BY LAEL O. CAESAR
“‘Men, I can see that our voyage is going to be disastrous
and bring great loss to ship and cargo, and to our own lives also.’ But the
centurion, instead of listening to what Paul said, followed the advice of the
pilot and of the owner of the ship. Since the harbor was unsuitable to winter
in, the majority decided that we should sail on” (Acts 27:10-12, NIV).
o here we are in the third quarter of that
much-vaunted, long-wanted, bug-haunted year—A.D. 2000. And what are we doing
about it? Are we seeking new ways to cope in the new millennium? Or are we holding
on to our own anchors?
Anchors, of course, are meant for security. And we find
change so menacing, so inescapably persistent, that we feel we need the best
protection we can find against all these winds of years, decades, centuries,
and millennia that howl around our sense of stability, threatening to leave
us completely disoriented and unprotected from whatever.
“Before very long, a wind of hurricane force, called the
‘northeaster,’ swept down from the island. The ship was caught by the storm
and could not head into the wind; so we gave way to it and were driven along”
(verses 14, 15, NIV).
Yes, the storm is here. And we are not snug and warm and
battened down against it. We can hear its howl; we can feel its power—we and
the ship and the sea on which we ride. Our contingent of 276 soldiers, sailors,
scoundrels, and saints now contends, with furled sails, a frapped and leaking
ship. Food is being flung overboard, along with the ship’s tackle, all in hopes
of keeping the wretched bark afloat.
But still the storm rages on, with the worst yet to come.
And even as we let four anchors down and pray for daybreak, we cannot help reflecting
on the miserable irony that if the ship’s master had listened, we’d never have
been here.
So why didn’t he? Why didn’t he take the advice to stay
put? Because the speaker was just a landlubber, an apparent criminal who held
himself to be some kind of preacher. No authority on the journey ahead. He’d
never been that way before, after all, and he was no travel agent.
Should it surprise us that the centurion didn’t listen to the preacher? Who cares,
even now, that that old preacher in chains once spent three years of his life
just studying the Word to know God’s will?
And yet, this was no misguided, little old man dispensing
advice out of the cloud of his own delusions. God had spoken to him in the night,
giving him a mission to Macedonia. Out of a blinding vision of Jesus Christ,
he’d been given spiritual sight and unmodifiable authority to confront rulers
and kings. And it was from that source that he now gained insight to tell old
sea dogs and tough-minded soldiers what to do.
No, it doesn’t hurt to listen to the man who talks with
God. Listen to your scientist all you want; dialogue with your educator all
you need to; believe in your politician as much as you care. And discount all
the charlatans of religion as you wish. But that still leaves you the privilege
of listening when God speaks.
Paul listened until it was all he wished to hear. Jesus
came to be all he lived for. “I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection,”
he said (Phil. 3:10, NIV). His anchor was Jesus, the one declared to be the
Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead (Rom. 1:4), and the
one coming back for those who love His appearing (2 Tim. 4:8). If Christ is
not risen, Paul contends, every Christian preacher is a liar, every Christian
is a fool, and all is a waste of time (1 Cor. 15:14-19). But Christ is risen
(verse 20). Our hope in Him, our confidence in the unmodifiable infallibility
of the Word of God—spoken and incarnate—is the justification for living. It
is the anchor of our soul, as sure and steadfast as God Himself (Heb. 6:19,
20).
“Fearing that we would be dashed against the rocks, they
dropped four anchors from the stern and prayed for daylight” (Acts 27:29, NIV).
There’s trouble with the ship, because its experts refused
to heed the man who spoke for God. Their restless search for novel solutions
produced, in the words of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, “a falsely understood ‘avant-gardism’—a
raucous, impatient ‘avant-gardism’ at any cost” that has brought us to a world
with values possessing no reality. Our world today has become a “text” of varied
meaning or none at all. Thanks to our experts, today’s sophisticated humanity
gropes for sense with more desperation than ever. For many, their spirits already
in despair, nothing remains but an empty end.
Still, millions of us grab hopefully at new anchors. We
search because our postures of sufficiency cannot fill our hollow souls, nor
supply our spiritual need.
Questionable Anchors
Today we have our own complement of anchors to match the
four on Paul’s doomed ship.
1. As the best among equals, perhaps, the modern
world launches its political anchor in celebration of the victory of
republican, democratic government over dictatorship, monarchism, oligarchy,
militarism, and Nazism. The free world insists that totalitarianism has failed
because of the dissonance, among other reasons, between official pronouncements
and the general experience of the tyrannized populace.
Unfortunately, such dissonance is not limited to dictatorships.
Consider, for example, popular attitudes to the question of the origins of life.
No proof has ever been furnished that life is the result of an accident. And
no credible research or government or business can survive on the basis of faith
in a fluke. Yet many accept the “assured results” of science with their “evidence”
that our existence on earth is pointless. Millions of susceptible minds read
scholarly logic, only to be persuaded that nothing is logical. The seed of totalitarianism’s
failure grows and prospers everywhere. In lands of freedom, as in areas of tyranny,
people go on believing against the evidence of their senses.
