This Week's Sermons

Sermons for the Month
Saving the Beetle Cat
DATE: March 21, 1999
SERVICE: Lent V
TEXT: Ezekiel 37:1-14
"To all of you Saints here this morning, grace and peace to you from God our Father, from His Son, Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit. AMEN

Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. These three words form a mantra for the modern environmental movement, and they remind us of the need to conserve the limited resources that God has given us on planet Earth.
A couple of weeks ago, a member and I were talking about the coming lawnmower season. We joked about the expense of fixing a lawnmower versus buying a new one at the local Builder's Square Going-out-of-Business Sale. It seems that despite our nationwide and local efforts to encourage recycling, we remain a throwaway culture. Buying a new walkman is often cheaper than fixing the old one (even if we could find someone to do it). Items ranging from bottles to boats are tossed aside when they are used up, or worn out or viewed as worthless.
But once in a while we are reminded that recycling is a concern both human and divine.
Way down east off the coast of Maine in the fishing village of Stonington is the famed Billings Boatyard which, for decades, has cared for yachts both sail and motor for the likes of the Rockefellers, the Forbes, the Bushes and the Kennedys. Typical of such large yards, Billings has acres of buildings for storage and repair, and acres of land where boats are stored high off the ground up on stanchions, wrapped in plastic shrink-wrap, out in the open, yet protected from the harsh weather and salt air.
Far away in the furthermost corner of the yard, heaped around and uncared for, uncovered, exposed to the weather, are the derelicts - rotting away, forgotten or abandoned by their owners.
Old wooden launches sit with motors long rusted solid, the weight of which, were they not resting on the gravel, would have burst through the rotten planking and holed the boats terribly long ago. Ancient sailing yachts lay like beached whales on their sides, next to crumbling wooden lobster boats whose sweeping lines can still be seen, but whose utilitarianism in this age of fiberglass has seen its day.
Out among these decaying vessels lay a Beetle cat, a small day-sailer, 12 feet 6 inches in length, 6 feet wide, with mast placed forward as far as possible, gaff-rigged, having a boom at the bottom of the sail and an additional wooden piece that runs across the top of the sail at an angle from the mast. Early in this century, Beetle cats were originally designed for teaching children to sail, but adults quickly grew to love their stability, seaworthiness, easy handling and good looks. When in good condition, a Beetle cat has lovely, sweeping lines, and is a beauty to sail on the sea or view from the shore. But this Beetle cat lay abandoned and in decay, with ribs like broken bones, decking which had long disappeared, floorboards stripped away, and the rest of her rotting. Her sail rigging lay tumbled about like long sticks in a pile on the ground.
There she sat, forgotten and worthless, mere bones, until someone wandering through the yard happened to see her - a Beetle cat! A glint of restoration hope gleamed in his eye. Could this Beetle cat sail again?
Spirited Gary Williams, recycler extraordinaire, marched back to the office to ask Mr. Billings how much he wanted for the Beetle cat.
"What Beetle cat?" came the reply. "Didn't know we had one. Pretty stove-up is she? Well, you can have her for nothing, if you haul her out yourself."
Gary did, and with care rebuilt the boat, stem to stern, ribs and decking. Rib by broken rib, the bones that give her form and shape, he replaced, one at a time; then he built a new deck like a skin to enclose her. Where she had been pinned by iron nails, Gary used stainless steel screws. Where her deck had been white pine, Gary used marine plywood. Her sail, which had been made of canvas, was replaced with nylon. Her punky rudder was scraped clean and encased by fiberglass.
Now she sits and bobs in the swells off Ocean Point. Her hull bright red, she is altogether worthy of the sea, able in winds fair and fierce, and her current captain sails her when he can, a boat restored to grace and beauty; a boat admired by all who lay eyes upon her for lovely sweeping lines and handsome shape, an antique bucket of bones brought back to life using modern tools and supplies.
To most people who had seen here before she was restored, she looked hopeless? But only to eyes without vision. Was she a derelict? Only to those who could not see her potential, or her past. Would she rise again? Most surely, if the worker was willing to face the worst and do the work
What one might have thought of as waste, worthy only to be buried or left aside to be forgotten, has through necessity and ingenuity been reworked and renewed into useful materials and products. The rotting Beetle cat was renewed to sail the sea again.
Is it possible for a community, even out of necessity, to give new life and usefulness to a decaying institution? What does it take? Well for one, it takes one person with a vision; one person who listens for the voice of God and acts, even when it seems crazy at the outset. Our first reading for this morning, finds Ezekiel looking over a valley of dry bones, his country. Israel had been utterly and completely destroyed by the Babylonians. Nothing was left. Most had resigned themselves to the inevitable. But not Ezekiel.
When that three-word mantra-- Reduce. Reuse. Recycle-- first came into usage it was only the counterculture hippies of the 1960s who saw the value. The back-to-the-landers, as they are now called in our New England Northeast, built their lives on simplicity and recycling. What was once just the crazy counterculture has turned mainstream in places like Bar Harbor, Maine or Laconia, Vermont or Billings, Montana.
What does it take to bring something back to life? Well for one, it takes a person with faith, with trust, in God. Ezekiel was convinced that those bones of Israel could rise again and they did. People like Henry David Thoreau believed in being at one with God. And today Lake Erie has come back to life as will the Little Cuyahoga. And no less than Jesus Christ believed in we could be salvaged and we who call ourselves his disciples can and will be.
A boat can be restored; but it takes winds in its sails to get it moving again. Surgeons can reattach limbs to the body; but it takes the life-force of the body to energize the nerves and give those limbs function and mobility again.
In the last 12 years, Akron has lost one Lutheran church every three years. What does it take, Faith, for the church of Jesus to come alive again? Our OT lesson supplies the answer. It takes the ruach, the breath of God's Spirit, to bring life.
God asked Ezekiel, "Mortal, can these bones live?" Does Ezekiel reply, "No! They are bones, never to walk about again"? He does not. Ezekiel says, "Only you know, God. It is entirely up to you." In other words, only God's will can make it so. Only God knows what hope can come back to the church through the proclamation of God's Word. Only God knows what hope can come back to any person who stands beside the covered hole in the ground where we too easily bury all our hopes and dreams. And what one of us has not stood by such a graveside?
How many churches in our own Akron-Wooster Conference will it take before we wake up to what God is doing in the world?
How many of the faithful assume their fellowship is past its prime?
How many empty sanctuaries are there across America, rural and urban, that have given up praying for a renewal of Spirit, for flesh to fill the vacant pews with hearts wide open to God?
How many people feel a dryness in their spiritual bones but lift not a finger to open their hearts to the will of Jesus?
How many are yearning for empty lives to be filled but seek it anywhere but in God?
My friends, it is my conviction that the prophesied death of the church of Jesus Christ is greatly exaggerated. Why? Because with God all things are possible. Just as Israel rose from the ashes of conquest and exile to reinvent itself, God can act and intervene in the lives of His church, in our own personal lives, to renew our Spirit, give us hope, new life provided we align ourselves to what he is doing in the world. When we stick with God's vision, his words, his tools and his Spirit all things are possible. Nothing is impossible for those whose faith rests in the will of God.
AMEN