"FOR THOSE IN PERIL ON THE SEA"

Good morning. I am Mike Sweeney. Many of you know me as clerk of Session. But I also am one of the Sunday School teachers. And I’d like to share a message with you, from the youth.

First of all, the title for today’s "sermon" is not quite right in your bulletin. It should be, "For Those in Peril on the Sea." Dave Hedgepeth said I could blame him for the mistake, but as a journalism professor, I’m not going to complain about typos. When I was a young reporter, I mixed up the words "Calvary" and "Cavalry" in a story about Easter services. It was quickly pointed out to me that there were no cowboy-soldiers in Jerusalem.

The title comes from an old hymn. It’s called "Eternal Father, Strong to Save," but it’s also called the Navy Hymn. It was written in 1860 by an Englishman for one of his students who was sailing for America. It was the favorite hymn of Franklin Roosevelt, who loved the Navy, and was played at his funeral in 1945. The words refer to our readings from Genesis and from Mark today, and I would like to share some of them with you:

O Christ, Whose voice the waters heard

And hushed their raging at Thy Word

Who walked on the foaming deep,

And calm amidst the rage didst sleep;

Oh hear us when we cry to Thee

For those in Peril on the Sea!

The youth have chosen for worship today, the theme of "Sea and Sky." It’s appropriate as we prepare to celebrate Earth Day, this coming week. It sort of completes our picture of our world: earth, sea, and sky. But it also is a terrific theme for a Bible lesson, even for people who live so far from the ocean. The imagery of water and air fills the Bible. According to one concordance, the word "sea" appears 400 times in the Bible. "Sky" is only in there seven times, but if you get a little metaphorical and search for "heaven," you’ll find it 582 times. "Earth" is mentioned 987 times. Thus, if you have been doing the math, you realize by now that the sea, the sky, and heaven combined are greater than the earth. Final score: 989 to 987. It was close, but the wind and the waves turned the tide.

When we look at how the Bible refers to sea and sky, we find that they are big and scary. The ocean and the heavens overwhelm us, as they nearly did Christ’s disciples on the Sea of Galilee. They remind us of the majesty and power of God. In the case of the Navy Hymn, they remind us of the power of wind and waves compared to puny human lives.

God himself refers to sea and sky in the Book of Job, to let Job know just how small, ignorant and insignificant Job is:

Job, Chapter 38, says . . . Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said, "Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding. . . . Who shut up the sea with doors, when it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb? When I made the cloud the garment thereof, and thick darkness a swaddling band for it, And brake up for it my decreed place, and set bars and doors, And said, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed?"

The Lord is telling Job, Who are you? Where were you when I created the world, and set water and heaven apart from dry land? Declare, he says — almost like a dealer saying, "Show me your cards." And God always has the bigger hand.

Well, I’ve told you some of the background of the Navy Hymn, but I have held back one little part I’ve been saving. It has to do with this week in history.

As Bob Appuhn recently reminded me, April 15 was an inauspicious day. Lincoln died, the Titanic sank, your taxes came due . . . and Bob Appuhn was born. Happy Birthday, Bob.

As many of you already know, I will be traveling this summer to the wreck of the Titanic. Dr. Robert Ballard, who found the ship, is returning, to document its decay, to explore its interior, and to lay the groundwork to preserve it. I’m along for the ride, as a writer for the National Geographic. I’ll be writing daily dispatches for the National Geographic News Service, handling media inquiries, and gathering material for a book about the trip, to be published just in time for Christmas. (I’m not suggesting that you go out and buy it, but there is a clause in my contract that says I get a big, fat bonus if it sells a certain number of copies. Just FYI.)

I have been spending my spare time for the last few months, researching and writing the first two and a half chapters. Part of the challenge is to find something to say that hasn’t been said before. The Titanic is one of those subjects that seemingly has been done to death. I have a shelf of books at home, about three feet long, all on the Titanic. And in addition to those books, there are videos, magazine articles, and some insignificant little movie that came out a few years ago. But the work has been fun. I’ve learned a lot of things.

Here’s the Cliff’s Notes version: In 1912, when Titanic made its maiden voyage, it was the largest moving object ever created — 882 and a half feet long, and nearly 50 percent bigger than any other passenger ship. Its design made some people say it could not be sunk. Bulkheads that crossed from port to starboard separated Titanic’s interior into sixteen supposedly watertight compartments. The ship could float with any two compartments filled with water. It could float even if water filled the first FOUR compartments. Small wonder that given the confidence of the builders, a technical journal declared in 1911 that the ship was "practically unsinkable." Or, when passenger Sylvia Caldwell boarded Titanic in Southampton, she asked a deck hand if the ship was in fact unsinkable, and he told her, "Yes, Lady, God himself could not sink this ship."

You know, I wonder if that deck hand ever read the Book of Job.

