A Bigger Boat
March 31, 2024 Easter Sunday
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Mark 16:1-8
“A Bigger Boat”
Douglas T. King
“I’m going to make him an offer he can’t refuse.” “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.” “What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate. “I’ll have what she’s having.” These are among countless famous movie lines. If we opened the mic up to the congregation we could sit here all morning coming up with them, each and every one bringing to mind a vivid scene from a favorite movie that has become etched in our memories.
Mark creates a vivid scene for us as these women flee from the empty tomb…speechless and filled with fear. As I picture the women running away in terror a specific movie line does come to mind. “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.” If it is not ringing an immediate bell for you, it is an iconic line from the movie “Jaws.” A movie, that for at least one summer made me nervous about swimming in both the Atlantic Ocean and the Long Island Sound, and even a little leery about climbing into the bathtub.
The line was famously ad-libbed by Roy Scheider, but according to The Hollywood Reporter, “the actor didn't pull the line out of thin air…Filming Jaws on the water
made for a troubled production, with the crew working off a barge that carried the equipment and craft services plus a smaller support boat. Crew members complained to producers that this support boat was too small, which was how they coined the soon-to-be-famous phrase.” The producers were very, shall we say, frugal. “Everyone kept telling them, 'You're gonna need a bigger boat,’…It became a catchphrase for anytime anything went wrong—if lunch was late or the swells were rocking the camera, someone would say, 'You're gonna need a bigger boat.'
“Scheider eventually picked up the saying and started sneaking it into takes. One of his ad-libs came after his character's first confrontation with the shark, which is also the audience's first good look at the human-eating antagonist following an hour of suspense-building.” After seeing the size of the ferocious beast approaching in the water, he slowly backs away, transfixed by the enormity of with what they are contending. Barely able to overcome his speechlessness, the words seem to fall from his mouth in awe, “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.” It is the perfect line for when you realize you are in way over your head and dealing with something beyond anything you have ever experienced before. We will see how it is the perfect line for us this morning.
The ending from the Gospel of Mark, is rather abrupt. This morning we are welcoming the empty tomb with brass and song, raising our alleluias in hopes that the entire world might hear the good news. But those actual witnesses fled in fear, speechless. And this is where Mark ends his version of the story. No joyful reunion celebration of the disciples with the risen Christ, in fact no sighting of Christ at all. No going out and making disciples all nations. No vision of Christ being raised into the skies. Definitely no trumpets and timpani.
We get fear and fleeing. Thanks, Mark, for ruining the party. I feel like we got all dressed up for nothing. I am tempted to turn to one of the other gospels for a smoother ending that matches what we are doing this morning. But I believe Mark has gotten it just right. We are going to need a bigger boat.
First of all, why would “terror and amazement” not be their reaction, or our reaction, if we had faced that empty tomb that very first morning? Over the years we have tamed and domesticated the resurrection. But when all of your expectations about how the world works are shattered it is like being in the midst of a magnitude seven earthquake. The foundations beneath your feet you thought to be solid are now a rolling and wobbling mess, tossing you to and fro.
Those women understood what death was. They had a playbook to follow. You grieve. You show up and enact the time-honored traditions of preparing the body. You know how to proceed. But now what? There is no body. No sign of the one you loved so dearly. And what’s more, they are told he is alive once more and on the loose, on his way to Galilee. What happened to death? What happened to the mortal Jesus they knew? What happened? They are going to need a bigger boat.
That first Easter, no one was equating the resurrection to the sun rising in the morning or daffodils pushing their way through the earth. The once dead Jesus now alive and on the loose, making his way to Galilee is not some cyclical renewal of nature, not some continuation of business as usual. It is the very defeat of death and so much more. Tom Long says it this way, “Easter destroys the perceived world at hand, it is…the unmasking of the present reality, the world we assumed was permanent.” All of the limitations and imperfections of each of us and our broken world we believe are just the way it has to be. The empty tomb says otherwise.
Whatever assumptions we may carry about the nature of the world and reality, Mark is telling us to pause for a beat, because they may just be illusions of the old reality before the resurrection. We are going to need a bigger boat.
As we sit here in all of our Easter finery this morning, the worlds feels like a pretty lovely place. But a return to the headlines on our phones reveals a more complicated picture. War and terror circle the globe. Our political systems appear to be sinking into a sea of toxic division and dysfunction. We turn to the weather report for news of the latest once-in-a-hundred-year storm. Sounds to me like our entire world is going to need a bigger boat.
