An Empty Boat

John 11:32-44

I want you to use your imagination for a moment. I want you to imagine that you are in a boat on a river. It can be any kind of boat you choose: a canoe, a rowboat, a kayak… Can you picture it? O.K, you’re in your little boat, paddling along, minding your own business, heading down river. The water is still and calm. The leaves on the trees around you are just beginning to change color and you can see all of the yellows, oranges, and reds reflecting off of the water all around you. An occasional leaf falls off of a branch and drifts gently down in front of you. As you watch it fall, all of a sudden WHAM! Another boat bumps into you from behind. You turn around and see that the driver of the other boat was busy furiously texting on their cell phone, oblivious to where they were they were going when they bumped into your little boat.

Now, let me ask you: How do you feel about that person? What do you say to that person?

Shortly after this happens, you get your boat going back down river, your blood pressure returns to a normal rate, and you once again begin enjoying the still water, the changing leaves, and the ride that you’re taking in your little boat, when all of a sudden WHAM! It happens again. Another boat slams into your little boat. But this time when you turn around you see that this boat has no one in it all. It’s an empty boat. What do you do this time? Do you shout at the empty boat? Are you angry at it? Do you say anything at all? How does life change when you get bumped by an empty boat?

Chuang Tzu was a Chinese philosopher who lived in the 4th century before the birth of Christ. This lesson about the “empty boat” was one of his stories.

Have you ever been bumped? Can you remember the last time you really got bumped in life? When someone or something came along, often without warning, and knocked you off course? When something bumped you out of the comfort and security of the life you were living and left you trying to paddle back on course?

We’ve all been bumped. And when it happens, it’s jarring. It’s startling. It can make us angry. In fact, many of us have been bumped so many times that we’re no longer paddling along through life, enjoying the scenery and the moment, but instead we’re spending all of our time on the lookout for the next boat that may come along and bump us. Can you relate?

Mary and Martha have been bumped. In our lesson for today, they’re still reeling from a big bump-one that startled and shook them. One that has sent their lives off course. Lazarus, their brother, has died, and they are feeling bumped in a big way because of it. They’re angry. They’re tearful. They’re searching for answers and looking for hope. They’re worrying. Really, they’re doing what we would do.
What they learn that day is that God has the power to make every painful experience, every threatening thing, every worry inducing bump in our lives into an empty boat. Jesus, filled with every human emotion his body will hold, as he fights back the tears, appeals to God to do just that. In the face of death, Jesus prays to God and opens the grave. At the end of that day, with the bandages still hanging from his head, arms, and legs, Lazarus’s death is nothing more than a momentary bump from an empty boat.

We still get bumped. Every day. The problem with this isn’t in the bumping, but it’s in what we do with it. If you get bumped enough, you begin to worry about where and when the next big bump will come from and what it might do to you. When this happens, you spend most of your life worrying instead of living. You start looking not at the changing leaves or the still water that God has blessed you with, but at the boats all around you, the one way out there on the horizon…and you worry that it’s coming for you. When this happens, the whole world shrinks to the size of your little boat and you spend all your time wondering how you’ll protect it. The end result is that even an empty boat can rob us of the present-the only time we really ever have.

Jesus came, in part, to liberate us from the idea that worrying accomplishes anything. He told his disciples, at the most uncertain point in their lives: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in me.”

In Jesus, we are given the power and the strength to become the very thing that we spend so much time running from. In Jesus, we can become empty boats. Chuang Tzu put it this way: “If you can empty your own boat crossing the river of the world, no one will oppose you, no one will seek to harm you....” When we become empty boats floating through life, then God becomes the one who charts the course, drives our lives, and watches out for the bumps along the way.

Jesus, seeing the pain that death causes and the power that it holds over the lives of the people he loves, does something about it. That afternoon, he opened the grave, prayed to God, and called for Lazarus to come out. Later, in order to destroy the power of death forever, Jesus ventured right into it. He walked into the darkness that Lazarus emerged from. He set his course for the heart of it and never allowed himself to be bumped off course by anything. Before he did, he emptied himself completely, he prayed for God to take over, and when he set his compass for the cross he became an empty boat-driven by God. In the emptiness, God does something amazing. Death is conquered and new life emerges.

No one likes getting bumped. We’re bumped by all kinds of things and all of them add up in many ways to death and loss. We’re bumped when we lose a loved one. We’re bumped when we lose a relationship. We’re bumped when we lose a job. Every bump interrupts our life. Every bump knocks our little boat off course. Every bump hurts.

In the God who raised Lazarus, in the God who was raised on the cross, and in the God who raised Christ to new life, we’re reminded every day that these bumps cannot defeat us. These shocks cannot drive us off course forever. These traumas will never have the last word…because with this God, one day the waters will become calm once more, the sun will shine again, and even at the end of life, our boat will still sail on.