Drowning

 March 24, 2024

If you worshipped at Park church this morning, you’ve already heard the story I’m about to tell. When I was a kid, our family went camping every summer for two weeks. We camped numerous times at Raquette Lake in the Adirondacks, once on an island on Lake Huron, and once or twice at Silver Lake, somewhere in Ontario, Canada. It was here that the incident took place when I was seven or eight years old. 

The campground at Silver Lake fronted a bay about the size of a baseball diamond. The bay opened up to the rest of the lake at the far end, and it was there the adults were swimming. I was lazily floating on an air mattress about halfway out when I fell off. The water was over my head, and I couldn’t swim. I frantically thrashed about, desperately but unsuccessfully trying to keep my head above water, and in my mind’s eye can still see the sticks and mud on the bottom of the bay as I went under, painfully aware I was drowning.

The next thing I know, I was standing on the shore with no idea how I got there. Over sixty years later, when I think of it, it feels like yesterday. I never told my parents about it, so why do I tell you? 

On this Palm Sunday, I’ve been thinking about salvation. When Jesus rode into Jerusalem that day, the crowds were shouting, “Hosanna,” which means “Save us!” They didn’t understand the kind of salvation Jesus was bringing, but that’s not my point. When I think back on that incident of years ago, I LOVED the salvation, but hated being in the spot where I needed it. We are much like that. We love the idea of salvation, but don’t like to think of ourselves as needing it. We prefer to think we’re doing the best we can, that all we need is a little help or encouragement…but not salvation. Salvation implies we cannot help ourselves in any way, and we don’t like feeling helpless, needy, sinful. We love the results of salvation, but not the conditions of it.

So today I’m asking the hard question: From what do I need to be saved today? What in my life is so damaged that I cannot rescue it? Where am I drowning, needing someone to reach out and pull me from the waters that are closing in over my head? We don’t like to go there in our thoughts, but if I don’t recognize my helplessness and need, I’ll never be able to receive the salvation God offers in Jesus Christ. And that would be a worse place than in water over my head.