And what about the church? Post pandemic, across the country numbers of attendees and members are down. Folks got used to being home on a Sunday morning and many have not gotten into the habit of returning just yet. The church is going to need a bigger boat.
Have I brought enough shadow to the morning? It makes me long for the day when my biggest fear was a fictional shark somehow finding its way into my bathtub. How could we possibly build a boat big enough to withstand all of the very real threats and worries of this world?
But we will see this is the great gift of Mark’s gospel ending. The other gospels provide us with traditionally happier endings. We get disciples spreading the good news of the resurrection and making disciples of all nations. The other gospels turn to what the disciples and subsequently you and I will do. As if it us who make the resurrection real.
My friend and colleague Matt Gaventa writes this of Mark’s ending, “The disciples give up, but Jesus rises anyway. The women flee, but Jesus rises anyway. Even Mark himself can’t quite do it justice; he can’t look the thing directly in the eye; he just quits writing, guilty by association of the same fearful trembling that has possessed his protagonists. But Jesus rises anyway, an apocalypse of grace into a story full of characters who do not deserve it.”
My friends, we do not need a bigger boat. We have a bigger boat. The resurrection is the biggest of all boats and is not dependent upon our imperfect efforts to make it happen. We can run in fear from it. But Jesus rises anyway. We can try to tame and domesticate it down to nothing. But Jesus rises anyway. We can simply ignore it. But Jesus rises anyway. None of it is stopping the victory of resurrection from unfolding. Death has been defeated. All of our failure and limitations are being overcome. The resurrection occurred without any help from us and it continues to unfold without any help from us. Jesus rises anyway.
We are invited this morning, to join in the victory already won and continuing to make itself manifest in our midst; to live into the resurrection; to do our best to follow behind Jesus as he makes his way back to Galilee; to share the good news; to wipe away the tears of the suffering; to lay out a banquet to all who hunger; to work for justice and for peace. But, in the end, thank God, none of it is dependent upon us. Jesus rises anyway. What a remarkable vision of victory for a world that can feel mired in defeat.
One of my favorite quotes is from Antoine de Saint_Exupery. He wrote, “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”
We do not need to build a boat, bigger or otherwise. The resurrection stands before us ship shape and ready to brave whatever may come. Let us yearn for the vast and endless sea and join the journey of resurrection victory.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Mark 16:1-8
“A Bigger Boat”
Douglas T. King
“I’m going to make him an offer he can’t refuse.” “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.” “What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate. “I’ll have what she’s having.” These are among countless famous movie lines. If we opened the mic up to the congregation we could sit here all morning coming up with them, each and every one bringing to mind a vivid scene from a favorite movie that has become etched in our memories.
Mark creates a vivid scene for us as these women flee from the empty tomb…speechless and filled with fear. As I picture the women running away in terror a specific movie line does come to mind. “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.” If it is not ringing an immediate bell for you, it is an iconic line from the movie “Jaws.” A movie, that for at least one summer made me nervous about swimming in both the Atlantic Ocean and the Long Island Sound, and even a little leery about climbing into the bathtub.
The line was famously ad-libbed by Roy Scheider, but according to The Hollywood Reporter, “the actor didn't pull the line out of thin air…Filming Jaws on the water
made for a troubled production, with the crew working off a barge that carried the equipment and craft services plus a smaller support boat. Crew members complained to producers that this support boat was too small, which was how they coined the soon-to-be-famous phrase.” The producers were very, shall we say, frugal. “Everyone kept telling them, 'You're gonna need a bigger boat,’…It became a catchphrase for anytime anything went wrong—if lunch was late or the swells were rocking the camera, someone would say, 'You're gonna need a bigger boat.'
“Scheider eventually picked up the saying and started sneaking it into takes. One of his ad-libs came after his character's first confrontation with the shark, which is also the audience's first good look at the human-eating antagonist following an hour of suspense-building.” After seeing the size of the ferocious beast approaching in the water, he slowly backs away, transfixed by the enormity of with what they are contending. Barely able to overcome his speechlessness, the words seem to fall from his mouth in awe, “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.” It is the perfect line for when you realize you are in way over your head and dealing with something beyond anything you have ever experienced before. We will see how it is the perfect line for us this morning.
The ending from the Gospel of Mark, is rather abrupt. This morning we are welcoming the empty tomb with brass and song, raising our alleluias in hopes that the entire world might hear the good news. But those actual witnesses fled in fear, speechless. And this is where Mark ends his version of the story. No joyful reunion celebration of the disciples with the risen Christ, in fact no sighting of Christ at all. No going out and making disciples all nations. No vision of Christ being raised into the skies. Definitely no trumpets and timpani.
