SERMONS

Luke 5:1-11
Reverend Angela Ying
February 7, 2010

Fish

A word that brings up many images for us who live in Seattle and home of the infamous Pike Place Market, where one can go, see and experience flying fish!

Fish

Is it a noun or an active verb?

Is it fresh and alive or is it frozen — and needing some heat to even begin to thaw out.

Does it smell because it has been around without change?

Fish

Is it moving and shaking?

Is it part of a school of other fish?

Does it bring people together around a shared meal or out to eat others up?

Is there one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish, black fish, blue fish, old fish, new fish!

Are its eyes open and clear or are the eyes dead and glazed over?

Fish

Is one willing to go deep or stay on shore?

Notice, in today’s scripture passage that follows Jesus’ ministry in Galilee — fish is on his heart and mind.

Having spent the beginning of his ministry in Galilee healing the sick and preaching in the synagogue — Jesus now goes out to the lake of Gennesaret, which is another name for the Sea of Galilee.

The people are pressing in on Jesus to hear the word of God.

To hear the Word of God.

They understand what really feeds them.

On the Sea of Galilee, in Jesus’ time, individuals and small groups relied upon each other to ensure that the fruits of the sea (the fish) were harvested.

Because the community was poor and not full of wealthy, privileged people — they could not afford to not produce.

There was no such thing as the privilege to only consume or choose to be a consumer.

The people saw themselves and their community as producers.

To ensure production, the fishers formed cooperatives with other groups to gain fishing contracts.

Though we sometimes think those who followed Jesus were successful fishers who were also boat-owners — it is more likely that the fishers rented the boats they used.

From the gospel, it is clear that Jesus’ first disciples were not wealthy people. They struggled to survive.

And yet, it was these every day working people — those oppressed and made poor by the empire that Jesus first preached his message of God’s love.That these were not the only ones who heard Jesus’ message is evident from the diversity of people that we see and hear eventually followed Jesus.

But the reality that the first to hear God’s good news are the poor — tells us first and foremost that God is God of the poor and oppressed.

Interviewing Archbishop Desmond Tutu for his book “God of the Oppressed,” Bill Moyers heard Tutu say that theology — which is the study and worship of “Theo” or God — “theology must always be linked with the liberation of the poor and oppressed” as Jesus proclaimed.

God is not neutral on this.

Tutu goes on “If you are neutral in situations of injustice — you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse — and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”

God is God of the poor and oppressed.

Second, God gets into our individual boat for the sake of the whole community.

God gets into our boat — our small boat. No cruise liner. No massive ship, no private yacht — our individual daily boat that somehow, by the grace of God, remains afloat and which carries both our failures and our hopes.

As my friends and colleagues in the black community on MLK,Jr. Day exclaimed to the crowd of people gathered, “We may all have come to this land on different ships — but be not mistaken — as human beings, we are all in the Same boat!” (Amen)

God gets in our life boat — and yet, not for the reason we think.

Not for our own petty individual complaint, codependency and competition.

No! God gets in our life boat for the whole community of faith.

For what God creates in the intimate and personal is also universal. The individual heart interconnected with the universal soul — with heartache and humor, hope and healing.

Peter and the other fishers were going about their daily lives when Jesus enters their empty boat. You and I going about our every day lives and finding Jesus in our boat — no force or striving, conniving or manipulating.

It is living faithfully in our own daily lives that Jesus enters in.

First and foremost, God is God of the poor and oppressed.

Second, God gets into our individual boat for the sake of the whole community.

Third, God through Jesus moves us from shore to knee deep water to see if we are ready to go deep.

As parents learn and teach, before their children can run, they need to learn how to walk and before they can walk, they need to crawl and before they can even crawl, the children need to put out and move from one side to the other.

Today, if you have not caught on this week, it is Super Bowl Sunday.

As a faithful Minnesota woman, born and bred in the small town south of the Twin Cities, a Purple People Eater (aka: a Minnesota Vikings’ fan) at heart — I have watched and witnessed with my father, which is why I know the game, and my two sisters — the failure and loss of four Super Bowls — and only a few weeks ago, again giving away, through five turnovers, the NFC Championships to the Saints.

First time New Orleans Saints are in the Super Bowl against the experienced Indianapolis Colts.

And yet, if the Saints are going to face the Colts who plan on trampling over them — they will need to start from the shore and move to knee deep before going deep into the end zone.

The team will start at the shore or line of scrimmage or 20 yard line. They cannot go deep immediately. They could, but probably not too helpful as there is always the possibility of a fumble, interception or loss of yardage, let alone loss of a down.

As the gospel instructs, the team of Saints will need to focus on putting out a little way — in this case, 10 yards.

Ten yards — that’s it — just ten yards towards a first down.

A mere, but very important ten yards — then ten more yards and ten more yards after that, until the team finds itself putting out into the deep of one’s own end zone.

Now, if one is focused on success and being successful rather than faithfully playing the game, chances are one will come up with nothing.

You throw the ball up in the air — and there is no one open or prepared for the catch.