The first Sunday at sea, on the evening of April 14, Titanic had its first worship service. Among the hymns was "Eternal Father, Strong to Save," with the line, "For Those in Peril on the Sea." After the service the Rev. Earnest Carter said, "It is the first time that there have been hymns sung on this boat . . . but we trust and pray it won't be the last."

To paraphrase Paul Harvey, you know the rest of the story. Titanic hit an iceberg shortly before midnight. The accident was a one in a million chance, almost as if God had punished the ship’s builders and managers for their arrogance. The ice tore holes in the first FIVE compartments on the starboard side. Water flowed in, deep enough to let it slosh over the top of the "watertight" compartments. The weight of the water pulled the bow down, and let the water flow toward the stern. As soon as the water topped one compartment, it began to fill the next, and so on, and so on, like tap water filling an ice cube tray. In the end, Titanic sank early the next morning, with a loss of 1,500 lives.

You don’t have to look far for inspirational moments in the story of the Titanic:

Take the story of Isidor and Ida Strauss. Isidor was the owner of the Macy’s department store in New York. When the crew gave the order to fill lifeboats with women and children, Ida got in. Isidor had to stay on deck. Ida considered her position — she could go on living, without her husband, or step out of the boat and join him on deck. She chose the latter. "We have been living together for many years. Where you go, I go," she told him. So they did.

Then there’s millionaire John Jacob Astor, who put his pregnant wife aboard Lifeboat No. 4 and calmly accepted the order that he could not join her.

There’s the story of teenage boys who decided that, falling halfway between society’s definitions of men and children, they must choose which they would be — and chose to call themselves men, and die.

And finally, there’s another story, probably not Sunday School fodder, but it’s one of my favorites. A baker named Charles Joughin provided bread for the lifeboats. Then he had to decide how to face his own death. He came upon a doctor who told him that if he stayed inside one of the ship’s airtight compartments, death would be swift — the ship would be dragged down, and when the pressure became too great, the water would collapse the hull like a peanut shell under an elephant’s foot. Charles didn’t like the idea of going down buttoned up inside the ship. But neither did he relish the idea of swimming until he drown or froze. The water was 28 degrees that night, and the most likely scenario was that he would freeze to death. Charles decided that he would prefer to die as he preferred to live: with plenty of alcohol. So he grabbed a full whiskey bottle and drained it. He would either die of alcohol poisoning, or the whiskey would make him so senseless he would not feel the icy water. But God said, Ha. Charles unknowingly won his own one-in-a-million gamble that night. He got so drunk that as the ship sank, and the waves pitched the deck to and fro, he was the only person able to maintain his balance on the stern. Charles rode the stern into the water and stepped off just as it went under. He didn’t even get his hair wet. And the alcohol in his body counteracted the extreme cold. While others died within minutes, the drunken baker survived and was plucked to safety.

You see, people make plans. They build ships, they take trips. They trust in their own works. But God has his own plans. God has the wind and the water to remind us of the power of his creation. God also has the power to intervene in our lives. He can undo the best-laid plans of people who build giant ships and call them unsinkable, or he can save the life of a terrified baker who tries his best to kill himself.

God has the last word. And so it is fitting, I think, that the story of the Titanic continues, and grows ever more complex and fascinating.

After the Titanic sank, the world said, "Never again." New rules were passed requiring every oceangoing ship to have enough lifeboats for everyone on board. Marconi operators were required to staff their ship radios 24 hours a day. Ice patrols were organized to keep watch for icebergs and warn ships of their position. Ships were designed to be even safer, with watertight compartments that truly were watertight. But mostly, the Titanic’s sinking made people stop and take stock of their insignificance and ignorance.

God is still having the last word.

When the Titanic was examined up close in 1986, it was found to be covered with red slime that looked like icicles made of rust. Dr. Ballard called them "rusticles," and the name has stuck. At the time, they were thought to be merely oxidized iron — purely a chemical reaction. But in the last few years, scientists have examined the rusticles and come to some amazing conclusions. They’re alive. Rusticles are complex, colony creatures made up of many different kinds of bacteria, each with its own job to do to keep the rusticle growing. Rusticles feed on iron, and so slowly they are consuming the Titanic. Scientists say there are so many of them on the wreck, that the ship supports more life today than it did in 1912. Some even say the ship itself is coming to life. Furthermore, as they study the rusticles, they see ways that they could improve our lives. They are showing us new ways to make concrete — biologically, instead of chemically. They are showing us new ways to prevent rust from clogging fresh-water wells, a problem that affects millions in Third World countries. And, because rusticles promote the growth of some bacteria but retard the growth of others, they may help create new antibiotics. It is quite possible that the Titanic will save many more lives that it took in 1912.

Perhaps the lesson of the Titanic, as well as the lesson from our youth today, is that God really does hear us, "when we cry to Thee, for those in Peril on the Sea."

Amen.

April 18, 2004

Mike Sweeney

First Presbyterian Church

Logan, Utah