Into Deep Waters!

The Fifth Sunday after Epiphany
February 2, 2001

By
The Rev. Ann M. Smith

Based on Isaiah 6:1-8 & Luke 5:1-11

Peter and his friends had worked all night. They had caught nothing. They were tired and discouraged. "Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch," Jesus encouraged them. They responded. And to their amazement, they got results they would never have gotten had they stayed close to shore. They got not only a good catch of fish. God is always so practical. They also received a new vision of life. They discovered the amazing power and grace of God.

When I was growing up, my family spent many summers at a cottage on Lake Erie. We children spent hours in the water. It was a lovely beach. It was sandy. The water was sparkling and clear. It was very shallow and safe, the perfect place for children to play. We could walk way out into the water, bobbing in the waves. It never got much past your waist. Now it was a great place to play. But because it was shallow, it was not a great place to learn how to swim. We all learned to swim in deeper water.

Susanna, the baby of the family, was by far the youngest of us when she learned. The summer that she was two we didn't go to Lake Erie. We stayed at a cottage on an island. There was no beach. The water was very deep. We swam off the wharf. Because we were worried about her safety, Susanna wore a life jacket from the time she got up in the morning till she went to bed at night. She quickly learned to jump off the end of the wharf like the rest of us. Then one day we forgot to put the life jacket on her. She went running down to the wharf and plunged into the water before anyone could react. To our amazement, she didn't sink. You see, our two year old sister could swim.

Spiritually we spend much of our lives safely in shallow water. It is not that we have no sense of commitment. We are honestly trying to serve God. We go to church. We may even serve on a committee. We try to do what God is calling us to do. But we stay with what is familiar. We don't want to risk being labelled fanatical. We avoid Bible Study and personal prayer. We certainly don't make it too public that we are Christians. Heaven forbid that someone at work should find out!

Fearful of what God might ask of us, we do not risk putting out into the deep. And we really may need the safety of the shallow waters at times. Life is not easy just because we are Christians. Life has its frustrations. There will be disappointments. There will be times of difficulty. They may keep us from taking risks. But eventually we need to plunge in.

"Put out into the deep water", Jesus is telling us. It is the same thing he was saying to Peter and the others when he called them to leave their fishing and to follow him. They were putting out into deep waters. Jesus was on an unpredictable path. It would prove to be a costly allegiance for his followers as well.

Isaiah was setting out into deep waters when he responded to God's call. What visions did you see as the Old Testament passage was read? "Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is utterly desolate; until the Lord sends everyone far away, and vast is the emptiness in the midst of the land." If you think about it, it is a very contemporary scene. It might be Chechnya, or the terror of Hiroshima, or India following the earthquake last week!

Isaiah lived in a difficult period in Israel's history, a time of great change, a time of danger, of war, of threat, of despair. Isaiah felt totally inadequate to the task to which God had called him. Yet he heard himself saying, "Here am I; send me." He had his eyes, ears and heart attuned to God. He heard God's call. He responded.

Someone once observed, "When we are ten years old, we think we can live forever. When we're twenty, we believe we can save the world. When we're thirty, we think we might at least save the company. When we're forty, we think we can save our children, and when we're fifty, maybe we can at least save our marriage. By the time we're sixty, we come to the conclusion that maybe we should just save aluminum cans.

That is amusing. But more than that there is some real insight into human nature. We make our way through life seeking. But we do not always know what it is we are looking for. Sooner or later and in my experience it is usually later we begin to look within at our resources, at the grace that God has given to us. What gifts have we never ignored? How can we truly listen to God's call? How can we know that God is calling us? How can we know what God wants of us? How can we be all that we are meant to be?

To the Christian living in this post Christian era these may seem like terrible times. Many have lost faith in the institutions and structures of our society. We Anglicans are part of an institution that faces crippling litigation because of past injustices to our aboriginal people. We face a declining moral structure that we often feel unable to address. We see change around us, change that we do not always welcome.

This congregation has faced difficult times. We struggle financially. There have been times of instability. There have been many changes in terms of clergy. Working within the structures not only of a Diocese but also of an ecumenical Church Centre has caused tension. Do we sometimes feel totally inadequate? Do we wonder what God has in store for this congregation? We need to be encouragers of one another. Somehow or other, we need to accept the grace that God offers to us and find a way of offering ourselves in service in the church. Then we will become aware of gifts we did not even know we had. We will hear God's call more clearly. We will be able to respond. People will find this to be a sanctuary. Those who come to visit us will stay because they will find what they are searching for. We will be spiritually renewed and on fire with God's love.

For most of us that will take a lifetime of discovery. But the wonder of it all is that when we do, we truly find out who we are meant to be. It is in the incomprehensible depths of God's love that we meet our true potential. It is in setting out into the deep water that we claim and lay hold of all that God has done for us.