Nothing To Fear

A Meditation on Luke 5:1-11 ~ Jesus tells Simon to "push out into deep water and let your nets out for a catch."  Before long, a huge haul of fish, and Simon wonders what to make of it all.

Fully Alive

An old man in India sat down in the shade of an ancient banyan tree whose many roots stretched far away into a swamp. Sitting there, he noticed a small commotion where the roots entered the water. Concentrating his attention, he saw that a scorpion had become helplessly entangled in the roots of that tree. So, pulling himself to his feet, the old man made his way carefully along the tops of the roots until he came to the place where the scorpion was trapped.

He reached down, this old man, reached down to rescue the scorpion from its predicament. But each time, each time he touched the scorpion, it lashed his old hand with its tail, stinging him painfully. Finally, his hand was so swollen he could no longer close his fingers; and he withdrew to the shade of the tree to wait for the swelling to subside.

As he arrived at the trunk, he saw a young man standing above him on the road, laughing, laughing at him. “You’re a fool,” said the young man, “wasting your time trying to help a scorpion that can only do you harm.” And the old man, hurt but not hopeless, turned to him and asked: “Simply because it is in the nature of the scorpion to sting, should I give up my nature, which is to save?”

It’s an old Indian story. About an wise old Indian man. But doesn’t it also suggest the heart of Jesus’ teaching, the soul of his example in the world. “The glory of God,” said an old Christian mystic, “is a human being fully alive.” Jesus must have had this generous way about him, even under fire. He must have excited those fishermen with the courage with which he loved and loved and kept loving. Imagine Jesus, in these early days of his ministry, climbing into Simon’s boat, putting out a bit from the shore, and teaching the crowds. Imagine him saying to Simon, with a wink, “Push out into deep water and let out your nets.” And imagine him, as the catch of fish swamped the boats, roaring with laughter and telling them there’s nothing to fear. “From now on you’ll be fishing for men, for women, for humanity, for a better world.” “The glory of God is a human being fully live.”

The great 20th century preacher, William Sloane Coffin, once said, “Christ does not seek to convert us from this life to something more than life, but from something less than life to the possibility of full life itself.” In so far as the gospel is about conversion, constant conversion, it has to be this: that Christ seeks to convert us from something less than life to the possibility of full life, of robust life, of deep life. “The glory of God is a human being fully alive.”

Gotta Go Deep

So get a good feel for this scene. This Sea of Galilee, or Lake Gennesaret as Luke calls it, gave life to the entire region of Galilee. Thirteen miles long from north to south, and eight miles across; it’s surrounded, now as then, by rounded hills and rugged mountains. In Jesus’ day, there were nine populous cities along the shore. The road joining them also led northeast to Damascus and southwest to Egypt. Josephus, the historian of Jews in the day, once counted 330 fishing boats on the water. Fish, not meat, was the staple diet of families in cities like Tiberias and Bethsaida. Fish made life possible.

So Simon had been fishing hard all night, and catching nothing. His family depended on him. His mates depended on him. His city depended on him. He’d been at it all night, his frustration building hour by hour. And what do you do with all that frustration, if you’re Simon? What do you do? Maybe you look for somebody, something to blame. Maybe you lose yourself in anxiety for the hungry folks at home, for the economic disaster taking down your entire community. Or maybe, maybe you allow your frustration to take aim at your own soul. And you doubt yourself; you feel the sting of failure. It’s not too hard for you and me to identify with Simon. Is it? Every one of us has been at it all night, maybe some of us more now than ever; and every one of us has strained under the weight of all that frustration.

So Jesus comes along and finds them there. In the hour of their frustration. In their exasperated experience of scarcity. Jesus doesn’t wait for an invitation to preach at the local cathedral. Jesus doesn’t get a call to come speak at the Rotary Club on Thursday afternoon. He sets his sights on the fishermen, those same fishermen who’ve been casting nets all night long, those same fishermen who’ve lost hope and given up on the system / and berated themselves hard. He heads down to the shore and finds them by their empty nets. Jesus isn’t much interested in the prestigious pulpits of Nazareth or the fancy classrooms of Tiberias. He uses a boat for a pulpit, a smelly, empty boat. And he teaches from there.

And when he’s done, when he’s shared some stories, some hope, some energy with them, Jesus turns to Simon. And do you remember what Jesus says to the exhausted, depleted Simon? “Push out,” he says. “Push out into deep water and let your nets out for a catch.” Years ago, in Boston, I heard a charismatic preacher using this very verse with a room of convicted felons. He was really into it, really into it. And he told the inmates, “Hey, you gotta put out into the deep water. You want to experience all the grace God has to offer? You want to turn your lives around and follow Jesus? You want to live authentic lives in a strange and violent world? You gotta go deep. You gotta put out into the deep water.” I’ll never forget it. He was playing around, this preacher, with a metaphor in Luke’s story, the metaphor of deep waters, deep currents, deep commitments. You want to live authentic lives in a strange and violent world? You want to experience all that grace? You gotta go deep. It was powerful. And it registered in their eyes, in their faces. Deep waters, deep currents, deep commitments.

