Advent Lutheran Church

"Fishing with Jesus"

                Grace and peace to you from God the Creator and the Lord Jesus.  Amen.

                Today is known officially in the Church as the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany.  In our culture, today is known unofficially as the Sunday of the 44^th Super Bowl.  If history gives us any indication, most of us will be watching, and most of the most of us will be watching not so much for the game itself – the playoffs are often better than the Super Bowl – but many of us will be tuned in because of the commercials.  The Super Bowl draws the biggest TV audience of any event all year, which explains why advertisers are eager to jump at the chance to spend a minimum of $2.5 million for 30 seconds with the American buying public.

                It’s interesting to watch those commercials, because they show us what our culture considers to be “the good life.”  You might think you already live “the good life,” but just you wait.  Wait until this afternoon and you see what you don’t have, and what’s essential to possess in order to “have it all.”

                A partial list of advertisers is instructive: Anheuser-Busch, Audi, Boost Mobile, CareerBuilder.com, Denny’s, Dockers, Mars, and Paramount.  So we see that the profile of the good life is represented by a beer-drinking, junk food-eating, unemployed male talking away on his cell phone while driving his foreign car to the movies.

                Ah, the good life.

                The disciples knew what it was to live their culture’s version of the good life, to have it all.  In fact, in one spectacular instant they reached the pinnacle of success, and just as quickly turned their backs on it all. 

                You know the story.  They’ve been out fishing all night and have come up empty.  It’s not a typical outcome for this group.  After all, they’re professional fishermen, they do this for a living, they’re good at it, good enough to have built up a business that supports at least three families.  But, it’s a business that has its ups and downs, and today they’re ready to go home empty-handed.  But Jesus is there by the seashore, teaching.  The crowd grows to such a mass of people that he asks one of the fishermen, Simon, if he can borrow his boat.  They push out a little way from shore so Jesus can use the water as a natural amplifier for his voice.  When he’s done teaching, he invites Simon to put out farther, into the deep water, and let down his nets for a catch.

                This makes no sense to Simon.  He’s just been out there.  It goes against his experience, it goes against his instincts – anybody with a lick of sense knows you don’t go deep-sea fishing in broad daylight! – but, in deference to Jesus, he says yes.  You know what happens: they haul in not a good catch, not just an excellent catch; they experience so much abundance that it almost sinks their entire business!  They are Donald Trump, who’s finally realized his dream of owning all the real estate in North America!   They are Clay Chastain, who has finally come up with a light-rail plan that everyone in Kansas City supports and which everyone is eager to pay for!  They are the Kansas City Chiefs, who have just won their third straight Super Bowl!  OK, too far; but you get the idea: They enjoy greater success than they ever imagined.  And what do they do?  They walk away from it all.  Why?  Because they’ve been captured by a vision that’s greater, more productive, more life-giving than the vision that’s driven them all their lives.

                Here at Advent, one of our mission directions is “Challenging our Faith Community to Grow in Discipleship.”  We see that as a process, a life-long journey in which we grow deeper and deeper in our faith and in our commitment to Christ and his work in the world.  But this story doesn’t show a process at all; this is a light-speed leap into the unknown.  The writer of Luke’s gospel holds up this story and says to you and me and readers of every generation that this is what a faithful response to Jesus looks like: a dramatic encounter with the divine, and then immediate and complete commitment – “they left everything and followed him.”

                We in 21^st Century Olathe can watch this story unfold and admire the disciples’ response while at the same time acknowledge that we have no intention of imitating it.  Most of us are not going to leave everything we have and become professional evangelists.  But God has not equipped most of us to become professional evangelists, so that is not what God expects us to do.  The Bible is clear that each one of us has been equipped by the Holy Spirit of God to perform some function within the body of Christ, to build up that body as it feeds the world that God loves.  Those functions are very different, one from another, but there is one unifying factor, one linchpin that connects us all: the new identity that we receive in our baptism.

