Into The Deep

Into the Deep

Luke 5:1-11

Feb. 9, 2025  

Rev. Cynthia Cochran-Carney

 Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. He 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.

 When he 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.

So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, "Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!" For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon.

 Then Jesus said to Simon, "Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people." When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.

 Opening – Calling and Control

Who’s calling?  We want to know. We can quickly access that information these days with caller ID.  We glance down at our phone and see a name come up. Or Spam warning!  If we are at home, we might listen to an answering machine that tells us who is calling.  We like to know who is calling before we answer.  Technology has changed our understanding of being called.  One communication professor recently stated  - Technology changes behavior and behavior changes attitudes.

The fact that we can know who is calling because of caller ID and choosing to send the caller to voice mail gives us control over who we talk to and when we take a call and who and what is important.

And so I wonder how this reality has shaped our spiritual lives and our faith.  Do we ignore how God may be calling us?  Are we too busy to listen? To respond?  And what does it mean to be called by God?  What does it mean to be called like Simon to go out and put ourselves into the deep?  

Biblical  - Simon Peter spent a long night fishing without success. As he pulls ashore and cleans his nets, Jesus steps into his boat. The teacher asks to go out a little way from shore. And when the lesson is over, he says, “Let’s go out a little further, into the deeper water.”

 Simon complains when Jesus tells him to drop the nets in the water. “Listen,” he says, “I’ve been out here all night. I’ve haven’t caught a thing. The fish are avoiding me.”

 Jesus looks at him. Waits. Smiles. “Let down your net for a catch.” Reluctantly, Simon agrees. The net drops into the deep lake water. Suddenly there are so many fish, the boat begins to tip. He needs help hauling them in.  So there’s a miracle catch. The abundance is stunning.

 Simon Peter

This brash, brawny fisherman is called from one kind of fishing and catching to another.  What is most amazing about this gospel story is not that a fisherman lets a carpenter now teacher tell him what to do. It is not that Simon Peter both lets his net down and then leaves his net behind. No, what is most amazing about this story is the trust, the risk-taking, that Peter expresses.  What is amazing is that Peter is willing to leave everything—to go with someone he does not know, to places he has never seen, to carry out a mission he does not understand. What is so amazing is that Peter is open —trusting God's call – to be changed.

  I think it is significant that for Peter—this calling, this invitation, comes in midlife.  He has spent years honing his skills, learning the rhythms of the sea. But, as it turns out, God is not finished with him and other fishermen yet.  Just as God is not finished with us yet either.  God catches them with the love, the authenticity, the power of Jesus’ words and the power of Jesus’ presence, catches them to be part of the kin-dom, the realm of God, a movement.

Go out into the deep…. "Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people." In Matthew’s version, we read  - “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” Catch people – a slightly different image.  Use skills and experiences you already have.  Be more fully yourself.

Jesus the Christ embodied a completely different reality, a deeper one. This authentic self. We are more than labels. We are called to be and embrace the deepest identity as people beloved by God.  Who are we called to be?

The church is called to people of deep hope

 There are many ways we offer this.  In worship, in contemplative practices, in the work of the serving the community, in offering kindness and compassion.  In a recent article by David LaMott, he described the work of Presbyterian churches in North Carolina after Hurricane Helene.  He wrote…. 

Two months after the storm…there are those who lost loved ones to raging rivers or whose homes washed away, And for many of my neighbors, these were lives of poverty and insecurity to begin with.

….too often these people are told to have a positive attitude and don’t give up hope.

…There is so much cheap hope being peddled in the world. Real hope — deep hope — is too often diminished into optimism. …

Václav Havel wrote, “Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit.” …If we take faith seriously, we point our lives toward the possibility of better communities and a better world, and we work to create them..when the outcomes we desire seem impossibly distant.

….Here people dug through mud, fallen houses and trailers half-sunk in the rivers in the slim hope of finding survivors. Church volunteers and others …from all over showed up, got out their chainsaws and cleared roads. That is what deep hope looks like.  (1)

 Congregations are called to be sources of deep hope through being with others.

 Churches are called to be deep sources of welcome and life through authentic community

Anne LaMott.  In her book Traveling Mercies, she describes a moment when music in a church drew her back to God and to life. It started at a flea market in Sausalito.

 Finally, I began stopping in at St. Andrew from time to time, standing in the doorway to listen to the songs.  I couldn’t believe how run down it was…but it had a choir of five black women and one rather Amish looking man making all that glorious noise and a congregation of thirty people or so, radiating kindness and warmth.  During the time when people hugged and greeted each other, various people would come back to where I stood to shake my hand or try to hug me;  I was felt frozen & stiff frozen….  After this, Scripture was read, and then the minister…would preach…and I would go running back to the flea market…

            I went back to St. Andrew about once a month.  …something started to change. Something inside me that was stiff and rotting would feel soft and tender.  Somehow that singing wore down all the boundaries and distinctions that kept me so isolated.  Sitting there, standing with them to sing, sometimes so shaky and sick that I felt like I might tip over, I felt bigger than myself, like I was being taken care of…and  coming back to life.   

 Churches can be a place of connection and calling us back to life. Jesus tells Peter to go out into the deep to fish.  Christ also calls us to the deep. 

 Churches are some of the places where people love and serve and offer help and hope and welcome. ELCA been in the news for their work for decades with refugees finding a new life and congregations who have walked alongside them. There is depth there, love there.  I am concerned that some of the leaders of our country are ignoring the work of Lutheran Family Services refugee and immigration support but also adoption, foster care, and behavioral health.  No basis for being accused of fraud or money laundering. Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Catholic Charities – not perfect but doing the deep work of loving neighbors. 

 Right now there is so much on our hearts.  Maybe one place to start -  The world does not need more happy people or more nice people.  God needs more deep people in the world,  people who think deeply and care deeply and pray deeply, who engage our minds and hearts in study and reflection, and who take risks to be working toward building the beloved community as Dr. King put it.  Who take joy and compassion and kindness into the world.

 Think about who caught you in the net of the good news of Christ.  Think about that person, that church, that community, the people in our life through whom God invited you into the deep and the hope we find when we are seen and heard and loved.  Deep gratitude.

 The church is called by God to go deep and to do what the world often says is impossible - to love our neighbors, to stand up to hate and evil, to experience moments of authentic connection, new life and deep love.  Let’s be willing to put out in the deep together and trust there will abundance when and where we least expect it.  Amen.

 David LaMotte, “Advent in western North Carolina: Waiting with deep hope,” 12.10.24   

https://faithandleadership.com/advent-western-north-carolina-waiting-deep-hope