“Go into the deep water and let your nets down for a catch.”
In Washington State there is a discussion group at a summer church camp that is called, “Heavy, Deep and Real.”It draws the high school kids at camp like moths to a candle flame.They are encouraged to bring their questions, their Bibles and their doubts.They’re wrestling with their Christian faith, and they take the struggle seriously.These young disciples are looking for the truth, a truth that is relevant to their lives.They are searching for an encounter with the living Christ, and they like to get heavy.They want to be real.They’re ready to go deep.
Our culture is experiencing a crisis of meaning at present.A recent study found that teenagers are connected with some kind of media for seven and a half hours a day…not counting computer and video material used in school or for homework!iPads, Smartphones, iPhones, Kindles, Facebook, Twitter, and internet access on airline flights at 34,000 feet…we have all the information at our fingertips, we have all the data we can swallow, but we don’t know what it means.The church has the responsibility and opportunity to offer that meaning.But to do so, we must go deeper ourselves.
The Gospel lesson for today provides some clues for those who want to go deep in their relationship with Christ.Going deeper with Jesus first of all means to listen.Jesus used the boat as a pulpit there along the lakeshore.Peter, James & John put aside their nets for the day and listened to his words.How do you intentionally listen to God’s Word?If you do not have a discipline (a practice) for intentionally listening, then chances are you are not going deeper; the data drowns everything else out.Attentiveness to God and the deeper things of the spirit is our first step.Devotional reading, Scripture, silent prayer—these are the disciplines of listening…paying attention.
After his teaching was over, Jesus said to the fishermen, “Go into the deep water,” even before they were disciples.We can imagine the shock of these professional fishermen, being told how to do their job by a construction worker-turned traveling preacher.But they hadn’t done too well all day on their own and after hearing his teaching they decided to obey the plan.
Going deeper means obedience, a trust—enough to base our actions upon. (testing out faith, despite our fears and doubts)
How about those times in our lives when we don’t do too well on our own...we work hard at something and our nets come up empty?When we’re spinning our wheels?Someone called it holy failure or sacred dissatisfaction... it’s when we find ourselves working hardest, but going nowhere.Perhaps it is in those moments that we ought to expect God to reveal something to us.When our well runs dry— God wants to fill it.When our work’s meaning evaporates—God might be opening a new door.When we catch no fish, God wants to have us think about fishing in a whole new way.
But that is not what is most gripping to me in this…it’s what happens next.They let their nets down and felt the heavy tug of fish almost immediately.Pulling on the fragile nets, they see the huge school trapped below.After lots of hard work, they begin to grab the fish and throw them into the bottom of the boat.They called in the assistance of another boat.
The hair beings to stand on end on the back of Peter’s neck.Wild fear emerges in his mind as he sees the enormity of the catch.This is not normal... not natural.It is super-natural, and he looked at the cause of it all, Jesus, sitting calmly at the back of the boat.Fear.“I am a sinful man” he says.Going deeper involves an encounter with the holy that naturally brings a sense of fear, awe, knowledge of our incompleteness, brokenness…humility.
When confronted with holiness we become aware of our sinfulness.That is what is most gripping for me.Going deeper, opens us to not only the presence of God, but a more genuine truthful relationship with ourselves.
Joan Chittister tells the story of Jimmy O’Brien who as the town drunk, adulterer, embezzler, and philanderer who died.His wife, a proper lady, wants a nice funeral for him to keep up appearances if nothing else, so despite the fact that religion meant nothing to Jimmy, she pleads with Father Muldowney for a funeral.“Please.I know Jimmy was a scoundrel and never went to church, but can’t you at least bury him and say a kind word over his body?”The priest finally agreed.
The entire city and every one of his relatives down to his third cousins turned up at the funeral to hear what good words the priest can come up with to say about this guy.They loved to talk about Jimmy’s faults, and they loved even more to watch the priest squirm over the task of being truthful, while saying something good about Jimmy.The priest stepped into the pulpit, took a deep breath, and looked over the expectant crowd, thought for a minute, and said, “I know that Jimmy O’Brien had a problem with alcohol, he was an adulterer, an embezzler, and playboy.But compared with his family and the rest of us, this guy was a saint.”[1]
It is jokes like that that make me realize how little I account my own sins, while seeing clearly those of others. In a New Jersey town the same reality hit home when the local church held the funeral service for a well known Mafia boss.How the people loved to recount the sins of this man, and their shock at the church’s non-judgmental burial of him.
When I behold the sheer graciousness of someone, I am overcome with the realization of my own sinfulness.It is like the experience of Peter in the Boat.The grace of the miraculous catch of fish led him to see his sinfulness.To be in the presence of the holy, brings us up short.That is true humility.Going deeper, means to face our own faults, sin, and unworthiness.
When we go deeper with God we find that we are called beyond that fear and unworthiness to some ministryC some purpose.“There is nothing to fear.From now on you’ll be fishing for men and women” Jesus said.Peter, James and John leave behind not only their business investments, but the biggest financial windfall they’d ever imagined.
When we go deeper... trust a little, responsibilities are given to us.The disciples began to fish for people.What is your calling?Often times our calling is what we’ve always done, but done in a whole new way; fishing for people instead of fish.Going deeper leads to a new life (new way of thinking of life / self / God / call).The disciples left their old life and started a new one.The miraculous haul of fish lead them to think about fishing and life in a whole new way: “From now on, you will be fishing for men and women.”
Going deeper means to listen, trust, obey, humility, and respond to the Call in new creative ways that reveal Christ to the world.So be it.Amen.
Source material from: Revd Michael D. Powell, First United Methodist Church Ashland, Oregon
[1] Joan Chittister In Search of Belief, pp. 184-5.
