Dr. Dale Miller, January 28, 2007

Taking a New Chance on Us

Isaiah 6:1-8 and Luke 5:1-11

The scene is a restaurant. It is lunchtime on a Sunday. A family has arrived at the restaurant before the heavy church crowd has arrived. Fortunately for them their worship service got out early and they hadn't spent a whole lot of time shaking hands after the service. So here they were. The waitress who had not yet been totally frazzled by the Sunday lunch mob has taken their food order. Just as people from other churches began to arrive, their food was being delivered to their table. All of a sudden, the 10-year-old said, "Aren't we going to say grace?"

Mom and Dad looked at each other with a little panic in their eyes. They muttered, "of course," quickly grabbed the hands of their children, and softly uttered a brief prayer. After the meal was over, the bill was paid, and everyone was back in the car. The child was told, "We normally don't say grace out in public. We wouldn't want people to think we were religious fanatics. We just say grace in the privacy of our home." These are good and faithful people who simply didn't want to stick out in a crowd.

Isaiah could have been sitting at that restaurant table because he didn't want to stick out in a crowd either. Being inconspicuously religious made more sense to Isaiah than going overboard about it. He was rather complacent about his practice of religion, although he didn't mind dropping by the Temple on his way to the office for a quick prayer. So with his briefcase in one hand and a piece of buttered burnt English muffin in the other, he rushes in for a little mind-settling silence to get his day started off right.

What happens is not what Isaiah expects. His routine of the day is interrupted when to his amazement; there amid the incense and the ceremony, Isaiah sees a remarkable vision. He sees, of all things, Almighty God. Isaiah knows that he is in trouble. He knows that human beings are not supposed to look at God, and if any should happen to do such a thing, they will surely die. Isaiah doesn't know which breath will be his last. Isaiah is terrified by what may be next. He knows that he is not worthy to be in the presence of God. But God will have none of his whining. God makes him worthy.

Simon Peter could also have been sitting at that restaurant table. His primary concern in life was whether there would be fish to catch when he and his companions would go out in the evenings. For him, the truth of religion only brought judgment, guilt and frustration. He wasn't against it, but he wasn't excited about it either. In his encounter with Jesus, Peter had been fishing all night with no success to celebrate. Peter felt like a failure.

A young man wasted his first year and his parents' money at college. As a result, he flunked out. To soften the blow to his father, he emailed this message to his mother, "Flunked out. Prepare Father." She emailed back, "Father prepared. Prepare yourself." It is not easy to face our failures.

Peter's body ached from lack of sleep, and his joints were stiff from being out on the water through the chill of the night, from standing and sitting then standing again for long hours in a boat. And I doubt there was any way that he could mask the exhaustion in his voice when Jesus told him to put out to deep waters. Peter answered: "Master, we were hard at work all night and caught nothing; but if you say so, I will let down the nets." All that effort and there wasn't one fish to show for it.

In his weariness Peter allows Jesus to use his boat to preach. As Jesus is finishing up, Peter assumes that he should row back to shore so Jesus can jump out on land. Jesus, however, turns from the crowd to Peter and charges him to fish some more. "Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch." Even though Peter explains that there are no fish this morning, because a whole night of fruitless net casting has gained them not a single one, even in his fatigue and his doubt and his cynicism, he lowers the net.

In the company of James and John, Peter marvels at snaring so many fish. When the catch is loaded, their boats threaten to sink! That's when Peter begins to get the point. This Jesus has to do in some way with the power of God. Peter begins to acknowledge that he is not worthy to be in the presence of this man. In fact, he even tells Jesus to go away.

As God knew what was going on with Isaiah, so Jesus understands what is going on with Peter. Jesus takes a chance on Peter. We can almost see a smile as Jesus says, "Do not be afraid, Simon Peter; from now on you will be catching people." What did God and Jesus see in Isaiah and Peter that we need to capture as a part of the vision for our lives?

First of all, we take a shift of perspective. I have heard it said (and I believe I have shared it with you) that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing every time expecting different results. Scientist Albert Azent-Gyorgi once observed, "Creative thinking consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else and thinking something different." It happens all the time.

While the rest of us relegated baking soda to a moderate role in the cooking process some thinker figured out how to use it as an odor eater in the common refrigerator. The message is simple. Fresh insights are as close as a change in perspective.

While most of us were looking at sawdust as a carpenter's necessary nuisance, some genius figured out how to press it all together and make self-starting fireplace logs.

