“Desperate”

November 19, 2006

Scripture Reading:   

Rev. Dr. Carol  L. Kerr

 Blue Point Congregational Church

Desperate.  Were the pilgrims a desperate people?  If you look up the word in the Thesaurus the word desperate connotes frantic, inconsolable, wretched, very seriously acute, critical, drastic, grave, irretrievable, pressing, risky, severe, urgent and hopeless.   The History Channel is showing a three hour special tonight about the Pilgrims.  Lisa Wolfinger, the producer, was here last year at our Thanksgiving service and showed us some clips of the work in progress.   The title of the show is “Desperate Crossing:  The Untold Story of the Mayflower.”   The marketing arm of the History Channel came up with title, “Desperate Crossing.”  At first glace “desperate” certainly seems like a good word for what the pilgrims did.  Would you have crossed the North Atlantic at the beginning of winter to arrive at a wilderness inhabited by vicious Indians?  Would you have sold everything, left family, friends, civilization, and some even left their children behind, to do so?  We saw a clip of that crossing earlier in the service.  It was a desperate moment.  The Mayflower caught in a raging storm in the middle of the North Atlantic was beginning to break apart.  The main beam had cracked.   There were 102 of them on board the ship that was suppose to carry only 75. They had to lie on bare floors to sleep. There were no sanitary provisions.  They ate uncooked food.  They, as was so well demonstrated in the movie, were seasick over and over again.  They landed in what is now Massachusetts at the beginning of winter, without adequate provisions, and without shelter.  Soon they came down with scurvy caused by a lack of vitamin C.  Scurvy, among other things, reduces the capability of the immune system.  They got sick and did not have the capability of recovery.  By Easter almost half of the pilgrims had died. 

In many ways they were certainly desperate.   They were in wretched, grave, risky and sever conditions.  However, when you look at the etymology of the word “desperate” it comes from two Latin words,  espier and dis.  Epsier in Latin means “hope.”  Dis in Latin means “without.”  So the original word “desperate” meant “without hope.”  The question is were the Pilgrims without hope, or more to the point did the Pilgrims ever loose hope?   I think the answer to that question is no.  Certainly they were discouraged countless times.  Certainly they almost all died.  But, I don’t think they ever lost hope.  As such they were never desperate. 

To understand why I think this, you have to understand the faith which propelled them across the sea to America.  This week I have been immersed in some of the original writings of the Pilgrims.  I am captivated by the story they tell and the faith that comes alive as you read those words.   I would like to share some of that with you.  William Bradford became the Governor of the Plimouth Colony wrote an account.  In it he tells of Rev. John Robinson who was their minister in Scrooby England, and escaped with them to Holland.  Rev. Robinson did not go with them subsequently to America, however,  because there was more of his congregation staying in Holland than were going.  He felt the ones staying behind needed him more than the pilgrims who were going.   Although, Rev. Robinson wanted to go with them too.    It is the scripture passages that Robinson picked  and the sermon that Robinson preached on the last day he was together with the pilgrims who were going to America that gives us a glimpse of faith and boundless hope that the pilgrims carried with them.  What were they thinking at that moment?   A moment which was the end of deep and  life changing relationships.  It was also a beginning.

Let me start by reading to you the scene Bradford describes as they walk down to the ship that is to take them away from Holland, back to England and onto the Mayflower.  He wrote in an old Elizabethan English with long sentences that have many twists and turns.  To get the full impact of their thought, I have taken the liberty to update the language.  And at a few points I added some description and explanation that wasn’t there but I felt illuminates the meaning of what he is trying to convey. 

So when we were ready to depart, we had a day of  worship and prayer for what lay ahead of us.  We felt the immensity of what we were about to embark on and at the same time how small we were in the face of it.  Rev. Robinson read the passage in the Old Testament from Ezra 8:21.  This is the part of the Bible where the Israelites are at last allowed to return from exile.  They could go back to the land which God had promised them, and start all over again.   Ezra and the people were planning on  rebuilding the Temple which had been in ruins.  But, they also were going to rebuild the Temple in their hearts.  They were going to make up for the sins of the previous generations who went astray from the true God, and no longer obeyed the laws of Moses.  They were going to do it right.    Likewise, we were in exile like them, we had been in exile in Holland.     Likewise, we were going to return to a new home..  We were going to make a  new England that was a new Jersusalem -  Zion, the city of our God.  Rev. Robinson  read  the passage where the people are about to embark on the journey.  What do you do when you know that in a moment your life is never going to be the same again?  How does one undertake such a journey.   The ship was prepared and filled with supplies.  But we had to supply our heart with courage, and God’s guidance.  So we trembled as we prayed.  We cried and cried.    Like Ezra, we asked God to show us the right way for us and our children. 

And the time came that we had to depart.  Everyone accompanied us out of the city and the several miles to Delfes-Haven where the ship was ready to go.  And so, we left a lovely city which had been our home, our refuge, for nearly 12 years.  We knew that we had always been pilgrims.  We would always be pilgrims. We will never  have a home in this world.  Our true home is heaven.  As I walked down to the ship  I imagined that one day the sun would shine more brightly than it has ever done.  It would light up our lives with a great awakening light.  A light filled with love as warm and serene as a bank of a river in autumn I will walk along as I did in a home far away. 

