Learning to Sail - Part 1
This is me learning how to windsurf on my Dad’s board.
When I was a teenager, my father bought a windsurfer. After learning himself, he put me on the board and taught me to sail. It was a lot of fun but also a lot of work. The hardest thing was figuring out how to balance my weight against the varying wind tugging the sail. Sometimes I had to lean back and others I had to straighten up. Quite often a gust of wind filled the sail and pulled me over on top of it. Then I’d climb back up on the board, grab the rope and pull up the sail to try once again. Pulling the sail from the water was difficult because it weighed more than me. As a beginner I spent more time trying to pull up the sail than I did actually sailing.
Once I caught the wind it was glorious! I anchored my feet on the board, leaned back and let the wind push me across the lake. Coming back was another story. Here I had to learn to use the wind and my body very differently. More than once, my father had to rescue me from across the lake or I had to lay down the sail and paddle back. Sailing was both exhilarating and exhausting. The key is to learn how to respond to the changing wind.
The gospel of Mark describes how Jesus taught his disciples to sail. After watching him visit towns healing the sick and casting out demons, it was now their turn. Rather than loading them up with supplies and an inspirational pep talk, Jesus does the opposite.
He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics. He said to them, ‘Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place. If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.’ So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent. They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them. (Mark 6: 7-13)
Notice the way Jesus sends them on this mission. Certainly, Jesus and the disciples wanted to be well received in each town, but Jesus did NOT say “if any town doesn’t receive you, keep trying. Bring enough supplies to last until someone receives you. Go from house to house until someone believes our message and then use that leverage until you get a small following of people. Only then can you move on.” Jesus didn’t send them out with conversion quotas. There was no expectation about the percentage of people in a town who should receive the message before it would be considered a success. Indeed, Jesus did not even send them out expecting to be received at all.
He did, however, tell them what to do if they were received. They were to stay put in one home instead of continuing to move from house to house. He also taught them what to do if they were not received – move on, don’t get stuck and don’t look back. In this way, the disciples learned to sail with the Holy Spirit and leave the outcome of their work to God.
