Luke 17:5-6
July 21, 2013
The apostles said to the Lord,
‘Increase our faith!’ The Lord replied, ‘If you had faith the size of a mustard
seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, “Be uprooted and planted in the sea”,
and it would obey you.
A couple of weeks ago I started this sermon series on
coincidences, or God-incidences, and I talked with you about my fascination
with them. I mentioned how my own experiences of God-incidences led me into
ministry, into a vocation I specifically didn’t want to be a part of. And I
mentioned that I wondered if I was alone in my experiences. Were experiencing
coincidences with God? So I shared a story of an event that helped me realize
that it wasn’t just me that experienced these providences, but that others did,
too.
While working on my Ph.D. my interest in God-incidences
and providences grew, but others didn’t always share my fascination. It wasn’t until
I came to Calvin Church in 1996 that I came to realize how often God uses
coincidences to help us. Here I found a group of members who shared the same interest
in these events as me. I had conversations with a number of members, such as Jo
Jones, Jane Smith, and others who had had constant experiences of
God-incidences. No one influenced me, though, as much as June Worstell, who
used to share a number of stories with me—both her own and of others—that
influenced my thinking.
In 1996, June told me a story that has stayed with me and
that has captivated me ever since. It was a story she heard many times in the
years immediately after World War II, and I want to share this story with you.
During World War II, a miraculous even occurred that
changed the life of a man named Jim Whittaker. Whittaker was the co-pilot of an
Army Air Corps B-17 that took off from Hawaii in October of 1942, ten months
after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor.
The plane was headed southwest over the ocean toward some small islands
in the South Pacific.
Its manifest included five crewmen and three
passengers. One of the passengers was
Eddie Rickenbacker, the famous World War I flying ace. The flight was uneventful for the first few
hours, but then disaster hit: their
navigational equipment failed. They were
suddenly flying blind over the great expanse of the Pacific Ocean, with no way
to tell where they were. Should they
turn around or keep going? Either way
they would probably end up ditching the plane into the sea. They did their best to find land, but
eventually they ran out of gas. They had
no choice but to make a forced landing into the sea.
As they plummeted out of the sky, the navigator asked Jim
Whittaker and the pilot, Bill Cherry, if they should pray. Jim Whittaker didn’t answer, barely managing
to keep from yelling at the man to shut up.
Whittaker had little room for prayer and religion.
He had grown up in a
strong, Bible-believing community as a child in Missouri, but for most of his
life he had considered religion to be a sign of weakness. To make it through this ordeal, he and the
men would have to be strong. There was
no room for weakness, and prayer was weakness.
They hit the water at ninety miles per hour, and barely
had time to get out of the plane before it sank. They managed to push three rubber rafts out
the door. The only supplies they had
were four oranges, some fishhooks, some knives, a pair of oars, and some
twine.
They made it through the first night, wet and shivering
in the cold. The next day they were
greeted with the blazing tropical sun.
The first day passed and there was no rescue. The second day passed and it was more of the
same. The third day passed, but still
there was no rescue.
The days passed slowly and painfully in the hot, tropical
sun. By the sixth day, the men were
getting desperate and delirious. They
had caught and eaten a bird and a few fish, and they had eaten the oranges, but
other than that there had been no food or water for six days. For several days they had conducted prayer
meetings in the morning and evening, but Whittaker simply saw them as more
signs of weakness. God wouldn’t help
them because there was no God. Their
only chance was to be lucky enough to be seen by a rescue plane. Whittaker could barely keep his contempt in
check
Suddenly, Bill Cherry began praying: “Old Master, we know there isn't a guarantee
we’ll eat in the morning. But we’re in
an awful fix. We sure are counting on a
little something by the day after tomorrow, at least. See what you can do, Old Master.” Afterwards, Cherry took the flare pistol and
shot it into the air, as they had done every evening, hoping that a search
plane would see it. Instead of soaring
into the air, though, the flare veered into the water. As it zig-zagged, its light attracted some
fish and among them barracuda, which chased the other fish. To escape the barracuda, some of the fish
jumped into the rafts. Food! God had provided them with food. At least that’s what most of the men thought,
yet Jim Whittaker saw it as nothing but dumb luck.
On the eighth evening, Bill Cherry again prayed to
God. This time he asked for water. Soon, they noticed a small cloud on the
horizon change from a puffy white to a deep gray. It moved toward them and settled
overhead. Soon they were being deluged
with water as the rain came down in sheets.
Cherry yelled out, “Thanks, Old Master!”
The water came down so hard that they could catch it in their hands and
pour it down their arid throats. They
gathered more of the rain into their shirts, and wrung them out into the pockets
of their life jackets for reserve.
This new event sent spiritual shivers down Jim
Whittaker’s spine. Maybe God was
answering their prayers. This wasn’t the
way he thought God would have worked, if there were a God, but maybe he was
wrong. A few days later they prayed for
rain again, and again another cloud darkened and spilled hard rain over
them.
