Click here for audio
NRSVLuke 5: Once while Jesus was standing
beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the
word of God, 2he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake;
the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. 3He
got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out
a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the
boat. 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.
Welcome! Today I want to share with
you a fishing story. You see, in this story I can just see Peter as he
approaches the shore empty handed. All night on the boat setting the nets in
the water at precisely the right places where fish have always been and yet on
this day they return to shore empty handed. And here he is coming into the
village empty handed with people depending on him for food and for the money
that they derive from the fish. I am told of a village on the Atlantic coast in
Guyana, where fisherman still ply the trade the way that it has been done for
thousands of years. Casting out their nets into the surf, pulling the fish back
to shore where the villagers gather them for food and for their livelihood.
Imagine what it would be like to cast out your net and there is nothing in it
when you pull it back to shore. Imagine spending the whole day or night fishing
with the weight of the village on your back. Or knowing that you have worked
all day, your family is in need of food and medicine and there is no pay at the
end of that day.
And then along comes Jesus. Can’t you visualize it? He walks up the
shore and cries out to Peter and the fisherman on the boat. “Peter” he says,
“Put out in deep water and cast your nets out.” Now I can imagine this
scenario. Here is Peter, raised a waterman all his life. And here comes some
man from Nazareth ,
a carpenter by trade. Not much knowledge on fishing, no knowledge of what it
takes to do so, how to prepare the boat or the nets. And he says to the
watermen, let’s do it again my way. Now I can imagine for a moment that the
first thoughts through Peter, James and John were not good thoughts mind you.
They were probably thinking how dare this man who knows nothing of being a
waterman coming to tell me how to fish. How can this man who has spent his life
making furniture and building houses know how to do my job? Don’t we go through
this all the time. A new boss comes into the workplace and we immediately are
suspect that they cannot know much about our world. They are not been here’s,
been here long enough that several generations lay claim to your heritage.
Maybe this even applies to a new preacher who has new ideas and new visions.
Now to truly understand this story we have to go back in the text to
the beginning of chapter 5. There Jesus comes along the shore and asks Peter to
let him in his boat and from that point teaches the crowd. Imagine what wonder
went through Peter and the waterman when this man appears with hundreds of
people following him. The text does not tell us what he taught there that day,
only that he did. But it was enough that Peter called him Master when he
suggested they throw their nets in the deep water. And the scripture tells us that they did and
that the quantity of fish they hauled in was so large that it almost swamped
the two boats.
Years ago I spent a great deal of my life going into companies to bring
change. Not because they wanted it, but because they needed it. Some of them
were failing, some were just floundering and some had a vision of where they
wanted to go but did not know how to get there. The process of change is always
difficult. Not because the changes were always hard to do, rather the
difficulty was in helping people to want to make the changes. And when the
changes came, especially those that made their lives easier more secure and
more profitable, they often were overwhelmed. I remember when I worked for a
Bearing manufacturing company. I had lots of ideas about how we could do things
better and more efficient. Truth was they did not care what ideas I had. Years
later I was called back, now as a consultant at my own firm, and all of a
sudden all of those old ideas were suddenly the best thing they had ever heard.
The question we must ask ourselves is whether or not we are casting our
nets in the right places, at the right time and for the right things. When a
man and woman have a little baby they instinctively know what is right and
wrong as far as raising their little child. Often we fail to realize that our
faith life should be the same as this. What we instinctively know in our walk
with God is often overshadowed by our desire to control our discipleship walk.
How else can we explain how we often get so distanced from God in our
relationship even knowing that God is right here with us even now? Why is it
that our faith walk is often so hard? Why is it that our relationship with God
is often too difficult to understand? Some of the answers to these important
questions come not from our inability to comprehend but our willingness to
accept that which is contrary to what we want. Maybe the answers have more to
do with our reluctance to try something different just because it is. Or maybe
we are so set in who we are and how we do things that we just cannot be
persuaded to do it any other way. Maybe it’s because we have been programmed to
expect things to be complicated and difficult, rather than simple or
straightforward.
I’ve often told the story of a conversation with one of my Doctors who
became so deeply engrossed in the computer that he would not look at me when I
came to be healed. He would follow the prompts on the screen asking question
after question, often never looking at me or checking to see how I might be
responding. It was early in the days of the computer in the doctor’s office.
Now they have the nurse manage the computer and the doctor pays attention to
the patient. One day I told him that I was going to tell him a story. A true
story of two pilots flying a plane on a beautiful clear day down headed to a
landing in Florida .
Now pilots need to fly on instruments so often that they become dependent on
them, sometimes too dependent on them. This particular morning, with a
beautiful sky around them and visibility forever, they drove that plane and its
passengers deep into the everglades, killing everyone on board. All they had to
do was look up to see they were too low to the ground. But they did not and the
consequences were severe. Sometimes we can become so engrossed in what we are
doing that we lose our perspective on what we are supposed to be doing and what
the world around us looks like.
I can see Peter now. He is humbled by the fact that there are more fish
than he can handle. So much so that he cries out that he is not worthy to be in
the presence of this man. But Isaiah had already told them to prepare. The
prophet had told them to make themselves ready for this man to come and not be
caught unawares when he did. And God is telling us the same thing right now.
When I was a young man, I questioned everything. Some told me not to question
certain things and so I traveled a path where I wasted my life and my valuable
time that God had given me. I suspect some of you may share my story. Walking
along in the journey rather than participating in the promise and bounty of God
in our lives. Working towards being the person we want to be rather than the
one God is calling us to be.
What we need to do is throw our nets in the deep water. The deep water
where, yes, we might get wet or even drown. I can see Peter now, tired and worn
out, throwing his net out fearing that he is going to look the fool for
listening to this carpenter. How many times are we scared to love one another
as God loves us? How many times have we forsaken God because it’s not popular?
And how many relationships have we messed up or lost because we weren’t willing
to take a chance? Hear the cry in the wilderness. Hear the voice proclaiming
the coming of the Lord. Hear the simple message of love that changes
everything. Being a disciple is simple and easy. It’s not the being that is so
hard. It’s the becoming that is hard. It’s the giving up the old ways that is
so hard. It’s believing that this carpenter, really knows how to fish. Cast
your nets, into the deep water.
Risk Taking Mission as Bishop Schnase calls it means that we go beyond
where we feel comfortable and content. It means that we begin to cast our nets
farther than we ever would consider or in places where we have never been. It
means that we begin to look out beyond our traditional boundaries and focus on
places like Adult aging ministries in Greenspring, moving our marketing down
the Pohick corridor towards Route 1 and Lorton, considering working with
schools outside our norm like Newington Forest and Saratoga where children need
to hear the message of love and of God. It means that we begin to explore what
the structure of the church looks like and how we incorporate folk into
positions where they are energized and excited about what they are doing. It
means challenging Sunday School and Small study group leaders to look at their
folks, evaluate where they are on the journey and begin to offer opportunities
for growth in their individual and then our corporate journey. It means that we
accept that God is calling us not to be who we have always been even though we
are comfortable there, but to be the church. The early church was excited about
sharing the message of Jesus Christ with the world, wherever and whomever that
meant. We at Sydenstricker need to become that church again.
In the words of a great song from the Hollies,
The road is long, with many a winding turn…
It’s a long long road, from which there is no return,
While we’re on the way to there, why not share…
He ain’t heavy he’s my brother.
No comments:
Post a Comment