From My Porthole:
A Last Look Before I Close It

Seafarer Ministry: Procrastination and Righteousness

A few weeks ago one of our chaplains asked that I write an editorial for NAMMA-notes stressing the need for more chaplains to do the work since we seem to be losing more than we are gaining. Now I'm not sure that anything I write will be read by those individuals who need to be motivated. But I do know, that if I don't write at all, there will be nothing to read, so perhaps I had better make an attempt, particularly since my time at NAMMA ends in a little less than two weeks from today.

One verse that came to mind is found in John 4:35, "Do you not say, `Four months more and then the harvest'? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest." If I understand Jesus' words to his disciples, he was discouraging procrastination. Lest you think that this is a new problem, obviously the disciples then were as talented as we are in putting off what needs to be attended to now.

Too often we all are guilty of saying, "I'll tackle ... when I get around to it," and we all know we never do. The fields were ripe for harvest in Jesus' time and they still are. The time for people willing to enter maritime ministry is now; ships are still plentiful and shipping continues and as long as it does, there will be needy seafarers. But the only time you and I have is now; their need is now, and they really ought not to have to wait until we find more time. We'll never have more time than we do now.

But I have another concern than the shortage of maritime chaplains. I'm concerned about what we are supposed to be doing. I recently read a message which addressed this issue more clearly than any other that I have read recently and I'd like to share it with you. I don't know who wrote it, so I cannot give credit to the author. I only know it was written by a daughter of one of our friends at church.

Her message is based on the fourth beatitude, "'Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled." (Matt. 5:6) The author works with the word righteousness and says this word found in this verse is the same Greek word as the one which means justice. She says "there are three biblical ways to look at this word.

Three ways to look at the word righteousness

"First, there is the righteousness that belongs to God alone. In the Old Testament, God's righteousness refers primarily to his faithfulness to his covenant with the people of Israel and it's demonstrated by his saving actions towards them. God always acts rightly in his relationship with Israel. Genesis 18:25 says, 'Shall not the judge of the earth do what is right?' The prophets in the Old Testament associate righteousness with doing justice, loving-kindness and mercy, and with God's promises of deliverance.

"A person was considered righteous by acting in accordance with the covenantal relationship with God, meaning in obedience to the Law of Moses. This understanding continued into New Testament times. But by then righteousness had become a burden to the people of Israel placed upon them by the Pharisees, whose love or God had become secondary to their legalistic interpretation of the law.

"Jesus came to make it possible for us to become righteous, in the sense of being justified before God, by grace through faith in him. He offers as a gift what seems a ridiculous trade – he takes our sins in return for his righteousness. We are counted as righteous, that is we are in a right relationship with God, reconciled to him, only when we are in Christ. That's the legal sense of righteousness, and it's a one-time deal. All Christians are righteous in this sense, so it's not something we continually hunger and thirst for.

"The personal righteousness Jesus is referring to in Matthew 5:6 is what Paul calls 'being slaves to righteousness (Romans 6:13, 18-20), and what Peter said we are to live for (2 Peter 2:24). A righteous person is described in various places in the New Testament as one who lives for God's purposes, who is faithful, obedient to God's commands, moral and upright, exercising fairness and justice. We can sum up all these things by defining righteousness as being conformed to the will of God. Jesus said his food was to do the will of his Father (cf. John 4:34), and doing the Father's will should be what feeds every follower of Jesus.

"Righteousness understood as justice is the third sense of the word, and also something we should hunger and thirst for. When we see injustice in the world, we are not to turn a blind eye, but to seek to put things right as much as we are able. The Church has, over the years, done much to serve the cause of justice, but in the 20th century, evangelicals in the west have been guilty of looking inward, concentrating too much on personal devotion, to the detriment of doing justice in a societal sense...."

Where the rubber hits the road in port ministry

With this I leave her message and add my own two cents or so. I know by personal experience exactly what she refers to. I was raised in an evangelical church background where the church leaders prided themselves on being a New Testament church community. By this they meant that they followed the New Testament and that the Old Testament were words of a bygone era and therefore largely irrelevant to life today.

It has taken most of a lifetime to get beyond that idea. The development for me of the third view of righteousness as justice, which the author quoted above refers to as really being normative for us living today, began when I was introduced to what is theologically identified as the reformed way of thinking. The various branches of the reformed churches all stress the view of the unity of Scripture from Genesis through to Revelation, not just the New Testament. The second thread that characterizes this way of looking at things is the emphasis on the sovereignty of God.

In my own spiritual journey one of the major developments occurred when we moved from the United States to Canada and became acquainted with what has been called the Kuyperian or neo-Kuyperain way of looking at Scripture and what it means to be a Christian today. Abraham Kuyper was a Dutch politician and theologian of the late 19th century and he is quoted as saying that "over every square inch of human existence, Jesus Christ says: 'This is mine.'" If Kuyper is right, and I think he is, there is no longer any place for this dualism which has come to characterize modern evangelicalism. By dualism, I mean the splitting of the world in which we live into secular and spiritual aspects.

If all of human existence is to be under Christ's redemptive work, then Christians ought to be active in all spheres of life, not just in those of spiritual import. The secular is also to be brought under Christ's control. And that's where the rubber hits the road in port ministry. We do more than bring people into a right relationship with God and that "more" includes bringing every aspect of seafarers' lives under the Lordship of Jesus Christ and it means that we work to right the wrongs that we come across as we do our work of ministry. We need, as the preacher I quoted said, "when we see injustice in the world, we are not to turn a blind eye, but seek to put things right as much as we are able" and I would add, God helping us. That is true biblical righteousness -- doing justice.

The prophet Micah said it so well and so memorably, "He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." (Micah 6:8)

As I am about to finish my term of being Executive Secretary in NAMMA, I would like to do so by encouraging all of us to seek to do biblical justice for seafarers and to seek others to carry on this work of Christian ministry and vision.

—Chaplain Lloyd Burghart

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