On the thirteenth day, when they saw rain in the distance
but it failed to come near them, Jim Whittaker led the prayers: “God, you know what the water means to
us. It is in your power to send back
that rain.” Whittaker was surprised at
his own prayer, but he was even more amazed when the rain quit moving away and
began to move toward them, against the wind.
Again, they were drenched with a life-saving rain. Slowly, Whittaker’s skepticism was dying
while faith was being born in his heart and soul.
They drifted in the ocean for a total of twenty-one days
before they were finally rescued. On the
twenty-first day they saw islands in the distance. They rowed and rowed, and slowly they came
closer and closer to the islands, but they were so weak. Could they make it? They had eaten so little food and drunk even
less water that they could barely row anymore.
They had been rowing for seven hours since seeing land.
As they came closer to the island, a current picked them
up and began moving them away. With
sharks attacking the rafts, and the currents pulling them away from the
islands, Whittaker prayed “God give me a little more strength.” An invigorating
rain descended and gave him more life, and as the sharks bumped the rafts with
ever more ferocity, he yelled out, “God!
Don’t quit me now.” He felt a
strength that was not his own surge through his arms and shoulders. A swell took them over the reefs, and finally
they came to a halt on a white, sandy beach.
There, natives nursed them back to health and contacted the U. S.
Navy.
When Whittaker recovered, he decided to tell his story to
people all over America. He told them
how his skepticism and doubt had died during those twenty days, and how he came
alive to God’s presence in his life. He
was no longer the same man he was. That
skeptical man had died in the South Pacific and a new man was born: a man of faith, love, and hope.
This story taught me some really important things about
God. The first lesson I learned was a paradox: faith withers in a garden and
blooms in a desert. You may remember that twelve years ago I published a
book titled, Paradoxes for Living. In
it, I explored a number of biblical paradoxes, such as to be rich we have to be
poor, to be strong we have to be weak, to save our lives, we have to lose our
lives, and a bunch of others. I realized that often the core teachings of
Christianity are paradoxical and seem as though they don’t make sense. But it
is in living them out that we realize we are being led to a deeper life.
Whittaker’s story brings out this paradox, because his faith
withered in a garden and bloomed in a watery desert. This particular paradox seems
to be central in the Bible. The only ones ever asked to form their faith in a
garden—in a place of ease, beauty, and peace, where no on ever struggles or
suffers—couldn’t. And so Adam and Eve got kicked out into the desert wilderness
where they had to struggle. Meanwhile, most of the other biblical characters
either literally or figuratively had to form their faith in a desert: Abraham,
Israel, Joseph, Moses, the Israelites, David, the Israelites again in Exile,
Jesus (40 days and nights in the desert), and Paul (three years in the deserts
of Arabia following his conversion). It seems that the struggles of the desert
are the preconditions for forming a strong faith.
We often think that a good God would never let us
struggle or suffer, but apparently we need struggles to actually form a deep
faith. This paradox lies at the core of the reason that college students often
lose their faith, or have it seriously eroded. Think about the college
experience: the students live on a secluded, beautifully kept campus (whether
in the country or the city). They have their meals and housing paid for. Their
entertainment is provided, and their jobs (attending classes) are virtually
guaranteed. They are given lots of time to think about life in the abstract, while
they live relatively protected lives. They lose their faith because they are
living in gardens. For many, it’s not until later in adulthood that they
recapture their faith after living through the difficulties of real life.
Whittaker’s faith was soft until he was hardened by his
experience, yet it was his experiences of 21 days on a watery desert that allowed
a deep faith to bloom.
The second lesson I learned is that when God does miracles, it usually doesn’t
get rid of the need for human effort. One of the constant criticisms I hear
from people outside of the Christian faith, regarding our belief in miracles,
is that we Christians want to lounge around and do nothing, hoping that God
will do everything. Funny, but I’ve never heard a Christian propose that idea.
In fact, the Christian understanding is that miracles occur when all other
efforts fail. In other words, God doesn’t let us lounge, but instead, God
expects work.
Whittaker’s story is one of work, struggle, suffering,
and intense difficulty, and of God’s breaking through. They had to work to save
the plane, to get emergency supplies and people out the doors before it sank,
to secure the rafts, to keep up hope in the face of adversity, and so much
more. They didn’t lounge. They suffered. God doesn’t eradicate suffering, but
God does overcome it.
Finally, the message of this story is to never give up hope…. Ever! The
Christian message is one of God overcoming what seems hopeless. Most of the
biblical stories are those of God breaking into hopelessness: Joseph in slavery
and prison, the Israelites in slavery, the Israelites being attacked by
Moabites, Philistines, Assyrians, Babylonians, and even under occupation by the
Greeks and Romans. It also tells us about Jesus on the cross, and the hope that
broke through in the resurrection. In fact, our belief is that even if all hope
fades and we, or someone close to us, dies, that’s not the end. We believe that
something far better awaits us—a fate that makes the present sufferings “not
worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us” (Roman 8:18).
In other words, never despair because God is with us…
always!
Amen.