So what’s going on? In Luke’s story, what’s Jesus getting at? I think it has something to do with evangelism, with the heart of the Christian message. What are we asking of one another? What is Jesus asking of us? What’s the exciting possibility he unleashes in our lives? Jesus finds us after a night of emptiness and frustration, a long, dark night of the soul. He’s asking us to go deep. He’s daring us to put God first.

And here, again, Bill Coffin has something fascinating to say: “What, then,” he asks, “is evangelism? The best definition I know of this difficult concept,” he says, “is contained in the following: that it is one beggar telling another where he found the bread.” Think about that. Evangelism is one beggar telling another where he found the bread. Maybe that’s what Jesus is doing there by the lake, with all those frustrated souls, all the cynical and tired souls, suffocated by failure and a devastated economy. Maybe he’s just one beggar telling another where he found the bread. “Push out into the deep water and let your nets out for a catch.” Seek ye first the kingdom of God. Put your treasure where your heart is. Bind up the brokenhearted.

Faith has so much to do with pushing out into the deep water: committing your life to grace and tenderness and generosity; risking the sting of the scorpion again and again and again; living and praying one day at a time, one hour at a time, one minute at a time, as if Love is Lord of all. Bill Coffin used to say the leap of faith “is not a decision to believe without proof but rather a decision to trust without reservation.” That’s pushing out into the deep water! To trust without reservation. To love without hesitation. To give yourself to the kingdom of God when it looks like some other kingdom is taking over.

So you can show up week after week in church, and I hope you do. But at some point, hang around here long enough and at some point, you’ll hear Jesus saying to you, directly to you: “Time to push off. Time to push off into the deep water.” Maybe it’s joining a meditation practice. Maybe it’s joining a dedicated choir. Maybe it’s committing to a Lenten study of Jesus’ parables. “Time to push off. Into the deep water.” It’s not necessarily easy, this pushing off. It may mean facing down the demons of doubt and despair. It may mean taking a risk you’ve avoided taking. It may mean praying and turning to God more than you’ve ever done. But it’s in that – in your courage, in your patience, in your daring practice – that you’ll begin to realize what Jesus’s been saying all along. And it’s thrilling, really. Because out there in the deep, there is so much love, so much grace, so much joy. Out there in the deep, you can be fully alive. And the glory of God, the glory of God, is a human being like you fully alive.

Now there are scorpions, too. We know there are scorpions out there, especially in the deep places. For example, I’ve been working hard these last four years, with several of you, on peace issues in the Middle East, on bringing together people of different faith traditions, political persuasions, ethnic backgrounds. To organize for peace. I have to tell you: this work stings sometimes. There are profound disappointments along the way. But that same work, that hard work, has tested and strengthened my faith in unimaginable ways. Out there in the deep, love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Out there in the deep, says Paul, love never ends. There are scorpions out there, but love never ends.

Nothing to Fear

So evangelism. Is Jesus insisting you and I head downtown to save souls? Is he demanding evangelism as a kind of penance, a kind of dark obligation to pluck the damned out of the swamps of sin? Hell, no! He’s one beggar, Jesus is, one beggar telling the rest of us beggars where he found the bread. And we can do the same.

We find the bread when we show up for choir at 6 on a rainy Monday night to sing ancient rounds and medieval anthems, to discover in our own bodies this music, this sound, this lullaby of God. We find the bread when we commit to a bible study and invite old texts to speak new truths. We realize how hungry we’ve been; and we find bread in studying and seeking together. And we find the bread when we cast our lot with Jews and Christians traveling to Israel, to Palestine together: dreaming together of peace, risking hard conversation, fishing for human solutions to historic conflicts.

Evangelism is our privilege, our joyful privilege: telling other beggars where we’ve found the bread. Not because it’s the only bread. Not because they’ll go to hell without it. But because it’s fed us well, because we love the way it tastes, because we wouldn’t be the same without it.

Simon falls to his knees, you remember this part, he falls to his knees and tells Jesus he’s not worthy. “Master, leave,” he says. “I’m a sinner and can’t handle this holiness. Leave me to myself.” He feels completely unworthy of the abundance spilling out of these boats by the side of the lake, unworthy of the rich network of human need and human passion before him. He’d just as soon be left alone, Simon would. Leave the evangelism to somebody else.

But Jesus has none of that. Simon can go deep. You and I can go deep. Every one of God’s children, every one of us is wired, created to go deep. So Jesus repeats those three words that are the bright thread throughout all of scripture, three words that speak to our troubled hearts. “Nothing to fear.” Scorpions are just scorpions. The Dow is just the Dow. Even death, even death, is just death. “Nothing to fear.” Jesus comes looking for us, in just those places where frustration overwhelms us, in just those moments when despair swallows us whole. “Nothing to fear.” Just one beggar telling another where he found the bread. Put out into the deep. Trust without reservation. Put your treasure where your heart is. The glory of God, says Jesus, is a human being fully alive. The glory of God is you.