Sunday, January 20, 2013

Epiphany 3 :: Jan 20, 2013 (and pastor's conference) :: Luke 5:1-11


In the name of Jesus. Amen.

When I was a kid I used to push myself to swim past the buoy. On hot and humid summer days in South Dakota, the lake called to us with the promise of clear, cool water. And the further you swam from shore, the deeper the lake was, and the deeper the lake was, the cooler the water.

Into my late teens, and sometimes even now, the deep water of a lake terrified me. The water was cool and it felt so good, but my imagination was drenched with images of slimy, long-bodied fish slowly slipping past my leg. It gets worse. I’d get imagines running through my head ranging from the simple walleye to the simply ridiculous sea-monster…Leviathan, lurking in the depths of Wall Lake, South Dakota. [PAUSE]

Job, chapter 41,

1 Can you pull in the leviathan with a fishhook or tie down his tongue with a rope?
14 Who dares open the doors of his mouth, ringed about with his fearsome teeth?
18 His snorting throws out flashes of light; his eyes are like the rays of dawn.
19 Firebrands stream from his mouth; sparks of fire shoot out.
20 Smoke pours from his nostrils as from a boiling pot over a fire of reeds.
21 His breath sets coals ablaze, and flames dart from his mouth.
25 When he rises up, the mighty are terrified; they retreat before his thrashing.
26 The sword that reaches him has no effect, nor does the spear or the dart or the javelin.
27 Iron he treats like straw and bronze like rotten wood.
28 Arrows do not make him flee, sling stones are like chaff to him.
29 A club seems to him but a piece of straw, he laughs at the rattling of the lance.
30 His undersides are jagged potsherds, leaving a trail in the mud like a threshing-sledge.
31 He makes the depths churn like a boiling cauldron and stirs up the sea like a pot of ointment.
32 Behind him he leaves a glistening wake; one would think the deep had white hair.
33 Nothing on earth is his equal— a creature without fear.
34 He looks down on all that are haughty; he is king over all that are proud.”

Deep water is terrifying to me. Well, if I let my imagination run too long and start wondering what’s down there it is. Just what is down there in the deep water? What would we find if we let our feet dangle a little bit further into the cool depths?

In Scripture, deep water is full of chaos, churning and mysterious. Only God knows what we’d find down there in the deep. And yet, fishermen have drug nets on the bottom of the sea floor for thousands of years. Among other things, there must be fish down there.

When Jesus tells Simon Peter to put out into the deep and let down the nets for a catch, Simon Peter, confesses. “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing.” Simon Peter has some experience with casting his net into the deep sea, some very recent experience. Fishing hasn’t been good. In fact, it’s downright discouraging. All night long; Simon Peter and the others are no doubt exhausted, frustrated, sick, and tired and sick and tired of being sick and tired. Sometimes fishing in the deep can be discouraging. [LONG PAUSE]

I am learning that this work of Christian ministry is at times terrifying and at other times deeply discouraging, (sometimes especially when your call is pastor). The empty nets after days and nights of hard, grueling work are more frequent than not. And who can forget the times when you dangle your toes in deep water, terrified about what you’ll find.

For all of us (and even those in our pews on Sunday morning) the deep waters of life are both terrifying and discouraging. Life seems troubling. You don’t have to look much further than the front page of the newspaper to see the churning of deep water everywhere you go. It is both terrifying and discouraging to think that God has called us as Christian people into this deep water. And yet, God has.

We are called into water so deep we cannot see the bottom. In fact, when we stick our heads below the surface it is simply dark and murky. A life in service to God and the world is murky, muddy, deep, and churning.

[As pastors, we run ourselves ragged doing the young adult program, teaching confirmation, administrating the office, fixing the Sunday bulletins, visiting the 10 people having surgery on their knees at one of the three hospitals, each a two hour drive from the church we serve, we are constantly hearing the complaints about the new carpet color. And that is all on a Wednesday]

This life of service is terrifyingly deep and discouraging. And yet this is precisely where Jesus told Simon Peter to drop his nets and start fishing. In the terrifying and discouraging waters, Jesus teaches Simon Peter where to fish. And as the nets stretch and strain to pull in the catch, Simon Peter is confronted with his own sin, doubting the deep and discouraging. The abundance is overwhelming. And instead of scolding Simon Peter, Jesus calls him into a life of service.

In what seems to be a parable playing out in Simon Peter’s own life, Jesus teaches him what fishing in terrifying and discouraging waters can produce. Fishing in these waters produces abundance. It’s just what God does.

Scripture testifies over and over and over again to a God who takes nothing and makes something, a God who takes soil and plants and tends and reaps a great harvest, a God who takes the death of his only Son and turns it into the life-giving Gospel for you.

We have a God whose favorite thing to do is take the deep, chaotic waters of the world and produce from them an abundant creation. Our God moves from nothing to something, from death to life. And in baptism, so do you.

It seems so strangely ironic to me that God has used water and a promise to call us to into this deep, chaotic water of life. In your baptism, water was poured over your head, giving you something tangible, something graspable, to call you into a life of service to God in the deep waters of life.

When Jesus called his first disciples, especially Simon Peter, he had them put out into deep water and let down the nets there. When he hauled the nets up, to everyone’s amazement, the nets were full, teaming with fish, in an incredible abundance. God’s call into the terrifying and discouraging promises abundance because God is at work there.

And, in hearing, the Scripture has been fulfilled. God has done this for you: in confession and absolution, in water together with God’s Word, in bread and in wine. God is at work in you, calling you to a life of service in the terrifying and the discouraging. Thanks be to God, who puts us out in deep, terrifying and discouraging water and calls us to a life of abundance with him.

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

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