That night we couldn’t sleep.  We staid up with our friends knowing it could well be the last time we ever saw them, and a vast unknown abyss lay ahead of us.  We played cards and other small games.  We talked.  We said good bye in many ways.  Saying things we always felt but never had a chance to say.  “I love you.”  “You were a big help when…”  “I will never forget…”  Then there was the silence and the long look into each others eyes.  We had been through so much together already.  We would clasp hands trying to memorize the warmth of the other. 

Finally the tide turned.  The tide which waits for no one, called us away.  Then Rev. Robinson got down on his knees.  I should say he collapsed onto his knees in fear and faith.  We all knelt with him.  He was crying and asking  God to care for us his good and faithful servants.  He told God to  love us forever.  He poured out his blessing on us.  We hugged our very last..  And we left each other  forever.   

If you went to Hannaford’s after church and asked most people what they were religiously, most would assume they were ‘christians.’  They were born of Christian parents, live in a predominantly Christian society.  They went to church when they were kids and now show up for Christmas and Easter and in a good year a few more times.  They recognize the 23^rd psalm and can recite the Lord’s prayer.  But, the life of the pilgrims shows us a different way.  For the pilgrims Christianity was a commitment and not something to be taken for granted.  Nor was it something that was simply to be understood or comprehended.  The pilgrims were not the “go along to get a long” kind of christians.  They thought for themselves and swam against the tide and passionately searched for their own way.    For the pilgrims Christianity was not just a social relationship.  They did not just show up on Sunday to be with some friends.  The pilgrims believed in their heart fervently, and as Kierkegaard would say, with fear and trembling. 

When the pilgrims parted they were sad, they were grieving, they couldn’t say good bye long enough.  But they were far from desperate or hopeless.  In fact, they were filled with hope.  They imagined  that they could create a place in this world that would embody their new ideals, a new England.  For them it was worth taking the risk.  They could not imagine life without this vision.  They could not imagine living a life with a luke warm half baked faith.   Staying put and settling for the status quo would for the pilgrims have been an act of desperation.  Stepping on the Mayflower was an act of great hope.  They were willing to risk their lives for this hope, because they were about something bigger than their own survival. 

What more gave the Pilgrims cause to hope rather than despair?  William Bradford writes about the last sermon Rev. Robinson preached to them before they departed.  It went something like this… and again I paraphrase:

It is not very long until we separate, and only the Lord knows whether we ever should live to see each other’s faces again:  but whatever the Lord has decided  the Lord has given us a special mission before the angels of heaven to  follow him as far as he followed Christ.  God’s revelation is not over.  God has more to say to us.  We should be open to new insights into the meaning of the Word of God whenever and wherever they might come.  For I am sure that there is more truth and light to break forth.  There have been great people who came before us and who had great understanding of the Scriptures.  These were such as Martin Luther, and John Calvin and their followers..  They were precious shining lights in their times.  Yet, it is not over yet.  God has not revealed everything yet.  And if they were now living, they still would be ready and willing to gather in more light of God as it continued to reveal its fullness to them. 

But, this is where we come in, our small church and our small covenant community.  We have promised to be open to God and to each other so we can be ready to receive the light and truth of the Scriptures as it is revealed to us….

For the pilgrims they were a living as a part of God’s ongoing revelation as it would continue to spill forth from the scriptures.  For the pilgrims no one person, or denomination had a corner on God’s truth.  Rather for them truth is many layered.  There is an infinitue Unity from which it comes.  It is an ungraspable essence which reveals itself in part and at different times and in different places.  God is beyond our human categories.  God is beyond any one box we humans can put him into.  This is extremely hopeful point of view.  It is a point of view that has the breadth to respect different approaches to faith.  It is a belief in truth that builds toward including rather than excluding people.  It is a uniting and embracing faith.  Desperation happens when people shut other denominations and faith out.  Desperation happens with one faith in its rigidity and claim to absolute truth necessarily excludes and so polarizes all others.  The pilgrims were not desperate but had the hope that there was a great unifying God who was still revealing himself to us all and would continue to stretch our imaginations, and make us continually wonder not with complete certainty but with reverence for mystery. 

It is important for us to realize that we as Congregationalists are historically connected to these very same pilgrims.  There were some puritans lead by other ministers who believed that one could not have a society with different denominations living side by side.  But, Rev. Robinson was not one of those Puritans.  He was part of more liberal open stream of the faith.  It was this stream that eventually became the United Church of Christ.  The denominational theory of the church looked for Christian unity in some inward religious experience and allowed diversity in the outward expressions of a that personal faith. 

Were the pilgrims desperate?  Was the Mayflower a “desperate” crossing?  Surely it had horrible trials and great suffering, but that is different than without hope.  Is a seed without hope.  Surely a seed is small.  It can be tossed on the wind and battered in a storm.  But, small as it is, even appearing to be dead, a seed is full of hope.  Likewise as small and beleaguered as they were the Pilgrims planted a seed in America.  A seed of tolerance, and openness to new revelation and insight that they would believe continues in each day and age.   The pilgrims were passionate believers who did not sit on the side lines but participated as Chrstians with their whole life.  We can count how many seeds are in anapple.  But, we can’t count how many apples are in a seed.   William Bradford likened them to one small candle which lights a thousand. 

Thus out of small beginnings greater things have been produced by His hand that made all things of nothing, and give being to all things that are; and, as one small candle may light a thousand, sot he light here kindled hath shone unto many, year in some sort to our whole nation; let the glorious name of Jehovah all the praise!

The word is not desperate the word that carried the pilgrims across the North Atlantic to America is hope.