Sweet Victory at Awaji Island
[Adventures in Faith: Japan; the late 1980s] Tom and I went on a three-day evangelistic journey. We brought no money and no bag. Things went amazingly well.
Tom and I had been reading the Bible together for quite a while. You’d think we would have mastered it by this point. But no, it was always fresh and new. Fortunately, it’s never same-old, same-old.
For us, Jesus and the Bible weren’t philosophical concepts or texts to achieve mastery over.
Rather, our relationship to them was that of love. We loved Jesus. And we loved the Bible.
Neither Jesus nor the Bible ever got old or boring.
Plus, they’re both multivalent.
The word multivalent means something has multiple meanings. At different times, it seems different. Or it does different things at different times, for different people.
Here’s an example of something that’s multivalent: a diamond ring.
If you hold it up to the light, it refracts the light into a certain pattern. It glitters in a certain way. But move your head a bit, and its refraction will change. It’ll glitter differently.
The diamond hasn’t changed, nor has the light changed. But your camera angle has. You’ve changed.
A diamond is multivalent, and so is the Bible.
Sure, each biblical text has an overarching meaning, a meaning that most Christians historically agree upon.
But in our own individual spiritual lives, the passages of the Bible speak to us personally. They speak different things to us at different times, depending on our needs at the moment.
The passages refract the one light of Jesus Christ to us, but depending on where we’re at when we look at it, that one light can show us different things.
The Bible is living and active (see Hebrews 4:12). It scratches where we itch.
One day, we stumbled onto something that practically leapt out of the page to us.
It was a text where the Lord Jesus sends out his apostles on a preaching journey, carrying nothing more than the clothes on their backs.
When they arrive at their destination, they’re to preach and teach. They are to serve and heal. For this trip, they’re to take no food or money.
Here is one of the texts that describe the mission:
As you go, make this proclamation: ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, drive out demons. Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give. Do not take gold or silver or copper for your belts; no sack for the journey, or a second tunic, or sandals, or walking stick. The laborer deserves his keep.
Matthew 10:7-10, NAB translation
We felt really inspired by that narrative. So we took it to prayer.
Over the course of time, ideas coalesced. We arrived at some clarity. We felt we knew roughly what we were inspired to do.
We would go on such a trip ourselves.
We picked a destination. We’d go to Awaji Island.
It was located off the shore of Kobe, out in the Seto Inland Sea. In those days, you could get there and back only by boat.
We set a date and prepared ourselves. When the day arrived, we took the train west of Kobe to the city of Akashi.
From the station, we walked to a man-made island named for its purpose: Ferry City. At the terminal, we bought tickets to take the ferry to Iwaya, out on Awaji Island.
Next we needed to make sure we didn’t bring any of the things that Jesus told his apostles to not take.
We didn’t have extra clothing or food or a map. We didn’t even bring with us a plan.
We did have some money in our wallets, though. So we rented a coin-operated locker. Into it went all our money.
In our day, this level of minimalism is often referred to as Zero Bag.
And then we simply walked onto the ferry.
As a crutch for our not being very good with the Japanese language, we put some Christian pamphlets in our pockets.
They would help us evangelize, which was the whole purpose of the trip. We figured bringing a few pamphlets wasn’t cheating. It was necessary.
Mostly what we brought with us was our love for Jesus.
The ferry trip went pretty quickly. Once it docked at Iwaya terminal, we hit the ground eager. We were ready to go. But where?
In the terminal, we found a map. We studied it for a while. Nothing really jumped out at us. So at random we picked a city. We made it our destination.
We walked out to the parking lot then turned left onto the main street. That pointed us toward the city we wanted to go to.
And we began to walk. On the map, it looked like it might be some distance. Awaji Island is about the same size as Singapore.
Tom was eager to get to our destination. If we walked all the way there, it would take too long. He came up with the idea of hitchhiking.
But I bristled at that. Back when I’d lived in Michigan, I had picked up lots and lots of hitchhikers.
But here in Japan, hitchhiking seemed too un-Japanese to me.
Soon a car approached. Tom stuck out his thumb. The car went right on by. So did the next few. But the fourth car slowed down and pulled over.
We had a ride!
The car looked brand new. It was a big white Toyota, a luxury car in immaculate condition.
We ran up to the car. The driver asked where we were going. Tom remembered the name of the town. The driver said that’s where he was going. He invited us to get in.
We got in, and he sped us off to our destination.
Within minutes of our setting out on foot, we were given a ride.
We were given a direct ride in a very nice luxury car.
Subtly, we smiled at each other. We felt were we being given an authentication, a sign from heaven that confirmed we were on the right track.
When we arrived at the center of the city, our driver dropped us off.
In characteristic Japanese fashion, he apologized for not being able to do more for us. Then he was off. And there we were.
