Deep Water

When [Jesus] had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” Simon answered, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.” When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. Luke 5:4-6

One of my more challenging – sometimes even traumatic - experiences growing up was learning how to swim. My parents signed me up for swimming lessons when I was in grade school, but I never quite had the knack for staying afloat for any length of time – usually I would cling to the side of the pool with a white-knuckle death grip, yelling, “I won’t let go and you can’t make me!” By high school I could at least float – sort of – but when I was growing up, frequent asthma attacks made swimming a fairly dicey proposition, and so I rarely ventured beyond the shallow end of the pool. It wasn’t until college that I really learned to swim at all well. One of the requirements for graduating from Penn State was being able to stay afloat in the water for some period of time, like 10 or 15 minutes. During the test I had an asthma attack about 3 minutes in, and so I got stuck taking a remedial swimming class. I can’t say it was ever my favorite course – I ended up taking it during winter term my first year there, and Penn State winters can get mighty cold, and my next class was a 15 minute walk across campus, by which time I had icicles in my hair. But I did finally learn to swim and even to dive – which you don’t want to do in the shallow end of the pool – and gained enough confidence that the thought of being in water over my head no longer gave me recurring nightmares.

Our Gospel reading today has a story, not about swimming, but about fishing in deep water. In one sense it’s a very specific story about the call of Peter and several of the other early disciples. But in a sense, it may be our story as well, if we have ears to hear.

We’re in Luke’s gospel, still quite early in Jesus’ earthly ministry, just after he received a less-than-enthusiastic response from his hometown synagogue. Having somehow avoided being thrown off a cliff by the folks in his hometown, he went to the Lake of Genessaret to teach. There the crowds were so enthusiastic that he went out in the lake in a boat to teach, so that the crowds wouldn’t press in on him. Having concluded his lesson, he asked Simon to put out into the deep water and let down his nets for a catch. Simon said, probably sighing and rolling his eyes and shaking his head, “we’ve been fishing all night long and caught nothing – but – ok, if you say so.” Down went the nets – and along came the fish, huge numbers of them, so that Simon and his friends could hardly get them into the boat without getting swamped. Simon, at this point in his life, was no theologian, but he knew a miracle when he saw one, and said to Jesus, “go away from me, for I’m a sinful man.” Jesus told Peter, “from now on you’ll be catching people.” And Peter and his friends left their boats behind and followed Jesus.

In a sense, all three of our readings – from Isaiah, I Corinthians, and Luke, involve appearances of God to human beings. The prophet Isaiah was in the temple on one occasion, when he had a vision of the Lord, high and lifted up, surrounded by angels singing praise. Similar to Simon’s reaction to the miraculous catch of fish, Isaiah immediately becomes overwhelmed with a sense of his own guilt and unworthiness to be in God’s presence – “I am a man of unclean lips, among a people of unclean lips, and I have seen the Lord.” An angel touches a piece of coal to his lips, and proclaims him cleansed of sin. Then, in response to God’s call, Isaiah says, “Here I am! Send me!”

It has been said that this account of the call of Isaiah is the pattern for our form of worship. We begin worship with the call to worship and a song of praise and adoration in God’s presence. Aware of our unworthiness to stand in God’s presence, we confess our sin and receive the assurance of God’s pardon. We then give thanks and through the hymns, sermon, and prayers are prepared for service. An acronym or memory aid is the word ACTS – A C T S – adoration, confession, thanksgiving, service. That’s the basic pattern for what we do here on Sunday. Isaiah’s encounter with the Lord, high and lifted up, prepared him for his prophetic ministry. Paul’s vision of the resurrected Christ on the Damascus road turned his life around. Everything he had previously lived for, all that he had previously held dear, he was willing to let go, count as loss, in order to respond to the vision of Christ, so he went from persecuting the church to being perhaps the greatest evangelist and witness to the Risen Christ. Peter’s encounter with Jesus set the pattern for the rest of his life – “from now on you’ll be catching people”. And as we encounter God weekly in worship, and encounter God daily through prayer and meditation and reading of Scripture and Christian fellowship, God prepares us for lives of service to God and neighbor.

Sometimes, in our personal lives, our lives with our families, our careers, our volunteer work in the community, our life together here at Emanuel, Jesus may call us to go into the deep water and let down our nets for a catch. And we may have questions, may even resist. We may fear getting in over our head. “I’m just one person! We’re just a small church! We can’t take all that on!” In the same way that I clung to the side of the pool when I was growing up, we may cling to what seems safe and familiar and say, “I won’t let go and nobody – not even God - can make me!” But if we’re unwilling to let go of the side of the pool, unwilling to risk venturing into the deep water and letting down our nets for a catch, if we insist on staying stuck where we are, we risk cutting ourselves off from the future God has planned for us. We risk stagnation, risk growing older without growing wiser, risk dying without ever having truly lived. So, really, we have choices not between risk and safety; but a choice of which risks we are willing to take.

I’m reminded of one of the great stories of this congregation – The Rev. Emanuel Boehringer’s founding of what would become Bethany Children’s Home. Heartbroken by his encounters with dying Civil War veterans who asked, “what will become of my children,” Boehringer began caring for orphans of civil war veterans. Emanuel Church had only existed for a few years, and we were quite a small congregation, only a few dozen at that point. But Rev. Boehringer and his wife were true to the vision God had given them. And, yes, there was quite a cost; the strain of the undertaking may well have hastened Rev. Boehringer’s death. But the Boehringers were willing to go into the deep water and let down their nets, were willing to stake all they had on the vision God had given them, and God honors their past faithfulness to this very day.

“Who will go for us?” God asks. “From now on you will be catching people”, says the risen Christ. “God’s grace toward us is not in vain”, says the Spirit. To all these calls, may we respond, “Here I am. Send me. Here we are, the gathered congregation of Emanuel United Church of Christ. Here we are. Send us.” Amen.