Escape from Gilligan’s Island: Intro

We have started a new series at Flatland Church called “Escape from Gilligan’s Island.” Our pas­tors intro­duced the series yes­ter­day by, of course, talk­ing about the TV series Gilligan’s Island and how they never got off the island (at least not until the stu­pid movie). We even sang/spoke (poorly) the theme song, at least the part where the song lists off all the peo­ple stranded.  It was fun! But our pas­tors still had some seri­ous things to say.

They dis­cussed how we can find our­selves stranded in some way in our lives. We can be stranded in our rela­tion­ships, our jobs, our finances, our addic­tions, among oth­ers. They encour­aged us that we can escape from being stranded through God’s power. Over the next eight weeks, they will be show­ing us God’s power that can deliver us as seen in the book of Exodus.

I have been stranded myself with regards to my health. I am get­ting rather frus­trated over the lack of health lately; gluten-intolerance, neu­roupa­thy, vaso­va­gal syn­cope, and a spas­tic esoph­a­gus. It seems that dur­ing the past few weeks I have had them all flare up rather heavily.

At least one doc­tor I vis­ited believed that many of my prob­lems all stem from the gluten-intolerance. Unfortunately, I man­aged to acci­den­tally get some gluten into my diet recently so I had a fairly nasty break out of the skin blis­ters that it pro­duces. Gluten also causes me to have rather nasty abdom­i­nal pains and other nas­ti­ness (celiac dis­ease).  During church ser­vice yes­ter­day, I was expe­ri­enc­ing some very severe chest pains, caused by the spasms in my esoph­a­gus. So, even as our pas­tors were talk­ing about being stranded, I was lit­er­ally feel­ing it.

During our Oasis ser­vice on Wednesday, I also felt stranded and very frus­trated because of my gluten-intolerance. We cel­e­brated the Eucharist (bit redun­dant, I know) but there I was, not able to fully par­take because I can’t eat the bread. Waves of sad­ness really hit me. Communion has always meant so much to me through­out my life and to be cut off from it because of some stu­pid  ill­ness dri­ves me crazy.

Some might chide me a lit­tle say­ing, it is only sym­bolic. And, yes, I rec­og­nize that par­tak­ing of the bread and wine is not salvific but I have a ten­dency to fol­low to a small degree Calvin’s view of the Eucharist which says there is some­thing spir­i­tual that takes place dur­ing Communion. What that is, I can’t say. I just know that Paul would not have needed to warn us about tak­ing part in our cel­e­bra­tion through the bread and grape unworthily if it was purely sym­bolic (1 Cor. 11:27–30 [show]1 Corinthians 11:27–30 [27]Whoever, there­fore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unwor­thy man­ner will be guilty con­cern­ing the body and blood of the Lord. [28]Let a per­son exam­ine him­self, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. [29]For any­one who eats and drinks with­out dis­cern­ing the body eats and drinks judg­ment on him­self. [30]That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. (ESV)
).

Anyway, I look for­ward to this series. I may not be able to escape from my ill­nesses per se but I believe that God can lead me away from the emo­tional feel­ings of being stranded. Our pas­tors empha­sized that we need to be alert to God’s sal­va­tion. He may pull up to our iso­lated island in a cruise ship or just a row boat — either one can res­cue us. But if we just want to get on and look for a cruise ship, we may never get off the island because He has pro­vided us with some other form of rescue.

There is an inter­est­ing pas­sage in 1 Timothy 5:23 [show]1 Timothy 5:23 [23](No longer drink only water, but use a lit­tle wine for the sake of your stom­ach and your fre­quent ail­ments.) (ESV)
that has recently caught my atten­tion again. Paul urges Timothy to drink a lit­tle wine for his stom­ach because he is sick fre­quently. This has to really get under the skin of those who believe that tak­ing med­ica­tion indi­cates a lack of faith. Paul, super apos­tle, giv­ing med­ical advise instead of say­ing, “BELIEVE and you will be healed!”

Why would Paul tell Timothy to take his med­i­cine? Paul rec­og­nizes that until the res­ur­rec­tion, we have to suf­fer from the effects of sin. He sees that God has pro­vided us with ways to stay healthy and cure ill­ness that may not seem to be mirac­u­lous but still a gift of God. He also rec­og­nizes that God’s power is made man­i­fest in our weak­ness. God can do amaz­ing things through us, even when we are weak. This is going to be one of the mes­sages we will see in Exodus, God’s Power in a weak vessel.

And so, although we may think we are only going on a three hour tour, we can find our­selves stranded on some deserted trop­i­cal island. God can and will res­cue us from being stranded, if we only let Him. I will try to be open to what God wants to tell me and hope­fully you will come along for the ride and dis­cover your own way to be res­cued (and be sure to lis­ten to the pod­casts of the ser­mons — either on Flatland Church’s web­site or sub­scribe via iTunes).