“Going Deep”
Psalm 74:1, 4-23
Luke 5:1-11
Maybe you—like me—have no idea what it’s like to spend all night fishing—not for fun but for survival, not for sport but to be able to put something on your family’s dinner table. All night with the nets—letting them down, pulling them up, finding them empty, letting them down again, waiting, and watching, and coming up empty every time. All night long catching nothing, growing more weary with every empty haul, until the very last thing you want to do is get back in the boat, let those nets down one more time, as if to invite the universe to laugh at you again.
Maybe you have no experience with failure, no truck with discouragement. Maybe your life is so charmed that you don’t know what it’s like to have nothing left to give, to be absolutely exhausted from trying, completely worn down from trusting, sick and tired of hoping things will be different.
Maybe you can’t imagine ever getting to the place where you’ve poured so much of your love into another person or so much of your energy into a noble cause, reaping nothing but pain and abuse, that you can no longer sing the songs or pray the prayers or even pretend to believe.
Maybe you would swear on a stack of Bibles that no matter how exhausted or despairing you were, no matter how many ways you had tried to mend this broken world to no avail, still nothing could ever stop you from continuing to give your all—to put out into deep water—for the right cause or person or situation.
And if that’s where you find yourself this morning—well, praise God and good for you!
But I’m guessing that most of us here this morning fully understand Simon Peter’s reluctance let his nets down yet again. I’m guessing that at least some of us—living as we are in a national moment more frightening, disturbing, and disheartening than we’ve ever seen before—are tempted to respond as Simon Peter did, saying, “We’ve marched and organized and voted and prayed and made calls and stood vigil, and this is where it’s got us I’m done here.
And if that’s where you find yourself this morning, welcome to the human race. And take heart, because God can work with that. Be not afraid— because God will work with that.
If you’ve been down so long that you can’t even imagine a good day, much less a great catch—well, then: Jesus wants to get into your boat.
And if you’re thinking that a younger you wouldn’t have thought twice about going for it, but now you’re less adventurous and more risk- and failure-averse—well, then: Consider that deep water is a metaphor for whatever will open you up to the fullness of life and the abundance God wants for you.
Consider this story an invitation to more—more life, more hope, more justice, more love, more health, more strength, more of whatever it is you most need, more of whatever it is our world needs.
Consider this story a summons—to your truest self, to new life, by way of the only path guaranteed to get you there: surrender and transformation, death, and rebirth.
Consider that this story is not about fish at all, but about listening for what God might ask you to do with your life—and whether you, like Simon Peter, will do it.
This story is, among other things, about how God calls us. This story is about everyone who’s ever thought their life was about one thing—catching fish, say, or paying the bills—and then discovered it was actually about something altogether different—say, loving people as God does, or serving the least and the lost, or working for justice, or building up the people of God, or sharing the good news that the realm of God is at hand.
This story is about deep calling to deep, the God Who Is Love seeing the suffering of her children and then becoming one of them, the better to understand them, the better to walk with them, the better to beckon them out of their darkness and into the light, out of their brokenness and into wholeness, out of their weariness and isolation and disappointment into power and community and joy. This is about God meeting us where we are, as we are—at the lake, in a boat, in our families, in our struggles, in our pain, in our worries and our weariness—and not leaving us there.
Consider that this story might also be an invitation to each of us to consider what our own deep water is. Where do we need to go, what do we need to risk, what do we need to keep trying or give another chance, what do we need to keep doing until we become who we’re meant to be?
I could go on, but I want to take advantage of the situation we’re in this morning but giving you a chance to reflect on those questions—either silently or by unmuting yourself and sharing something brief with all of us.
Let me ask the questions again, more directly this time:
As you consider this time in our country and in your own life, what might God be asking of you?
What does “putting out into deep water” mean for you in this moment?
What keeps you from trying again to do the hard things?
What would give you the courage?
[sharing time]