                Scripture doesn’t fill in all the blanks about this story about the miraculous catch of fish, but it’s easy to imagine what it was like out there that afternoon.  As Peter and James and John began to haul in those nets and started to realize what they had on their hands, their faces broke into smiles, and then laughter, and then they were overcome by a sense of awe – if you’ve gone fishing and hooked into a lunker that was much bigger than you were anticipating, you get completely caught up in the experience.  As they pulled in those nets filled with flopping fish, they must have gotten wet, must have gotten soaked; and as they stood there, dripping wet, it began to dawn on them that they were no longer fishermen.  As they brought the boats to shore and left everything there, they became men of Christ.

                In the New Testament, St. Paul talks about that new identity in terms of adoption.  We are, he says, all adopted children of God through our faith in Christ.  Now, most of us here this morning are not adopted – some of us are, but most are not, biologically.  But in a spiritual sense, each and every one of us is adopted into God’s family.  It’s our most potent, most comprehensive identity.

                I’ve been talking with a young couple here at church who are going through the process of qualifying to become adoptive parents.  And what a process!  There is a mountain of paperwork to climb, interview after interview, home evaluation after home evaluation – the process seems designed to discourage anyone who is not totally committed.  The conversations that this couple and I have had have been inspiring to me, because this couple is absolutely focused on doing whatever is necessary in order to provide a safe, secure, loving home for a child they have never met and know nothing about.  As we’ve talked it’s become clear that they really don’t care at all about the past; it’s almost as if the past has to be disconnected in order for a new and life-giving present and future to emerge.

                And that’s precisely what God does with us.  God disconnects us spiritually from the brokenness of the past – I hope you felt this during the Confession and Forgiveness with which we began this service – disconnects us from the ways that we’ve failed God, failed one another, failed ourselves, and he gathers us to himself, innocent and free once again.  And then he sends us out to live that new identity, to, in the words of this story, “catch people.”

                It’s important to note that the verb “to catch” translates literally as “to take alive.”  To take alive means to rescue and set free, not capture and condemn; to strengthen, not weaken; to give life; not death.  And the whole process starts with God’s initiative, when he catches us and claims us; and it continues with our response, a response of trust and willingness to risk, a willingness to say, along with the prophet Isaiah in the Old Testament, “Here am I; send me.”

                This invitation, “put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch,” comes as such a stark contrast to our very human insistence on the predictable and the safe.  We love our business plans, our flow charts, our careful calculations about the probabilities of success; we love our profit and loss statements, our guarantees.  We love to paddle around in the shallow water.  It’s where we live and where we operate, but God doesn’t want us to stay there.

                It starts quietly enough.  Jesus comes to us in the midst of our lives, where we live, where we work; by the seaside, in the office, the jobsite, the classroom, the kitchen.  He comes to us and asks us to do one little thing, one simple something that we normally wouldn’t do, wouldn’t think to do, something that might even go against common sense, like deep-sea fishing in broad daylight, something that takes trust.  It shows up as an impulse, a small and persuasive urge.  Like the pastor, years and years ago, who tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Hey, you ever think about becoming a pastor?”  Or the 26-year-old executive who somehow senses that his friend is struggling inside, hungry for something that he can’t define, and he’s bold to open a conversation with his friend by asking a question, “What do you think about God?”  Or the retiree who’s idly thumbing through the paper one morning and happens to notice a small article that talks about the need for volunteer mentors for young girls at a community center; and on a whim she picks up the phone.  That’s often how the call of Jesus comes to us, as the invitation to simply take one step.

                That’s what it was like for a couple of Advent members who have gotten increasingly involved with Heart to Heart International and its work with earthquake relief in Haiti.  They were asked to do one thing, a simple task, and that led to another, then to another.  And now they’re deeply invested in the work of this organization whose unofficial motto is Leap, Then Look.  Isn’t that great?  Leap, Then Look.  Commit first, then figure out the details.  Talk about doing God’s work with our hands!

                One thing we can be sure of: Jesus is calling each one of us this morning, inviting us out into the deep water, out away from our favorite comforts and securities, out beyond our familiar fears and anxieties, out into the deep places in life that call for trust and courage, where we rely only on God.  God promises not only to accompany us as go out there, but he also promises to stay with us while we’re there, constantly reminding us who we really are, helping us to live God’s own abundant life even as we invite others, “Put out into the deep water, and let down your nets for a catch.” 

May God grant you courage and creativity and grace as you take just one step.  Amen.