|
Dr. George A. Purnell
February 7, 2010
“What Do We Have to Lose”
Luke 5:1-11
Sometimes experience is not the best teacher. In fact, our experience can work against us when we are on familiar waters. Since we have fished this lake before, and our methods have worked in the past, we almost refuse to give them up and try something different, even when we are getting no results.
Over my years in ministry, I have developed a familiar method of preparing sermons, for instance. I begin reading the Biblical text over a few times on the Sunday evening a week before the text is being preached. I think about the words carefully. I try to imagine where the writer was at the time of the writing…what the situation was at the time…who was the author actually writing to…? I go to bed that night with the text on my mind.
Monday morning I read the passage again, repeating the thought process from the night before. Then I turn my attention to other work matters. I jot a few notes to people, make a few calls, go over the mail and email, and, around mid afternoon, I return to thinking about the sermon text for the week ahead. I begin consulting secondary sources, primarily scholarly commentaries about the passage. I think about contemporary events that are similar to what is described in the writing. And, by then it is night…
On Tuesday I select hymns, prayers, a statement of faith and a call to worship, and put the elements of the worship service together for Cindy, who produces our bulletins each week. I spend a few hours usually working on the order of the service, because I want it all to fit together in lifting up the theme of the day.
Later in the week, I sit down and block out a day to actually write the sermon. Usually this day is Thursday, but it varies. A death in the congregation means the Sunday service is put aside until the funeral is over, for example…
But sometimes nothing seems to work. The ideas don’t come. A blank page keeps staring at me. As Sunday looms larger and larger, I redouble my tried and trusted methods. I will not abandon my method, because I know it will work!
When we have fished the same waters many nights we know what to expect…
If you are regularly in worship on Sunday mornings, you have heard several sermons preached from this familiar story about the calling of the disciples. And sometimes the most difficult sermons to hear can be from familiar texts, because it can be hard to anticipate a fresh word. It can be tempting for you to begin thinking about what you are doing later today (like watching the Indianapolis Colts in the Super Bowl), since you are pretty certain that there is not much new I can add to this story.
Who can say how a new word gets through when we are pretty sure we know the story. What convinced an experienced fisherman like Simon to take the advice of a carpenter and rookie preacher about his trade of fishing? When Jesus said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch,” we read that Simon Peter responds: “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down my nets.”
From what we learn later about Simon Peter – how he would react quickly to situations, speaking before taking time to think – it seems out of character for him to be so compliant after a long and frustrating night of fishing without any catch. A more expected response from Peter would have been something like: ‘Look, fellow, my living is made fishing these waters. I’m going home to get some sleep. If you want to go out in the morning to deep waters to find fish, good luck. Take somebody else’s boat though!’
What made him ready to listen this time? I think the word gets through because we are ready to change, even if we don realize it sometimes. I think we come to places in life where we are no longer satisfied with things as they are.
Frustration can be the impetus that will let a new word get through to us. When our tried and tested methods quit working, we may be ready to hear a new word.
Many people are frustrated with the quality of their lives. There is increasing evidence that people in America are dissatisfied with their work, for example. Part of the reason is that as downsizing occurs, more and more is expected of the remaining employees; who are working longer hours for the same or less pay and reduced benefits.
At the same time that work is taking more time from our lives, many people have a sense that life is much more than work. The post modern generation does not see work in the same light as their forbearers. Indeed, many from this generation believe that their parents were devoted to careers at the expense of other priorities (like family).
And work is not the only source of our frustrations. Maybe we had thought that the affluence generated by hard work – comfortable homes, late model cars, wonderful vacations, etc. – would bring contentment.
Maybe we had sought identity and meaning in parenting, and our relationship with our now adult children is distant and strained, and we feel a sense of disappointment.
Maybe we had anticipated that retirement would afford the leisure…and the years give us the wisdom… to ask questions of life and deepen our understanding of self and of God. But instead, these years find us suffering the loss of our life partner, or dealing with loneliness and with physical challenges that often accompany aging, or worrying about money, and this life of leisure and reflection never arrives.
Maybe we have the freedom that material means allows, and we have companionship of our life partner and dear friends, but we feel self-indulgent. The feeling that there is something we are supposed to do with our lives before they are over…something other than enjoying our affluence…some legacy we are to leave…won’t let us alone…
Many people are ready, indeed hungry, for deep encounters with God. They are tired of the superficial…tired of looking for meaning in all the wrong places…tired of being manipulated by cultural forces and voices making promises that are unrealistic.
We don’t always know what opens us to trying again, but in new ways. Jesus sat down in Simon Peter’s boat and “asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. When he was finished speaking, he said to Simon, ‘Put out into the deep waters and let down your nets for a catch.’”
Simon Peter was open to trying a new method of fishing on this day. He knew that fishing in the morning in deep waters was not a good strategy, at least in his experience, but he was willing to try a new approach.
Who can say why it was this day? Who can say why, or predict when a new word will get through? Who can explain the mystery that is God at work in our lives?
This we do know. We make decisions in life that have impacts far beyond the moment. And at the time, we may not understand the long term consequences of the decision.
Sometimes we may only make decisions after we have carefully considered the consequences, and gathered as much information pro and con as we could get our hands on. Sometimes we have a deeper sense of urgency, or frustration with the present, and take a risk to decide out of “gut” feelings that do not rely on logic.
In the latter case, we make a leap of faith in the sense that we decide without knowing fully why and without completely considering the consequences.
What is obvious from our story today is that the disciples made a life changing decision, and they did not know how things would turn out. “When they (Simon Peter, James) had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.”
Jesus came to them on the lakeshore as they were washing their nets and getting ready to go home after a night’s fishing. He came to them in the ordinary of their lives. He got in the boat, and asked to be taken away from the shore.
So often, we overlook the ordinary. We look for the divine in the extraordinary. But today’s story says God often comes to us in the routines we live every day. When we are washing clothes at the end of a long work day…or washing dishes after eating…or washing our body before retiring for the night…
God comes, and for some reason we are ready to not only hear, to not only believe what we hear to be truth, but to actually begin a new journey of faith; to put aside our nets and follow when Jesus says, ‘follow me.’ We may lose life as we know it…life in the shallow waters near the safety of shore…but find a new life in the deep waters that we had so long avoided out of fear.
As we prepare to celebrate the reenactment of our Lord’s Last Supper, I remind you that these elements of bread and juice are very ordinary. But they have the power to change you. Put aside what “experience tells you will work” in your life for the time being, and open yourself to new experiences that God has for you. Amen.
|
||||
 |
||||