Now what?
We remembered that we brought pamphlets. If we were to hand out some pamphlets, it would ground us in the real purpose of our trip: evangelization.
Previously, we’d handed out thousands and thousands of them. It was a practical thing we could do to evangelize.
So we scouted out the area, picked out some spots, and began.
Compared to our handing out of pamphlets back in Osaka and Kobe, things went a lot slower here. There just wasn’t much foot-traffic.
But every once in a while, somebody would walk by. We offered them one of our pamphlets.
We’d been doing that for perhaps less than a half hour, when something amazing happened. Somebody came back.
It was a middle-aged woman. She’d received a pamphlet earlier, walked away and read it, and then returned.
What she wanted to know was simple: “Where are you staying?” We replied that we had no place to stay.
She asked us to come with her.
We couldn’t sense any reason to not go with her. So we agreed. She led us on a long walk. Finally, we arrived at her house. She brought us in, had us sit down, and invited us to relax.
She served us beverages and sweet snacks.
Later, her family returned home from work and school. They were pleasantly surprised to see us.
Later, other people arrived at the house. It turns out that our hosts were members of a local church. These people that showed up were friends from their church.
The woman told them what Tom and I were doing. She summarized our pamphlet for them. They seemed genuinely excited for us. They had lots of gentle questions.
They didn’t ask the usual questions that most Japanese ask foreigners.
No, they asked specific questions about living our Christian faith:
- living by faith
- pioneer evangelism
- being a foreign missionary
- witnessing in a foreign land
- taking steps of faith
It was like we were rock stars and they were our groupies.
Later that night, our hosts invited us to stay with them for all three days of our trip to Awaji Island.
They would give us a lovely place to stay, and they would feed us the whole time.
Even though we were complete strangers, they took us in like we were the apostles themselves.
We had never witnessed such hospitality.
What an authentication! What a blessing!
When Sunday arrived, Tom and I went with our host family to their church service. There might have been 30 people present.
Their singing was robust and beautiful. The preaching was life-giving and encouraging. The people were radiant with joy.
Afterwards, there was lunch. The pastor invited us to share a word with them. We spoke of Jesus, of love for him, and of putting his teachings into practice.
We didn’t tell much about ourselves, as we wanted to keep the attention on Jesus Christ.
We thanked our host family, the pastor and the congregation for their kindness and generosity.
Then it was time for us to leave Awaji Island and head back across the Seto Inland Sea to Kobe.
Inwardly, we were bracing ourselves for the long hike back to Iwaya ferry terminal. And we had no money for the ferry tickets.
But we were very careful to not mention these things or even hint of them.
To our pleasant surprise, a man from the church asked us if we would let him drive us to the ferry terminal.
We accepted.
When we arrived at the ferry terminal, he got out of the car with us, walked into the terminal with us, and bought our tickets for us.
He bought us some Can Coffee from a vending machine and waited with us for the ferry.
When at last the ferry arrived, in characteristic Japanese fashion, he apologized for doing so little for us.
After some goodbyes, we were aboard the ferry. It pulled away, and we were off.
We sat in the ferry, almost speechless with amazement.
Our experience was way beyond our wildest hopes and dreams. It was like something we might have read in a book.
As the ferry sped us across the Inland Sea, we reflected back on our steps of faith. We began to see a pattern.
It went like this:
1. Something quite unusual jumps out at us from our Bible Reading.
2. We ponder it. We discuss it together. It seems worth exploring.
3. We pray about it together.
4. Over the course of time, ideas coalesce. We arrive at clarity, even if fleeting or tenuous.
5. We conjecture a plan to put the idea into action. Our plan might seem weak or implausible or crazy, but that was OK.
6. We build up our faith and courage so we can do the new thing.
7. We build up our faith and courage to face the condemnation that our Evangelical friends will almost inevitably rain down upon us.
8. When the day arrives, we put our faith into action. We do the thing, come what may: success or failure.
9. Afterwards, we discover this impossible new thing, this brave venture of faith, this crazy thing that we’ve not heard of anyone else doing: it wasn’t so hard. In fact, it was exhilarating!
We came up with a name for that pattern. We called it action-faith. That meant acting upon what we discovered.
The ferry docked at Ferry City. We debarked, walked to the city of Akashi, waited for the train, and headed our separate ways.
We just had the faith-experience of a lifetime. We were completely astonished. For weeks.
RESOURCES
My faith journeys:
Sweet Victory at a Remote Village in India
At Wikipedia:
ADVENTURES IN FAITH
NOTE. Names, dates, and locations may have been changed.
Unless otherwise noted, all Bible quotations on this page are from the World English Bible and the World Messianic Edition. These translations have no copyright restrictions. They are in the Public Domain.