The winds of Crete: a bible study.

Tanner, Mary

Do not be afraid Paul, you must stand before Caesar: and lo God has granted safety to you and all who are with you. Acts 27:27

Most of you, like me, will have been to many ecumenical meetings from large assemblies to small groups like this one. You will have taken part in many worship services and heard countless meditations. Although at the time the meditations have spoken to you and to the theme of the meeting, few stay with you. As soon as I knew that we were coming to this place, there came into my mind the phrase "the winds of Crete" and a meditation given in this chapel in 1984. It was the first meeting of the new standing commission of Faith and Order which had been ratified at the WCC's Vancouver assembly in 1983. The new commission was having to plan its agenda for the years ahead. After the success of BEM, what next? The late John Deschner, the new moderator of the commission who had succeeded Nikos Nissiotis (whose spirit is evident in this Academy), opened the meeting with a meditation on the passage from Acts, chapter 27 and the text:

 Do not be afraid Paul, you must stand before Caesar: and lo God has
 granted safety to you and to all who are with you.

So, in honour of John Deschner, I decided to offer you John's three thoughts as I remember them and put into my own words. They are reflections on the experience Paul had with this island of Crete. John offered the three reflections to give direction for Faith and Order as it began a new phase of its work. I offer them to give direction to our work these days. I offer them in thanksgiving for John's contribution to Faith and Order and his contribution as a wonderful teacher to the ecumenical movement.

The story from Acts is familiar. I guess that as children in Sunday school some of you, like me, will have drawn maps of Paul's journey to Rome in Sunday school.

--Paul, before Festus in Caesarea, had appealed to Caesar. Now, together with other prisoners, he was being taken by sea, under the charge of the centurion Julius, to Rome.

--The boat coasted up to Sidon, rounded Cyprus, and sailed along the coast of southern Asia Minor to Myra where they changed ships.

--They put to sea with difficulty. The winds began to become disturbing. They sailed under the lee of the southern coasts of this island, Crete, until they came to Fair Haven--the most southerly part of the island. There is a lovely icon in this chapel of Paul and his companions in Fair Haven with the boat in the harbour. The gentle winds of Crete blow through the sails.

--There was an argument about whether to stay for the winter or continue the voyage. Paul counselled staying for the winter. But they put to sea, hoping to reach a better wintering place along the coast.

--But no sooner had they put to sea than the winds of Crete began to blow. First gentle and promising, but then blasting and furious. The boat drifted for two weeks in violent storms. First they battened down the hatches, then they threw the cargo overboard.

--Paul tells them to take heart--there will be no loss of life, only loss of the boat. An angel, he says, had told him:

 Do not be afraid, Paul: you must stand before Caesar. God has
 granted to you safety and to all who are with you.

--We all know the rest. The ship was lost--but all were saved and Paul and the others did reach Rome and, with Paul, the message of the gospel.

Three things then about this story.

First, those winds of Crete. The WCC has never been pictured as a steamship, a huge ocean-going liner, but as a sailing boat, small and modest. It has sailed through the years by the winds of God, by the breath of God, by the Holy Spirit of God. Sometimes the Spirit has blown gently, and we have sailed calmly together, sometimes the winds have been stronger and we have seemed to be being taken off course. But when the winds have been rough, when wisdom has prevailed, when we have been attentive, we have recognized that the ecumenical movement has to do with the winds of God, the Spirit of God, blowing us where God wills, for our good. God doesn't promise that it will be easy, that it will always be calm. But God requires of us that we shall trust God and be inclined to God, that we shall recognize the Holy Spirit blowing in the sails of our ecumenical boat.

So that's the first lesson. Paul's encounter with the winds of Crete reminds us that we are to be open to the Spirit's blowing, the Spirit's guiding us and taking us not where we might want to go, or where we think we ought to go, but to where God wants us to go, where the Spirit of God longs to guide us.

Secondly, amid all the fears that the ship could be lost, all life lost, Paul heard God's messenger assure him that his mission to Caesar would be fulfilled. Not that it could be fulfilled but that it would be fulfilled. Paul heard a message of certainty that his mission, that is to say, God's mission, would be fulfilled.

The churches together in the fellowship of the WCC have been given a mandate--the mandate of visible unity in faith. Life and mission, as the constitution says, "the goal of visible unity in one faith and in one eucharistic fellowship, expressed in worship and common life in Christ, through service and mission to the world", nothing less than the visible unity of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church for God's sake and for the world's sake. God says to Paul when the going is hard, when disaster looks inevitable, "Don't be afraid! Your mission is to carry out my mission, my purpose--it will be fulfilled." So God says to us, and to the churches in the fellowship of the WCC, "Don't be afraid of the turmoil, don't be blown off course. Use your wits, as Paul used his wits. Stick together, learn to act together in wisdom--don't expect the going to be easy. But stick together, sail together in my wind--open to my Spirit and your mission, my purpose will be fulfilled."

And thirdly, Paul heard the angel say, "God has granted you and all who sail with you safety." God has granted us through the WCC one another in the ecumenical boat. We may not have chosen each other as sailing companions to work for the unity of the church. It would have been easier if we had found ourselves in the boat with only some of us and not all of us. It would be easier if we could throw some of us overboard. But, like Paul and the other prisoners with him, we are together in the boat in fulfilment of God's purpose. We can throw overboard the unnecessary baggage we carry with us--the unnecessary programmes, unnecessary structures, unnecessary styles and ethos. But we can't throw one another overboard. We need one another; God has given us to one another. We belong together in the task God has set us.

So, as we begin our work as a part of the special commission, let the winds of Crete remind us that we are to be open to God's breath, God's Spirit, blowing and leading us where God wills, not where we will. Let's remember that, like Paul, God has given us a mission to work for the unity of the church, for God's sake and for the world's sake and that God's purpose will be fulfilled in God's way in God's own time. And let's remember that as Paul was given all who sailed with him and that they had to learn to pull together, so God has given us to one another in our ecumenical boat. We have to find a way to stick together and sail together, and in God's time eat together around the eucharistic table. So God says to us:

 Do not be afraid: you must carry out my purpose. I have granted to
 you and all who sail with you my safety.

* Mary Tanner of the Church of England is a member of the Faith and Order commission. She gave the following remarks at the Orthodox Academy of Crete in August 2000 at a meeting related to the WCC's Special Commission on Orthodox Concerns.