Darkness – despair – does anyone know or care?
And even if they do care, can they help?
Dragon Boat Festival
As I write this blog post, it is 22nd June 2023, or the fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese lunar calendar. In some places, people are celebrating 端午节, known as ‘Dragon Boat Festival’ in English. It’s a time for fun on the water, as competitors race ornate boats decorated like dragons. It’s a time for munching 粽子 (zongzi), pyramid shaped dumplings made with sticky rice, often with a tasty centre and wrapped in banana leaves.
I wanted to buy ready-made zongzi today but had left it too late. The helpful lady in the fruit and vegetable store offered to sell me the leaves and string needed to wrap the tasty bundles. “It’s easy,” she assured me, before relaying a long and complicated list of instructions about the filling and the sticky rice and how to form and fold them. At the end of her impromptu lesson, looking at my furrowed brow, she added, “Perhaps it’s not that easy, actually. Why don’t you try the Asian supermarket down the road?”
The origins of this festival are sombre. An ancient Chinese official and poet was rejected by his king and banished to a distant land. In despair, he walked into the river and disappeared under the water. (That happened in about the year 278 BCE.) Local people frantically searched for him with boats, and threw lumps of sticky rice into the water to try to keep the fish from eating the body of this poor fellow. But alas, it was for nought.
A missing submersible
Many modern netizens, like me, are today repeatedly refreshing our news apps, hoping and praying for a miracle. We are following the huge sky and sea operation which is underway. People are searching for the five hapless adventurers aboard the submersible that went missing near a deep sea graveyard – the wreck of the Titanic which sank in 1912. Experts expect that the chances of survival will be negligible if they’re not found by today……
Noah’s flood
In a passage I cannot begin to understand, the apostle Peter writes about Noah’s ark and relates what happened then to us now. In that vessel of ancient times, eight souls and a menagerie of animals were saved from the devastating flood in which all other living people and land creatures perished.
For Christ …. was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit. After being made alive, he went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits – to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it, only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, and this water symbolises baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at God’s right hand—with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him.
1 Peter 3:18b-22 NIV
I have little idea of what Jesus proclaimed to those hapless spirits who were submerged by the waters of judgement in Noah’s day or where he made his proclamation. Even questioning what and where reflects my limited understanding.
But this I know for sure. Those of us who trust in the risen Jesus are saved. Baptism is a powerful symbol of that salvation.
Hope
It seems crass to contrast our hope of salvation with the plight of those five souls adrift in the Atlantic Ocean. Yet the coincidence of today’s Chinese festival commemorating the drowning of a great man occurring at the same time as the frantic race against time as the search for those lost souls in the submersible draws to a crisis point is uncanny.
As I write this blog post, I continue to keep an eye on the news, hoping against hope for a happy ending. My hope is not based on anything secure. The most advanced scientific gadgets and the skills of the people aboard the myriad of planes and ships searching for them are limited.
Though followers of Jesus may sink beneath physical and/or metaphorical waters, our suffering but now risen Lord has a hold of us. The one to whom all heavenly powers submit is watching out for us. He is not limited. No, his search and rescue mission was conducted from a position of sovereignty.
And so we have hope. A sure hope.
Yet our hope is tinged with sadness for those who are lost……