Get Jesus Into The Boat

Today we are encouraged by the Scriptures to reflect on the Church, and how the Holy Spirit has, over twenty centuries, kept Christ’s church alive, witnessing to His Resurrection, and growing. We are also reminded that human beings, in our weakness, can impede that life, growth and ministry, but not destroy Christ’s presence in the Church.

The rapid growth of the Jerusalem community in the early years after the Resurrection of Jesus and descent of the Holy Spirit created problems for the apostles. In any new assembly of human beings, there are conflicts because everyone is unique and perceives different needs and gifts and abilities. So in the polyglot Jerusalem community there were people of two very different backgrounds, called here Hebrews and Hellenists. To expand the meaning, all of them were Jewish Christians, but one group had a generations-long identity as followers of Moses. They were thoroughly Jewish, followed “the Way” and read the Hebrew Scriptures. The others, the Hellenists, were also followers of Jesus the Nazarene, but probably had their roots in the Jewish diaspora and were more comfortable thinking and speaking in Greek. It is likely that the Hebrew members, being longer as Jerusalem Jews than the Hellenist, were getting more attention from the Hebrew apostles. The widows among them then got first dibs on the community resources. The Greek word applied to the Hellenist widows is, literally, “overlooked.”

The apostles soon were overworked and found their evangelization effort among both Hebrews and Greeks was being overwhelmed by all this administrative hassle. So they turned the problem over to the community, who chose seven—the Biblical number of perfection—men from both the Hebrew and Greek contingents. These would take over waiting tables. But they also were deputized to preach in the absence of the apostles. They became the forerunners of today’s deacons.

Now we read about Stephen in the Acts of Apostles, and know he became the first Christian martyr. We can also read about Philip’s evangelical outreach, to the Samaritans and even the Ethiopian official. The others are not otherwise mentioned in Scripture. Thus did the Holy Spirit’s presence move the apostles to solve the first problem of the community.

Our Gospel tells the story about another apostolic challenge. Right after the triumph in Galilee when Jesus had fed five thousand men with their families with five barley loaves and two fish, the exultant apostles had got into their fishing boat to cross the Sea of Galilee. The wind can blow pretty strongly through the hills around that huge lake, and the waves were threatening the boat. Jesus appears walking on the water, but when they take him into the boat, the sea calms and they are quickly at the other shore.

The story is a parable. The boat always means the Church, sometimes called the “Bark of Peter.” But it’s really the bark of Jesus.

There have been almost uncountable times when the government or culture or internal dissention has threatened to capsize the Church. It’s like the chaos ordered by the Spirit of God into creation in the Book of Genesis. Even today, we have priests and bishops all over, but especially in Germany, who want to rewrite the Law of Christ to conform the Church’s teaching to the whims of our secular, oversexed culture. In every instance the Church has survived for twenty centuries by inviting Jesus back into the boat. We can have confidence the Holy Spirit will make that happen in our day, but we must pray and listen to the voice of God, and encourage all those who are working to get Jesus back to the center of attention of the leaders and people, so that the chaos may be calmed and we can get to the task of evangelization and sanctification of more humans.