Rev. Peter Mantell
PRAYER: Oh God, the creator of the deep waters, enable us today to hear your message today, and accept your invitation into the deeper waters of our faith lives, that we may grow in our faith, and share your love in all that we do. May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable to you, O God, my rock and my redeemer. Amen.
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Before we look at our reading in Luke 5 today, let’s just have a brief recap of what happened in the previous chapter.
In the fourth chapter of Luke, Jesus began his ministry by going into the wilderness to face temptation. Upon emerging from that, he went to his home synagogue, announced good news to the poor, and was rejected by his own community. Then, he went to Capernaum, where he performed some miracles, and cast out some demons. In chapter 4, he met Simon Peter. He went to Peter’s home and healed his mother-in-law before casting out some more demons. Jesus was a busy guy in chapter 4.
And right away in chapter 5, Jesus’ reputation is getting all over the place. People are coming from far and wide to see him. The crowds are so immense that he turns to his new friend Simon Peter to take him out on the boat just a little bit off the shore so that He is not so crowded and so people can hear him.
Remember, by this point, Peter was most likely well-familiar with Jesus. Jesus had been to his house and healed his mother-in-law. Peter had presumably heard Jesus preach at least once before. This wasn’t a total stranger to Peter.
So, Jesus gets in the boat, and Peter takes it out just a little bit off the shoreline. …Just a little bit off the shoreline. For how many of us is that a perfect metaphor for our own faith lives? Just a little bit off the shoreline…
When our kids started playing soccer, we knew virtually nothing about the game. Anna and I sat on the sidelines with other parents and watched the kids run this way and that. Many times, I would listen to the other parents who (apparently) knew the game more than I did… which isn’t really saying much. If one of the other parents yelled, “Offsides” at the ref, we would yell it too. But at first, we (I) really had no idea what constituted offsides in soccer. We were just watching the kids run up and down the field.
It took some time, but eventually, we did get the hang of the game. I can tell you what is offsides and what is not. Eventually, both of us branched out in our soccer experience. We got off the sidelines. Anna got her coach’s license and I got my referee license. I was elected as the treasurer of the youth soccer league. The game became an integral part of our home life. Every weekend was consumed with getting everyone to their respective games. (Of course, as a ref, I was the only one actually getting paid to be on the soccer pitch, but that’s another story.) The point is that we got off the sidelines!
We could have just stayed on the sidelines, sat in our lawn chairs and watched soccer until each kid stopped playing. Two of them played all the way through high school, and one played through college. But by being invested in the game – in our kids’ games – we found a deeper connection with them, with the game itself, and with our community. It wasn’t just about sitting on the sidelines. We had to venture out onto the field.
Was it easy? No, absolutely not. In fact, it was downright hard because we had so many schedules to juggle. And many of the other activities we may have wanted to do had to get pushed aside because we prioritized this aspect of our lives. And you know, for all the times that I hear complaints about how Sunday soccer games have taken children out of the church, it just doesn’t ring true for me because our kids still went to church, often times in their uniforms so we could leave and go straight to their games. And there were other kids in our church that did the same.
Jesus asked Peter to take the boat out a little bit off the shoreline and he preached from there. He preached from just a little bit off the shoreline. We can presume that Peter had an expectation that when Jesus would finish speaking, he would take the boat back to the shoreline. But the story tells us that when Jesus finished speaking, he told Peter to “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.”
Peter had been working all night. When Jesus showed up that morning, Peter had been cleaning his nets from a hard and fruitless night’s work. He had to be exhausted. He had to be frustrated at not having caught anything all night. If he hadn’t encountered Jesus in the previous chapter, then he might not have even agreed to go the little bit off the shoreline, let alone go into deeper water. But there was a trust, a respect built up from their previous encounters. Even with that trust, he tried to talk his way out of going deeper. “Master”, he says, “we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.” And they went further out into the waters.
I’ve told the story before about how our friend asked me to be a Sunday School teacher… she was inviting me into deeper waters at our church, but I resisted at first. It was only because one of my daughters overheard me and guilted me into saying yes that I did go into the deeper waters of Sunday School.
Peter put his nets down in the deeper waters and caught so many fish that the nets were bursting. They had to get help from the other fishermen.
By this point, Peter had no doubt that Jesus was sent from God. And in a moment of pure humility, he drops to his knees and tells Jesus to leave him because he is a sinner. There is an echo here of the call-story from Isaiah 6 in which the prophet hears the calling of the angels declaring “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of God’s glory.” This shook the prophet to his core and he responds, “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” In the vision, the angel touches a coal to the prophets lips and declares that his sin is blotted out.
And a curious sidenote is that this is actually where our gospel reading diverges, because like the prophet, Peter drops to his knees and calls himself a sinner. But unlike the angels in Isaiah, Jesus doesn’t dispute Peter’s claim of being sinful or even declare forgiveness. In fact, Jesus barely acknowledges the fact. He simply says, “Do not be afraid.” Let’s face it, the human condition is one in which sin is ever-present. If Jesus only called those who were without sin, there would be nothing for us to do. One of the commentaries I follow every week talked about Jesus’ non-response to Peter’s declaration as “well, duh, of course you’re a sinner. That’s why I’m choosing you.”
Even in the midst of our sin – our human condition, we are still invited to take our faith journeys out into deeper waters. We are encouraged to not be afraid of the deep waters, to put the shallowness of our faith behind us, and venture outward, growing in our wisdom and our love. It is a model of evangelism that is in need of strengthening for all of us. The church has become so focused on some really shallow-water issues. I know we’ve all heard it before. Our culture has made it the goal of the church to have pews that are full on Sundays. Full pews would be nice. That was never Jesus’ mission. Jesus’ mission was not about doctrine or attendance in worship. His mission was about feeding the hungry and caring for the sick. His mission was about lifting up the sinner from their knees and sending them out into deeper waters of relationship with God and with community.
Jesus does not invite us to sit on the sidelines and be spectators in the community around us. Anna and I could not have stayed on the sidelines of our kids’ soccer field any more than Simon Peter could have kept his boat in shallow waters. Jesus invites us into a new season of ministry in deeper waters. We cannot view evangelism simply as a mode of getting people to come to church. Rather, we have to use evangelism as a tool for inviting others to embrace the alternative way of Jesus.
The measure of a “church” is not its buildings, its denominational affiliation, its faithfulness to certain doctrinal or political ideologies, or its size and wealth. The measure of a church is on the way it integrates into the community in which it is placed, and how it becomes the hidden, subversive, influence for grace, and peace, and love going out into the deeper waters, bringing greater care to the broken, more accessible and sustainable resources to the needy, more companionship to the lonely, and more unyielding opposition to the forces that would rob any human being of the abundant life which Jesus sought to bring.
The bounty is given freely as we travel closely with Jesus into deeper waters. To be sure, going into the deeper waters of our faith can be scary. It can be hard. But most of life’s hard work does not result in a relatively easy catch of fish. In fact, we often find ourselves in a heap of grief and uncertainty when we follow Jesus into the deep waters. Making hard life decisions can result in hard realities.
Yet, the deep water is ultimately a place of hope. Let’s be bold in our faith and go out into the deeper waters where the risks are real, but the reward is amazing, where community is built upon foundations of compassion and mercy, compassion and love. Let’s venture out in faith and hear the calling of Jesus in our lives to be the kind of community where God’s love is first and foremost everywhere.
To God be the glory
