only rescue offered by the colony.  Holding on to Woltemade and Vonk, everyone disappeared beneath the waters.’

The disciples sat in silence, with thoughts of a far off colony at the tip of Africa, the Jonge Thomas wrecked on the rocks, and dying men holding on to Woltemade and his horse in the raging sea.  ‘It is just so in the Anglican Communion,’ said the master.  ‘The Episcopal Church in the USA, closing a church every week, has spent millions in litigation to wrestle church properties from faithful members, crippling the Church’s mission and opting for a false gospel.  In the UK, the Church sits with wealthy properties but dwindling memberships, like soldiers standing on the shore while people are dying in the storm.  The institutional Church has turned itself into a trust and has forgotten its mission.  Ministerial training has faltered, and those willing to serve are under-resourced.  Imagine if the Church were once again to become a mission.  Imagine if it rediscovered the salvation it is supposed to offer.  Imagine if it released its resources to save the lost.  Imagine if it cared enough to risk itself in ministry. Imagine if it left the comfort of its parishes and dioceses and entered the stormy waters to seek and to save the lost and dying. Indeed, imagine the outcome if the Cape colony had developed a Coast Guard and equipped it with all it needed to rescue people from the storms and tend to their injuries.  Imagine the Church about its mission.'
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Alasdair MacIntyre and Tradition Enquiry

Alasdair MacIntyre's subject is philosophical ethics, and he is best known for his critique of ethics understood as the application of general, universal principles.  He has reintroduced the importance of virtue ethics, along with the role of narrative and community in defining the virtues.  His focus on these things—narrative, community, virtue—combine to form an approach to enquiry which he calls ‘tradition enquiry.’ [1] MacIntyre characterises ethical thinking in the West in our day as ethics that has lost an understanding of the virtues, even if virtues like ‘justice’ are often under discussion.  Greek philosophical ethics, and ethics through to the Enlightenment, focussed ethics on virtue and began with questions of character: 'Who should we be?', rather than questions of action, 'What shall we do?'  Contemporary ethics has focused on the latter question alone, with the magisterial traditions of deontological ('What rules govern our actions?') and tel...
Post a Comment
Read more

‘For freedom Christ has set us free’: The Gospel of Paul versus the Custodial Oversight of the Law and Human Philosophies

  Introduction The culmination of Paul’s argument in Galatians, and particularly from 3.1-4.31, is: ‘ For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery’ (Galatians 5.1). This essay seeks to understand Paul’s opposition to a continuing custodial role for the Law and a use of human philosophies to deal with sinful passions and desires.   His arguments against these are found in Galatians and Colossians.   By focussing on the problem of the Law and of philosophy, we can better understand Paul’s theology.   He believed that the Gospel was the only way to deal with sin not simply in terms of our actions but more basically in terms of our sinful desires and passions of the flesh. The task ahead is to understand several large-scale matters in Paul’s theology, those having to do with a right understanding of the human plight and a right understanding of God’s solution.   So much Protestant theology has articulated...
Post a Comment
Read more

The New Virtues of a Failing Culture

  An insanity has fallen upon the West, like a witch’s spell.   We have lived with it long enough to know it, understand it, but not long enough to resist it, to undo it.   The very stewards of the truth that would remove it have left their posts.   They have succumbed to its whispers, become its servants.   It has infected the very air and crept along the ground like a mist until it is within us and all about us.   We utter its precepts like schoolchildren taught their lines. Its power lies in its claims of virtuosity, distorted goodness.   If presented as the vices that they are, they would be rejected.   These virtues are proclaimed from the pulpits and painted on banners or made into flags.   They are established in our schools, colleges, universities, and seminaries.   They are the hallucinogen making our own cultural suicide bearable, even desirable.   They are virtues, but disordered, or they are the excess or deficiency of...
Post a Comment
Read more