An entertaining parable as a discussion starter on the Church in mission (or not!).
This sermon was preached at the 1999 synod of the Diocese of Canberra and Goulburn, but could have relevance anywhere. The Eklay Zia was the finest of ships but hadn’t been to sea for years. A parable of the Church engaging with the wider community.
Imagine yourself on a Sunday afternoon stroll along the wharves of a large seaport. Admiring the various ships tied up, you note a particularly fine vessel. Built in traditional style she is a stately and gracious lady. You look to see the ship’s name and find it is one of a fleet owned by the well-known Zia family : the name of this ship is the Eklay Zia. Attached to the gang-plank is a sign which says “All Welcome”, and you climb aboard.
On board the Eklay Zia all is a great hive of activity :
- some structural engineers are busy moving internal partitions and debating whether one or two bulk-heads might be demolished
- a committee has just completed a year-long process of reviewing the wages and conditions of the crew
- on the sun-deck a small group is looking at ways to move the chairs around to provide more warmth for the passengers
- another group is considering options for re-organising the work teams, changing the leaders and giving them new titles
- the purser posts regular multi-coloured charts of the ship’s finances
- word has just been received that one of the vessel’s twin engines is to be permanently decommissioned. This will seriously impede the ship’s progress, and may even cause it to sail around in circles
- the crew are very busy : when they are not part of one or more of the foregoing committees they are fully stretched looking after the passengers. The passengers by and large are an ageing group, some of them pretty grumpy, and quite demanding in their expectations of the crew.
You notice some rather unusual features of the Eklay Zia :
- there is no one rostered for duty in the crow’s nest to scan the far horizons, nor are there any navigators to chart the ship’s route
- no one is in the weather bureau to receive news of potential storms or high seas
- several deckhands stand ready to raise the gang-plank and let go the mooring lines, but the order never comes
- below deck the engineers wait for the engine-room telegraph to ring up Full Ahead, but the telegraph has been stuck at Stand By for a long time now, and sometimes indicates Finished with Engines
- some passengers who bought their ticket a long time ago have grown tired of waiting for the departure, and are now trickling ashore to seek alternative forms of transport
- in the wardroom a particularly noisy debate is going on : it appears there are some who believe the Eklay Zia should not go to sea at all. The practice of sea-going has been replaced by study courses in Virtual Navigation, and Virtual Seapersonship
- others are deeply concerned there are so many empty cabins, and want to send scouts ashore to recruit more passengers before sailing.
This latter group carries the day and scouts are selected from the crew for on-shore recruitment of passengers. After a period of training they go ashore to sell tickets for the journey, but are discouraged by the response. Hardly anyone wants to travel on the old Eklay, and there are many who have never heard of the ship. But as they travel up Main Street, and duck into side alleys, the scouts discover some surprising things :
- they over-hear side-walk conversations outside the cappucino stops and wine-bars, and are astonished at the hedonistic and narcissistic emphasis in much of what is said
- one with an economic bent has visited the stock exchange and is dismayed to find copies of the Eklay’s newsletter trampled underfoot amidst the hubbub of greedy voices of those who trade the earth’s resources for gain rather than as sources of life
- one of the scouts has visited the red light district, and senses something of the pain and compassion of the Eklay’s Owner in the body of a dead prostitute. The woman was a solo mum who was assaulted and killed while earning money to put her kids through school
- two of the women scouts have started regular visits to run-down government tenement blocks, and have seen hope blossom in the eyes of families cast aside as flotsam on the sidelines of a heedless society
- another scout has joined the Gay and Lesbian Quire and sings at the regular AIDS-day events. There she has sensed the abiding presence of the Owner’s Son in the midst of the rejected and the persecuted
- the chief scout has developed a program that gathers up groups of young people and takes them to distant lands to live amongst the poor and the homeless. The lives of the young visitors have been changed as they experience courage in the midst of despair, and new understandings of faith and hope have taken root
- others have gathered with candles in the streets to witness and pray on behalf of innocent lives taken by marauding militias and complicit governments in other lands
- another scout has been invited to accompany police on their Friday night patrols : this experience has changed his life as he comes face-to-face with a slice of community life he never even knew existed, and he has been deeply shaken by the vulnerability of the police, and the trauma they and their families face each day and night
- another has stood beside a tree and monument with the families and friends of those who have died from drug overdoses, and in some way has shared their pain and grief, and felt the Owner’s presence in their midst
- the deputy chief scout has been invited by the city’s managers to convene a group to address the needs of the hungry, the homeless, the sick, the strangers and those in prison
- one group of scouts have established a camping spot by the sea for youth, who find in friendship and community the compassion and faith that the Owner offers
- two others sensed the presence of the Owner as they travelled the Brungle road and saw the green hills bathed in the rays of the setting sun. The next day the same sense of presence was evident amidst the snows and eucalypts on the run up to Cabramurra
- another is working with a group of environmental planners to save vast expanses of the Owner’s estate from salinity and the rolling sands of the encroaching desert
- yet another has gathered together several key people who used to travel on the Eklay, but now want a more intimate community in which to explore the links between spirituality, ethics and the challenges of corporate life
- others have stood with farmers on land stricken by endless drought, with forestry workers whose jobs have come to an end, and with parents and young people made redundant from a fish factory declared uneconomic by financial gnomes in a far-away glass tower
- two scouts have embarked on a journey of reconciliation with indigenous peoples, working the Owner’s teaching about repentance, forgiveness and new life into the very fabric of the national community
- others again, seeing the loneliness and suffering of young and old alike affected by breakdowns in relationships, have established groups to provide understanding and support, and to build a community that offers hope and purpose for the future
- some scouts have attached themselves to schools and tertiary campuses : here they seek to inject a measure of vision and values into curricula shaped by narrow ideologies and pragmatic objectives
- others have gathered groups of folk minstrels and jazz players together to give new life to the Owner’s music and rhythms.
The scouts are disappointed not many people want to book a passage on the Eklay Zia, but they are exhilarated by their encounters with so many different members of the Owner’s family. In some places they have brought small groups together to study the Owner’s teachings, and in others they have been sustained by the food and drink the Owner plenteously supplies.
Fired by such exhilaration they rush back to the Eklay Zia to report on what they have discovered. They bang on the ship’s doors and windows, but the passengers and crew seem reluctant to let them in. When at last they are admitted they are listened to politely for a few minutes, then dismissed with a cheery wave and a few dollars for pocket-money on the road. Those on board become quickly absorbed again in their very full agenda of Eklay-Ziastical business.
Disillusioned, the scouts walk slowly away beyond the yellow pool of light from the Eklay. They return to the city, shrouded now in the darkness of night and chilled by the cold winds from the ocean. Huddling together for warmth, they walk through the red light district, past the shooting gallery, the closed doors of Maccas and DJs, and alongside the looming hulks of the financial towers of glass.
But as they walk there is a perceptible brightening in the sky. A soft glow is pierced by shafts of light until suddenly the scouts are dazzled by the brilliance of a new heaven and a new earth, and a peaceable city coming down from above. Leaders and peoples from every nation are pouring into it, for in this city there is room for all, and the gates are never shut.
Through the middle of the city flows a river of life-giving water, and along the banks trees which produce fruit, and leaves for the healing of the nations. There is no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God Almighty. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb.
To Discuss
- Dos the Eklay Zia sound like a church near you?
- If you analyse the agenda of your church, how much effort is devoted to outreach in the wider community?
- What would need to change to enhance a mission of wider engagement?