Second, we cope with our limited vision by responding to Jesus with maximum risk. Jesus asked Peter to go out into the deep water. The Greek word "bathos" not only translates as "deep water," but also as "the unknown." When Jesus asks us to go out into the unknown, we may not want to go. The key is to do it anyway!

Several years ago, there was a book entitled Feel the Fear, and Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers. Her thesis was quite simple: "As long as we are growing, we will always have fear!" Growth always pulls us out into the "deep water." It takes us where we have never been before. It presses our capacity to adjust. And it demands that we be willing to let go of the past in order to claim the future.

Like Peter, our first inclination is to sit still until conditions are in our favor. Peter knew two things that made it almost impossible for him to head for that deep water. First, he knew the efforts of the previous night were completely fruitless and second, he knew from years of experience that there was little chance of catching fish in the middle of the day. His problem was that he thought he knew more than Jesus.

Finally, I would like us to consider that the Christian way of life challenges us to understand our own shortcomings. I am not suggesting that we can eliminate all of our shortcomings, but I believe we need to understand our shortcomings. It would be nice to say that it is possible to eliminate all the sin from our lives, but to say it doesn't necessarily make it so. If we could eliminate sin entirely, we would have a perfect world. We know that such perfection doesn't exist.

Peter demonstrated his temporary lack of faith in Jesus when he doubted there were any fish out there in deeper waters. Having been proven wrong, he fully recognized his shortcoming of faith and he said, "You'd better go on without me, Lord, for I am a sinful man; I'm bad news for you."

Jesus saw that Peter understood his own shortcomings. It seems to me that understanding sin is our greatest difficulty, for we tend to equate sin only with badness. Having shortcomings in a world filled with imperfections simply means being alive. It doesn't always have to do with whether we have bad thoughts or do little selfish deeds. If we highlight only our incapacity to solve all the social ills that beset us, or if we concentrate only on our personal transgressions, then we are missing something important.

If we understand grace to be a close relationship with God, with others and with ourselves, we can understand sin to be a breaking of this relationship. If we can see sin as our inadequacy to serve God and as a disconnectedness with humanity, then we are ready to be used by God.

Peter said, "I'm not worthy to be with you." Jesus' reply is, in effect, "Fine, now we're ready to get to work; if you didn't see this about yourself, you would be no good to anyone. Now let's all put out into the deep together, for the real challenge of life and the real rewards are out there, not in these shallow waters of little sins we like to worry about and debate over."

Jesus is ready to take us out into deeper waters. Will we go? Will our belief be transformed into faith? To be a believer is one thing; to be faithful to the call of God is another. To be a believer is to give mental acceptance to ideas or principles. That's easy. Faith doesn't begin until the mental acceptance is transformed into a changed life. Head and heart must be willing to walk and work hand-in-hand.

Faith is not something accomplished or attained once-and-for-all at one specific moment. Faith is a relationship which must be maintained by a constant striving, constant following, constant loyalty, constant loving. The temptation of our shortcomings is to say, "I just can't be that constant." Well, nobody can. Isaiah couldn't. Peter couldn't. Jesus responds, "Now you get it."

In spite of our shortcomings God loves us anyway and bids us, every one of us, to get off of our knees and get on with it. Of course, we sin. That is inherent to the human condition. But we are also forgiven. And, that too, is inherent to the human condition.

Peter and the other guys did not leave their boats, and nets, and families to follow Jesus because he helped them catch a bunch of fish. I don't believe that for a moment. No, they left everything because for once in their lives they had found everything: total unmitigated, overwhelming, unconditional love. This is the real "catch-of-the-day" - the grace of God in our lives.

When Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people," he knew that all of us need this kind of unconditional love in our lives. We receive this love; we practice this love; we share this love; and we invite others to experience this love.

I invite us today to go into "the unknown" and experience the depth of God's love for our lives. I invite us today to be willing to be used by God to help other people to catch the depth of God's love for their lives.

Keep your ears open to the people around you. There are people who have stories to share; they need just one person, like us, to hear it. Through our compassion, someone might be able to feel the beat of God's heart in their heart. There is no limit to what Christ can do with a person who has been hooked by the Gospel, and no limit to what can happen when we talk about the powerful presence of Jesus in our own lives.

A person once stood before God, their heart breaking from the pain and brokenness of people in the world. A cry went forth, "Dear God, look at all the people who need your love. Why don't you send them help?" God responded: "I did send help. I sent you."