2. Economics too is a much-esteemed contemporary
anchor. Hope of deliverance has never been higher than in these heady days of
a “new world order,” built on free-market competition, instead of the subsidized
dictation of central planning and command. With the World Trade Organization
as our shepherd, our needs will ever be supplied, as marketplace geniuses invent
a capitalist salvation, urged on by the inspired prospect of unlimited earnings.
Human greed, by and by, will get us all new heavens and a new earth wherein
dwelleth Bill Gates!
3. The judiciary represents yet another respected
anchor. We act as if our rules are somehow more effective than the indwelling
Holy Spirit. As if those rules are an agency for institutionalizing the Spirit.
We seem to think that if we enforce certain structures or standards, in keeping
with our specific preferences of worship or faith, then that would bring an
end to the reign of godlessness and sin, and inaugurate in a new era of nationalized
Christianity.
4. The anchor of education may well be the
most sophisticated anchor of all, with its promise of information and development
instead of conversion. The argument would be that a properly informed electorate
would vote for the right causes and people, would care about the correct issues,
would forever end the blight of prejudice. When an angry physics graduate from
the University of Iowa killed five people in a fit of anger and then himself
back in 1991, one scholar commented that she thought that scientists would solve
their problems in better ways than that. (Scientists, you see, are no longer
subject to the truth that human nature is corrupt and capable of perverse manifestations.)
Will our anchors of politics, economics, law, and education
save the ship of our civilization? Will philosophizing get us out of this storm?
Will fighting over the food on board save us from shipwreck? And will reading
Aristotle save us from running aground? I doubt it.
The ship is past saving. Already it is irremediably
damaged.
What to Do?
The ship is breaking up. But we still need saving. And for
all who will, there is hope. From the final verses of the account in Acts 27,
I draw two lessons:
1. We must “abide in the ship” (verse 31).
First of all, we must listen to “the preacher.” If we do,
we shall all be saved together. Against the exacerbation of collective selfishness
that will follow congregationalism, the preacher insists (and let us all concur):
We must acknowledge the unity of our lostness if we will ever know salvation
together in Jesus. We do not need a plurality of anchors, or a fleet of little
boats all bobbing about on the sea, all blasted by the waves, and even crashing
into each other. We need oneness in Christ. We need to rally together around
the banner of the cross and look together within the veil. That’s where our
hope is (Heb. 6:19, 20).
2. We must forget our own human anchors.
“Cutting loose the anchors,” the text says, “they
left them in the sea and at the same time untied the ropes that held the rudders.
Then they hoisted the foresail to the wind and made for the beach” (Acts 27:40,
NIV). We must surrender our faith in the anchors we have so skillfully constructed
ourselves. We cannot cling to our self-designed anchors, however useful, and
still be saved. Four anchors are not enough (verse 29). A thousand human-made
anchors would not be enough.
The devil knows of our faith in numbers. So he keeps us
busy, careful, and troubled about many people and things, about ropes and anchors—from
bow and stern and everywhere else. He can give us more anchors to hang on to
than Martha of Bethlehem, a soul of more dreaded fate than the Martha of Bethany.
The Martha of Bethlehem must wake the children, dress them, feed them, pack
their lunches, and get them to the bus. Then she must fix herself, get to the
baby-sitter, the store, the hairdresser, the graduate class, and the evening
job—all on time.
The devil fills our lives with anchors. He thrills us with
them—jobs, second jobs, class assignments, research, entertainment, computers—whatever.
Everything except Jesus.
But what we need is Jesus. Four anchors are not enough.
A thousand anchors would not be enough. We need Jesus.
And we’ll need to go beyond just a glimpse of Jesus. We
need to have our souls, our minds, our hearts, our lives full of Him. He will
bring joy and gladness in exchange for sin and sadness. But we must let Him
flood our beings with all there is of Him.
Why would anyone want to anchor here in this old world,
anyway? Human anchors don’t really save. They merely get us stuck in the mud
or in the storm. But we’ve heard a joyful sound: Jesus saves!
And the security Jesus offers does not depend on location.
Paul’s display of sanity, stability, and serenity on the S. S. Alexandria
didn’t depend on the location of the ship. Nor was it a matter of how the wind
was blowing. Or how far from port the ship was in distress. The all-important
factor is to have “an anchor that keeps the soul steadfast and sure while the
billows roll.” When soldiers and sailors couldn’t eat for fear, Paul could stand
up and say: “Every-thing will be all right.” He was anchored in Jesus.
Hebrews 6:19, 20, the only place in Scripture where the
anchor metaphor is used, is a reference to Jesus. Try as God might, He can’t
stop the world from going to pieces. But you don’t have to go to pieces with
it. Anchored in Jesus, you’re as safe as heaven. And sailing with Jesus,
we’ll at last come safe to heaven.
A storm of trouble is coming, such as never was since ships
have sailed the sea of human experience. But regardless of that storm’s intensity,
if we will trust in Him alone, Jesus will bring us safe to land.
Four anchors are not enough. A thousand anchors would not
be enough. Jesus alone, however, is more than enough. He’s good enough for the
new millennium. He’s good enough for eternity.
_________________________
Lael Caesar is an associate professor in the Department of
Religion and Biblical Studies at Andrews University in Berrien Springs, Michigan.
