How many people suffer from travel sickness? Quite a few I would imagine because it is a common complaint. I’m quite fortunate in that respect because it’s something that’s never troubled me but I do know lots of people who do suffer from it and I’ve met some who it affects so badly that they’re very reluctant to travel long distances because they know how ill they’ll be. In fact, I used to know one man who suffered so badly from travel sickness that, when he stationed on the Shetland Isles during the Second World War, he wouldn’t go on leave if the weather was bad because the boat journey to and from the mainland made him so ill! But, if you’re one of those unfortunate people who do suffer badly from travel sickness, I think you’ll be quite surprised to learn that one man who shares your troubles, is the Apollo 11 astronaut, Michael Collins.
For those who don’t remember the days of the Apollo space programme, or who aren’t particularly interested in that sort of thing, Michael Collins was the member of the Apollo 11 crew who’s often forgotten. People remember or have heard of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin because they were the first men to land and walk on the Moon, but Collins is often forgotten because he was the one who didn’t land on the Moon; he was the one who stayed in orbit around the Moon. As a fighter pilot, test pilot and astronaut, you might have thought that Collins would be amongst the least likely of people to suffer from travel sickness but, in his memoirs, he admitted that, under certain circumstances, he suffered very badly from travel sickness.
What he found was that, whilst he was flying, as long as he looked straight ahead, he could do barrel rolls (that’s when a plane rolls round like the fingers of a clock) with no problem at all, he could do them all day long. But, if he turned his head sideways so that, to him, it felt like that plane was rolling end over end, straight away, on the first roll, he’d be ill with travel sickness.
That tells us something about why people suffer from travel sickness. It tells us that it’s not really the movement of a vehicle that makes people ill, it’s caused by the disorientation people feel when there’s movement coupled with the lack of a reference point for them to focus on. Because, as long as people have some fixed point to focus on, they can cope with the movement. That’s why Michael Collins could do barrel rolls in a plane with no problem as long as he looked straight ahead but, as soon as he turned his head sideways and lost his reference point, he became disorientated, he thought he was rolling end over end, and it made him ill. It’s the same reason why people who suffer from travel sickness as passengers in a car, don’t suffer from it when they’re driving. And we can use that as an analogy for the problems we have at times as Christians.
We know that our reference point, the thing our focus should always be fixed on, is God. And our compass if you like, the thing that keeps us pointed towards God, is Jesus. And as long as we keep our focus on Jesus and the things he taught us to do, we can keep God in our sights and keep our orientation towards God. And, if we can do that, we can cope with whatever problems might be going on around us. But, if we take our eyes off Jesus, especially when we’re having to face and deal with problems and difficult times, we can find ourselves in trouble because, once we take our eyes off Jesus, we can very easily lose sight of God and the problems around us can overwhelm us. In a sense, it’s just like being in a moving vehicle when we can’t see where we’re going, we can become disorientated and start to feel physically sick.
So, if we lose sight of Jesus and God in our lives as Christians, we can become spiritually ill. And we see some examples of that in our readings this morning.
In our Old Testament reading, we heard about Elijah who had to flee for his life form king Ahab and Jezebel. But Elijah doesn’t look to God for a solution to his troubles, in fact, we’re told that Elijah felt so badly that he simply wanted to die. It’s God who finds Elijah. And then, after God has found him and Elijah does go looking for God, God isn’t where Elijah expects to find him. He’s not in the great wind, or the earthquake, or the fire, God is in the gentle breeze, the stillness, the silence. And when Elijah’s focus was taken away from all the commotion going on around him, his own troubles, and the wind and earthquake and fire, and it was back where it should have been all along, on God, what does God say to Elijah in such a quiet gentle way? He tells Elijah to go back and carry on with his God-given task. And that’s something we need to keep in mind at the moment when we’re faced with such troubled times.
Over these past few months, quite a few people have asked me, ‘Where is God in all this?’. Well, God is there, God is always there. But if people are expecting to see God in the act of hurling a bolt of lightning or sending an all-consuming fire from heaven, or in some other unmistakeable, cosmic way to destroy coronavirus, they’re probably not going to find God in all this. So we need to look for God’s presence amongst us at this time in other, less conspicuous ways. And if we look to Jesus, and simply do the things that Jesus taught us to do, we’ll find God.
We also have people, understandably so it must be said, who are frightened at this time: just like Elijah they’re quite literally in fear for their lives. Because of that, some people are reluctant to return to church until ‘things are back to normal’. But the important things, the things that really matter about coming to church are back to normal. Those things have never changed, what did change is that we weren’t allowed to come to church to experience them.
And whilst we might have had to make changes to what we do in church and to the way we use our churches so that we can come back to church, God is still here, his Spirit is still with us, the Lord is still present amongst us in Word and Sacrament, and we are here to worship him. Is that not what we normally do in church and what we normally come to church for? So we need to keep our focus on Jesus and on God and not allow ourselves to be disorientated by the troubled times we’re living through and the changes we see around us.
I think, at this time, we can liken ourselves very much to Peter in this morning’s Gospel. We’re in stormy waters but, as long as we keep our eyes fixed firmly on Jesus, we’ll get through them to calmer times. But, if we get so distracted by the storms that are going on around us that we take our eyes off Jesus, there’s a danger that we’ll start to sink beneath the waves, just like Peter did. So let’s keep our focus on Jesus and on doing what he taught us to do, whatever is going on around us at the moment. If we can do that, I’m not saying it’ll be all plain sailing for us, let alone that we’ll be able to walk on these particular waters without even getting our toes wet, I’m sure we’ll have to do a bit of paddling at least, and maybe even some wading at times, but at least we won’t sink and it’ll keep us heading in the right direction, towards God.
Amen.
You will find the Propers for the 19th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Trinity 9) here.
Parish Church of St Mark Chadderton 