A Sermon Preached By

Rev. Peter W. Shidemantle

Communion Sunday, February 4, 2007 C Ord 5

PEBBLE HILL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

5299 Jamesville Rd., DeWitt, NY  13214

Phone:  315-446-0960     FAX:  446-0672

phillchu@twcny.rr.com     http://pebblehill.presbychurch.org

            But whatever metaphor he may have chosen to reveal to Simon and James and John what their vocation (“calling”) was to be, following their encounter with him, the goal would be the same – to gather people into the kingdom of God, into God’s reign, bringing people into awareness of God’s loving, saving presence.  No matter how you say it, whatever metaphor you use, it doesn’t mean much if you don’t buy the premise that this is what Christian discipleship is about.

            It’s not, perhaps, that we don’t “buy” it so much as we are uncomfortable with it.  We’re generally OK with the idea of “serving” others, teaching others, empowering others, loving others in the name of Christ.  These are all acts of ministry that touch and proceed from the Christian heart.  By these actions we are fed as much as we feed.  They are the bread and drink of Christian life.  But the idea of “catching” others may give us pause.  It’s one thing to love and serve other people, but to “catch” people somehow seems intrusive, or arrogant, or both.  We have seen plenty of evidence, from history and the present day, where the gospel has been used less to gather people up in the web of God’s love than as a club to threaten or frighten or intimidate people; if that is what “catching people” means we don’t want to have anything to do with it.

            Maybe it’s the near obsession we have in our society with individual privacy, or the idea that religion is a purely private and personal matter.  We assume that basically people want to be left alone, which is convenient for us because we’d just as soon leave them alone.  It’s sort of a passive version of the Golden Rule: “Leave others alone as you would like to be left alone.”  But yet, we are responsible for the spreading of the gospel, not just somehow by osmosis, but by “dropping our nets” out in deeper waters, out there beyond our comfort zones - out where perhaps we have “fished” before to no avail and so we’ve pulled in our nets, deciding that there is nothing to be gained by it.

            But I’d like to suggest that we see if we can let the Spirit of God lead us through our discomfort, to see if God might enlarge our understanding, help us to see in a new way.

            This wonderful story about the call of the first disciples is so rich that any single piece of it can serve as the basis for our meditation.  Taken as a whole we can see a pattern or movement, I think, toward life as a disciple (a student) in the kingdom of God.  The story begins with people “pressing in” upon Jesus.  They had come, Luke says, “to hear the word of God.”  No doubt many of them were “pressed upon” themselves, fitting the description of those to whom Jesus had announced back in Nazareth in his home synagogue he would be ministering, as he harkened back to the prophet Isaiah - the poor, the captives, the blind and the oppressed.  They came to hear a word of life, a word of hope that they, too, were children of God, deserving of the portions of life they longed for and were denied. 

            We who have more than enough food, regular health care, freedom from oppressive hands can attest that we share this longing for the word of God (experience of the living God).  This longing has been described in many ways, as a restlessness, a yearning, a homesickness, an emptiness.  Whatever word you use cannot fully describe it, but Jesus gave the people the sense that they were made for more than who they already were, by nature or by condition.  Fish can’t live for long out of water.  Jesus helped people to see that God is just as essential to human life.

            “Put out into the deep and let your nets down there,” he said.  Based on their immediate past experience, Simon replied that the effort would be fruitless - “but at your word I will let down the nets.” 

            “At your word . . .”

            There probably weren’t many people around who knew more about fishing than Simon and his colleagues.  Failure was simply part of the job.  They knew when to fold up their nets and when to lower them.  They knew the conditions; but with Jesus the conditions change.  He enters our familiar lives, the way we’ve always done things, the things we’ve tried and maybe had success for a while but then they grew tired and old . . . He enters our familiar lives and if we take him at his word we begin to see and experience uncommon things.  At his word, as we give ourselves to it, transformation begins to take hold.  And as his word continues to feed us, and nurture us, even what is most familiar to us can begin to take on a different cast, a different tone, a different look, a deeper meaning.  It isn’t any longer just a matter of what is likely, or even what is possible.  “We’ve fished those waters, Jesus, and there’s nothing there.” (expand) As far as we can tell, that’s the truth.

            But God’s truth isn’t limited by our truths, as Peter discovered.  Peter moves by his 0bedience from a fixed and failed reality.  He knows how fishing works.  Sometimes fish are scarce and you fail in finding them.  But look at what happens when he says “by your word, Lord.”  Reality that is fixed, reality as we know it, as we have been given it 0r as we’ve determined it, reality that includes failure and disappointment, moves by the word of the Lord to a new reality, to new life.  That is where the first disciples found their vocation, their calling, and so do we. 

Fredrick Buechner writes that “the place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”  It is the place called holy, where, pushed or pulled beyond the shallow places of our own comfort zones, risking the deeper waters, we find in those deeper places a transforming power beyond our capacity to predict or control.  Like Isaiah, like Peter and the others, our reaction at first, sensing the gap between our world as we know it and the new world, the new creation of Jesus, is to recognize a sense of our own unworthiness.  Who are we that we should be called into the deep and holy places?  It is deep and it is dark.  There is no controlling it.  It is uncontained.  We never know where the current of God’s love will take us.

“Do not be afraid” is his word to us – not so much to put us at ease, but to encourage us in our calling as disciples of Jesus Christ.  In many ways it is our fear that holds us back in our discipleship, isn’t it? -- fear of intruding, fear of not being taken seriously, fear of looking foolish, fear of failing.  But the deeper waters is where the holiness is, and it is the place of our own deep gladness.   We are caught in the net of God’s love, and we find that when you are caught by God it is your release; you are set free.

0ne thing we know for sure – the closer we remain to shore, play it safe, unwilling to risk the deeper places – unwilling to extend our love, commit our time, give of our resources, putting ourselves out there for the sake of a hungering world – the less we will know the deep gladness of our vocation as Christians.  For Simon and the others it began with a simple act of obedience – “At your word, Lord…” – and the depths of God’s love and holiness were opened to him, and his vocation was clear.  It didn’t make him perfect.  Perfection is not what God requires of us.

And so what are the deeper waters that God is calling you to?  Who is God calling you to join in the company of his transforming love – for it is never just a solitary venture.  To what deeper places is God calling us, as a church?  God does not require our perfection, 0nly our faithfulness.  This is the journey we are on, and the world needs to know it – and we need to tell it, to show it, to live it.

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