And yet, though I may be wrong, if a team works together — where each person on the team understands his strengths and weaknesses, failures and hopes — and is open to letting each play their part, chances are each person on the team can move from shore or the line of scrimmage to knee deep and eventually into the deep — the deep end zone — where there will indeed be a wide receiver with open arms to help get the catch.

On a team, as a ministry team here at Bethany, when there are days where there is no catch, we will need to be big enough, and yes, humble enough, to change our original game plan to follow God’s plan.

For as followers, you and I do not get to make the call. Someone who sees the bigger picture, vision and goal for us — does this.

Very few things in life require no every day practice and no daily routine to practice in our lives. The community of faith and learning to be faithful are no different.

If the Super Bowl analogy does not work for you, what about one with our children?

At night, our family has a daily routine. If at school, it is the three R’s: Reading, Writing and Arithmetic. At home, it is the 5 B’s: Bath, Brush teeth, Bedtime story, Blessings and Be in Bed Asleep.

As parents, we find that if there are not stepping stones for the children, no daily practice and routine — our children do not know what is expected of them and what the consequences are and will be, if they choose not to follow.

Back to our scripture passage, notice as I mentioned earlier that Jesus does not go immediately into the deep, which would be over the fishers’ heads, where they could drown or where Jesus could lose them without daily practice.

Jesus gives Simon Peter the instructions, as the gospel tells us, “to put out a little way from the shore” — which means Jesus has the self assurance to give the fishers and the whole community and himself some Healthy Space.

Breathing Space, Open Space, Just Enough Space, Sacred Space.

Each of us knows that only a person of faith who is self aware and self assured of God’s love has the capacity to give another human being — healthy space. Someone who is self-indulgent, self-hating or who has no self cannot, nor dares not, give another space — but sadly crowds out the very thing she needs — space.

Mystic and writer, Simon Weil, writes, “All sins are attempts to fill voids… Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it — and it is grace itself which makes this void.”

In my own faith journey to be closer to God, I realize that Jesus wants to get into my life boat and can get in only when my boat and life are empty — empty and open for God.

God is God of the poor and oppressed.

God gets into our individual boat for the sake of the whole community.

God through Jesus moves us from shore to knee deep water to see if we are ready to go deep.

Fourth, God is amazing enough to go deep and to seek out people who will follow God, not themselves.

Even though some will stay safely on shore and some will remain in the shallow waters, God is willing to go deep with God’s people.

In the gospel and good news, Jesus tells the fishers, as Jesus tells us, to put out into the deep water and let down our lives as we have never done before.

For Simon Peter and his fisher partners, James and John — this meant letting down their fishing nets — the very nets that have caught nothing all night long.

Strangely enough, Jesus does not ask them to put out their “successful” nets — what has worked for them in the past.

No! Jesus asks them to put out their faithful nets. Jesus knows being faithful costs.

Jesus lives out the liberating difference between being faithful and being successful.

For Jesus is not interested. Jesus could care less in the “successful” nets.

For Simon Peter and the fishers —Jesus is commanding them to put out into the deep their night-time fishing nets in the daytime — what many and most would consider the completely wrong nets!

The crazy and astonishing thing is — Simon Peter and the other fishers do what Jesus commands.

“Teacher, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet — if You say so, I will let down the nets.”

How incredible that they not only followed — they did not complain and provide Jesus with a long list or litany of all the ways this would not work for them.

They actually follow Jesus and what Jesus has faith in!

It is only by faith and being faithful and not success and being successful that when the fishers had done what Jesus asked — after an entire night of disappointment in catching absolutely nothing — they caught, scripture records, “they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break.”

The first disciples needed to ask others for help. They could not do it on their own even if they wanted.

They saw their boats begin to sink, not because they were faithless or without doubts — but because they were being FAITHFUL.

By now, if success and being successful is our goal, we would be jumping up for joy — claiming we did it on our own. Our American society has taught us this.

Not so — for those who are about faith and being faithful to God. We see Peter fall down at Jesus’ knees and confess.

You get the biggest catch of the day and it moves you to confession.

Now, that’s the good news of the gospel!

When Isaiah received his call from God, it first led him to despair and yes, to confession. Only later, did our prophet Isaiah say, “Here I am, send me.”

“Go away from me,” Simon Peter says to Jesus as a human being capable of sin. And yet, Jesus does not go anywhere. Jesus remains.

Jesus never leaves us even when we choose to leave. And get this: Jesus not only remains in Peter’s boat — Jesus gives them compassion and a challenge.

The words of compassion: “Do not be afraid.” The same words told to Jesus’ own mother before his birth.

And the words of challenge: “From now on, you will be catching People!”

A much bigger vision for a much bigger God who amazing enough will go deep and seek out people who will follow!

So, what do you think?

Will Bethany’s community of faith let God be God as God of the poor and oppressed?

Will this community of faith let God be God who gets into our individual boats for the sake of the whole community?

Will Bethany let God be God who through Jesus moves us from shore to knee deep water to see if we are ready to go deep?

And will Bethany let God be God who is amazing enough to go deep and seek people who will follow God, not themselves.

I do not know about you — but while you figure it out — I plan on going fishing with God as my life and faith depend on it!

Care to follow this day?