We get fear and fleeing. Thanks, Mark, for ruining the party. I feel like we got all dressed up for nothing. I am tempted to turn to one of the other gospels for a smoother ending that matches what we are doing this morning. But I believe Mark has gotten it just right. We are going to need a bigger boat.
First of all, why would “terror and amazement” not be their reaction, or our reaction, if we had faced that empty tomb that very first morning? Over the years we have tamed and domesticated the resurrection. But when all of your expectations about how the world works are shattered it is like being in the midst of a magnitude seven earthquake. The foundations beneath your feet you thought to be solid are now a rolling and wobbling mess, tossing you to and fro.
Those women understood what death was. They had a playbook to follow. You grieve. You show up and enact the time-honored traditions of preparing the body. You know how to proceed. But now what? There is no body. No sign of the one you loved so dearly. And what’s more, they are told he is alive once more and on the loose, on his way to Galilee. What happened to death? What happened to the mortal Jesus they knew? What happened? They are going to need a bigger boat.
That first Easter, no one was equating the resurrection to the sun rising in the morning or daffodils pushing their way through the earth. The once dead Jesus now alive and on the loose, making his way to Galilee is not some cyclical renewal of nature, not some continuation of business as usual. It is the very defeat of death and so much more. Tom Long says it this way, “Easter destroys the perceived world at hand, it is…the unmasking of the present reality, the world we assumed was permanent.” All of the limitations and imperfections of each of us and our broken world we believe are just the way it has to be. The empty tomb says otherwise.
Whatever assumptions we may carry about the nature of the world and reality, Mark is telling us to pause for a beat, because they may just be illusions of the old reality before the resurrection. We are going to need a bigger boat.
As we sit here in all of our Easter finery this morning, the worlds feels like a pretty lovely place. But a return to the headlines on our phones reveals a more complicated picture. War and terror circle the globe. Our political systems appear to be sinking into a sea of toxic division and dysfunction. We turn to the weather report for news of the latest once-in-a-hundred-year storm. Sounds to me like our entire world is going to need a bigger boat.
And what about the church? Post pandemic, across the country numbers of attendees and members are down. Folks got used to being home on a Sunday morning and many have not gotten into the habit of returning just yet. The church is going to need a bigger boat.
Have I brought enough shadow to the morning? It makes me long for the day when my biggest fear was a fictional shark somehow finding its way into my bathtub. How could we possibly build a boat big enough to withstand all of the very real threats and worries of this world?
But we will see this is the great gift of Mark’s gospel ending. The other gospels provide us with traditionally happier endings. We get disciples spreading the good news of the resurrection and making disciples of all nations. The other gospels turn to what the disciples and subsequently you and I will do. As if it us who make the resurrection real.
My friend and colleague Matt Gaventa writes this of Mark’s ending, “The disciples give up, but Jesus rises anyway. The women flee, but Jesus rises anyway. Even Mark himself can’t quite do it justice; he can’t look the thing directly in the eye; he just quits writing, guilty by association of the same fearful trembling that has possessed his protagonists. But Jesus rises anyway, an apocalypse of grace into a story full of characters who do not deserve it.”
My friends, we do not need a bigger boat. We have a bigger boat. The resurrection is the biggest of all boats and is not dependent upon our imperfect efforts to make it happen. We can run in fear from it. But Jesus rises anyway. We can try to tame and domesticate it down to nothing. But Jesus rises anyway. We can simply ignore it. But Jesus rises anyway. None of it is stopping the victory of resurrection from unfolding. Death has been defeated. All of our failure and limitations are being overcome. The resurrection occurred without any help from us and it continues to unfold without any help from us. Jesus rises anyway.
We are invited this morning, to join in the victory already won and continuing to make itself manifest in our midst; to live into the resurrection; to do our best to follow behind Jesus as he makes his way back to Galilee; to share the good news; to wipe away the tears of the suffering; to lay out a banquet to all who hunger; to work for justice and for peace. But, in the end, thank God, none of it is dependent upon us. Jesus rises anyway. What a remarkable vision of victory for a world that can feel mired in defeat.
One of my favorite quotes is from Antoine de Saint_Exupery. He wrote, “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”
We do not need to build a boat, bigger or otherwise. The resurrection stands before us ship shape and ready to brave whatever may come. Let us yearn for the vast and endless sea and join the journey of resurrection victory.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Recent
Archive
2024
January
March
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
No Comments