All Saints’, Dorval
August 9, 2026
Me, Ariel, and Arike aboard the Janet May on the first day of Schooner camp, circa 1990
It’s been occurring to me over the past few weeks that Canadians, and especially Canadian church people, seem to be disproportionately obsessed with boats.
Yes, today’s Gospel reading is about boats – and we’ll get there, I promise – so it makes sense to highlight that theme, but even so, as I was preparing the slides for today’s service I was struck by just how many hymns there are that take sailing as their central metaphor. Other than the Navy Hymn, I don’t think I’d encountered any of them before moving here. Which, given that I literally grew up in a major port city on Long Island Sound, is odd.
I’m sure there are all kinds of sociological reasons why Canadians like to sing “Will your anchor hold” and “I feel the winds of God”, but I’ll leave that to the sociologists to figure out. And they’re great hymns; I wish I’d known them sooner!
Because growing up in that port city on Long Island Sound, one of my most cherished memories of childhood is the three summers that I got to spend doing summer camp aboard a 92’ schooner that sailed around New Haven Harbour, pulling crabs and flounder out of the water for us to examine in big tanks on deck before we threw them back, and occasionally dropping anchor and letting us jump off the bow wearing life jackets. I met one of my best and longest-standing friends there when we both showed up on the first day wearing baseball caps and pigtails.
What I loved most, though, was just the fact of being on the sailboat, singing sea chanties as we hauled on the ropes together, learning what to do when the person at the helm yelled “Ready about!”
I went and read the whole Swallows and Amazons and Aubrey/Maturin series, and I’ve jumped at the chance to sail, in any boat, large or small, since then. (The fact that I’ve spend a total of four weeks aboard Dave Robinson’s 30’ Dragonfly and only had two decent sailing days, total, is an abiding source of annoyance.)
The other day, I happened across a video online that had been filmed from the bridge of a huge container ship somewhere in, I think, the southern Atlantic – towering waves rocking the whole gigantic vessel back and forth like a rollercoaster, so that the bridge, many meters above the deck, swung wildly from side to side. Many of the comments were expressing horror and wondering how on earth the crew aboard the ship could cope. And my response was “am I the only one going WHEEEEE SIGN ME UP”?!
I get carsick. I get horrendously sick on buses (especially if they smell of diesel exhaust and dirty upholstery, as so many do). But I’ve never been sick on an airplane or a train, and my favourite place to be on a sailboat is all the way forward, where the bowsprit is swooping up and diving down as we ride the waves; I pretty much always want the boat to be moving more than she actually is.
If I’d been on that boat in the middle of the Sea of Galilee, would I have been terrified? Maybe; I mean, it was dark, and night sailing is no one’s idea of an easy time. But at least in Matthew’s telling, the disciples don’t seem have been actually in danger; they were just tired, with the wind against them, and it was seeing Jesus that made them scream in fear, not the actual situation in the boat.
What we find terrifying versus what we find exhilarating is such a unique thing, distinctive and personal to each of us. I love sailing a heavy sea, and I make my living speaking in public, something that many people list as their #1 fear; but I am an absolute wuss if you tell me that there are bears in the woods where I’m hiking, and I’m not sure you could pay me enough to do that thing where you strap yourself to the CN tower and walk around on the outside of it. And of course I have plenty of anxieties about things like money and paperwork and whether that thing I said in a meeting in 2013 was as dumb as I remember it being.
And sometimes you can flip from WHEE THIS IS AWESOME to “Oh my God, what am I doing?” literally midstream, as the disciple Peter does in today’s reading. He steps boldly out of the boat, all ready to walk to Jesus across the choppy surface of the lake, and then all of a sudden his conscious mind realizes what he’s doing and says NOPE, and he starts to sink. And because Jesus knows Peter well, he just picks him up, affectionately rolling his eyes, and goes, “Just can’t stop getting in your own way, can you, friend?” and together they walk back to the boat.
I wonder what things you find intense and exciting and rewarding that other people might find just scary and stressful and no fun at all – and vice versa. Because that’s actually a great way to think about what God might be calling you to do.
I find it profoundly fulfilling to accompany people through the major life transitions of birth and death. I wouldn’t call it fun to rub a labouring mother’s shoulders all night or lead the prayers for the dying at a hospital bedside, but when I do either of those things I know exactly what I’m doing and that it’s where I’m meant to be.
I am extremely grateful that God makes other people who are equally exhilarated by hunting through thousands of pages of numbers to chase down financial fraud; or cutting people open to replace their joints; or showing up in court to defend immigrant children; or setting up mobile Ebola clinics in the jungle; or conducting multi-decade experiments to improve forestry practice in the north; or any number of other things that I would be absolutely terrible at but that the world desperately needs.
Certainly one of the reasons that Canadians love to sing hymns about boats in stormy seas is that the boat in a stormy sea is an excellent metaphor for life. For some of us, in that particular situation, the terror may be uppermost; for others, the adrenaline-pumping excitement. But God has given each of us gifts that empower us to do things that might terrify our friends. (Alex, for example, does stand-up comedy. Yikes!)
And if any of those things are also things that bring beauty and healing and hope and justice and creativity to the world, I think that that’s a pretty good indication that they’re what we’re supposed to be doing.
So let us – in whatever manner suits us – step out of the boat and start across the water to our Lord, who is holding out his hand to catch us if we fall.
Amen.
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