GOSPEL: Luke 5:1-11
4When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” 5Simon answered, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.” 6When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. (Read the whole passage)
Our journey from Epiphany to Transfiguration continues today. We began with wisemen searching for the Christ-child, we then heard God’s voice thundering from heaven, saw Jesus turn water into wine, Jesus preach in his hometown synagogue and then almost get thrown off a cliff by the people of his hometown synagogue. And now Jesus continues about the business of his ministry. And with crowds following him, clamouring to hear him speak, he gets in to Simon Peter’s fishing boat and meets the most famous of his soon to be disciples.
As we hear this story, the drama of this scene might be lost on us prairie dwellers, unless we are regularly in the habit of going up to Gimli to go fishing. To our land lubber ears, Jesus seems to go for a gentle boat ride. We are used to tractors and pick up trucks, to eating cows and pigs. And so when we hear that Jesus gets into Simon’s, and then Jesus provides overflowing nets, its seems like a nice story, a quaint story about Jesus making life a little easier for Simon and his companions. But dig a little deeper, and we begin to see that this is not just about Jesus providing fish. Today, Jesus is almost as offensive as he was a week ago when he pushed the buttons of the people of the Nazareth Synagogue, and today, Jesus isn’t the only one in danger of losing his life.
As Jesus begins to get more famous, people begin to follow him around. The crowds press in on him to hear what he is saying. And this time they press him right to the edge of the Lake, and when Jesus can walk no further, he hops into a boat. Into Simon’s boat specifically, and from there continues to teach. Simon has caught nothing and is going home for the day. Yet when Jesus hops in his boat, he obligingly takes him out a few feet. Simon knows his place, and allows the important teacher a makeshift pulpit from which to preach.
Yet, when the sermon ends, Jesus doesn’t ask to go back to shore, instead he tells Simon to go out into the middle of lake. The preacher in the boat tells Simon the experienced fisherman to do exactly what fisherman don’t do. They do not go out on the lake in the middle of the day. They fish at night, near the shore, by lantern light. This is how they have fished for generations. Simon is not impressed with this wandering preacher sitting in his boat. In fact he begins to refuse, “Look teacher, we have been fishing all night, our nets need repair, maybe you should stick to speeches and let us do the fishing” Simon has just met Jesus, but it doesn’t take him long to use that impulsive mouth that he will become known for. But then, Simon changes his mind part way through his refusal and says, “Well I guess it won’t hurt, so if you say so Jesus”.
There is something very familiar about this moment between Simon Peter and Jesus. We have all been there when someone insists on an idea that we know won’t work. And we have all, likely, ignored our gut instincts and gone along with a bad idea regardless.
And yet, there is an even deeper familiarity that we know as well. In our dark and difficult moments, in our times of frustration and exhaustion, we too often wonder if God actually knows what is going on. Like Simon the trusty fisherman, we know the ease of sticking to routines and traditions, of sticking to what we know to be tried and true.
In fact, like Simon, we even know how to stick to what we know despite our empty nets. Safety and predictability even if we are starving. As we float near the shore in our fishing boats, we too often find out nets empty, we get stuck in the ruts of the shallows. We stay with the familiar and what we know, even when it leaves us hungry. Yet, God is calling us away from the safety of the shore, out to the deep water, out the unknown.
And so, imagine Simon’s surprise as he lets down his nets into the deep water and then begins to haul it back in. The weight of the net pulling back more than Simon ever expected, maybe more than he had ever experienced. And Simon tries to the get the net — and all the fish — into the boat, there is so much that he must call to his friends. But even with James and John there is so many fish that both boats begin to sink. If there was excitement at catching a lot of fish, it would have disappeared when the boats began to sink in the middle of lake. The wandering preacher might have guessed where the fish were, but it wasn’t going to do Simon any good if he drowned first.
And there out in the deep water, out in the dangerous part of the lake, out with Jesus who has commandeered our boat and is telling us to try new things… Jesus calls us to something totally unexpected.
Jesus calls us to drown in the deep unknown.
And today, that call seems as crazy to us as it did to Simon, who knew better than to go far from the shore. And yet, God is doing something totally unexpected. Something that does not make sense to us. God’s calling to drown is call to die to self. God calls us to be drowned in the waters of Baptism… But that drowning of our sinful, scared, inward looking, routine clinging self makes way for the new creation that God raises up and out of the waters. God also calls us out of our ruts, out of our routines, out of the water, out of death and into life.
To a people stuck in the ruts, in the routine of what is safe and known, Christ’s call to risk everything in the deep water seems like too much to ask. But there in the deep water, Christ is giving us life. Life in the form of fish for hungry, starving fisherman with nothing, and today for us, New Life in the Body of Christ.
We simply cannot hear the story of Jesus’ call to Simon out in the deep waters and not remember the words spoken over us as we were held above the waters of the font,
“By the baptism of his own death and resurrection, [God’s] beloved Son has set us free from the bondage to sin and death, and has opened the way to the joy and freedom of everlasting life”.
Out of death, God brings life. Out of drowning in the deep waters of baptism, God forces the breath of life back into our lungs and joins us into a community of newly alive people. Its no wonder that we are call our church sanctuaries Naves from the Latin for ship, for they are indeed the upside down boats that we have been dumped from into the waters of baptism.
In our upside down boat, where we are baptized and where we welcome the newly baptized, God makes the dangerous and unknown deep water the sign of God’s love given to each one of us. And this how our God operates, by using mangers filled with animal food, empty wine jugs, empty nets, even a cross, God turns these things into beds for babies, wine for celebration, abundant catches of fish and life as the response to death.
Today as God calls Simon to let down his nets in the deep waters, even as we wonder if Jesus knows what he is talking about Jesus is pulling us out of the water into new and abundant new life.
Simon Peter is surprised today when Jesus hops into his boat and tells him to go out into the deep. And as we go out into the deep waters too, we go knowing that God is in this upside down boat with us.
The Millennial Pastor 