We recently saw a staged adaptation of Herman Melville’s story, ‘Moby Dick’ or ‘The Whale.’ In the version we saw, a small company did an excellent job of evoking the sea, the gore, the fear, and the insanity at the heart of Melville’s tale. Miles from the sea, with no white whale in sight it was as though the tornado was raging round us.
Four days before that I had been part of a performance of the Sea Symphony. In his musical portrayal of the sea, Ralph Vaughan Williams brings the power, mystery, and movement of the ocean to life. His use of instruments and the human voice combine to evoke the uncontrollable force of nature that finally overcame Captain Ahab in Moby Dick and showed that there are battles that a person cannot win.
Today’s bible reading is Matthew 28:16-20. In it, Jesus gave his disciples the task of taking his message to all nations. A task that, read in the cold light of day, seems fanciful and impossible for eleven men. And yet, just as music or drama can inspire imagination and let us feel things that are not actually happening where we are, so too, in a quite different way, to write off Jesus’s commission as impossible is, itself, to be fanciful.
The difference is simple. The fictional Captain Ahab obsessed about overcoming The White Whale until it made him unmanageable and mad. He led his crew recklessly and put them and his ship in such danger that all were wrecked, because his aim was unsupported and undeliverable. Two thousand years after the Great Commission was spoken, it is still being brought to pass. Why the difference? No one who tackles God’s Mission does it alone.
Then Jesus came to them and said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.’
A Prayer
Lord, it can be difficult for us to differentiate between figments of imagination and achievable miracles. Help us not to lose sight of your promised support when we respond to your tasks and to have the grace to know the power of your support with us.
We praise you that your will cannot perish with all hands. Amen.