The Deep Place

First I want to again welcome Troop 2 to our sanctuary. Its an privilege to welcome you to our service this morning and to have you in church with us.  I not assume you are all Christians I do assume that you have different level of Christian Education, Church Participation and Spiritual maturity, which also amounts to you having a variety of theologies and being at different places in your faith. I do believe that all of you have some operative theology and some kind of faith, even if you may not see it that way.

In troop 156 over in Glenview we have a fabulous adult leader , Mr. Marmet. I have been privileged to be on a couple of Board of Reviews with him over the years and I know that he is always very serious about asking every scout how they define their “duty to God”. It’s a good question but its obviously a very difficult one for most scouts.

Alongside doing your duty to God, I also know that a scout is supposed to be “Reverent”. Which I know something about, you know being a reverend.  However, one does not necessarily need to be a theist, that is to believe in a Living God to be reverent. However, whatever you might choose to give reverence to, most certainly will tell you something about where you put your faith, what exactly is your god. That is lower case “g” god…

Whatever it is that motivates you to do what you do, and seek what you seek that is your .your ultimate concern, the place where you put your trust, and from whence desire your values and virtues, priorities & pursuits your rights and you wrongs. A god is anything in which we place our highest trust, and give our greatest reverence.

This is no small thing. Across a lifetime, what we revere, we will grow to love and that which we love we will become.

This is a hard concept for modern folks like us because our culture struggles with lasting authority and with ultimate authority. Our culture, and even more so the world you will inhabit and inherit as adults, revers authenticity and newness above everything else. These, if you will are our cultural Gods.

On many levels the move to authenticity is a good thing. Over the last century we have seen all kinds of innovations and changes to our cultural, social, ethical and moral expectations that have sought to make more space for more voices. This is a good thing. The average person is allowed far more space to pursue their own authentic our unique path in life. Many folks believe that this is precisely why we don’t go to church or read the Bible, because we are to busy, too modern and free for outdated practices like worship or reading the Bible.

We have unprecedented access to evolving new up to the minute information than ever before. When the Gospel of Luke, which we read today, was written, the reason Luke wrote a long letter to his friend Theophilius and so few folks could read or had access to pen and paper that we are still reading his letter over 2000 years later. In fact in today’s story from Luke we see Jesus sending out Peter James and John to spread the mission and message of Jesus by walking, on foot, village to village because they didn’t have phones, let alone email. In this way we can see why faith in the God of Jesus is hard and difficult, even impossible to imagine how we would be reverent to this God?

Lets not assume that the modern age of technological efficiency and the pursuit of personal authenticity do not exact a sacrifice of reverence and worship all their own. Consider these words from theologian Andrew Root on the modern world:

“Our lives feel even more rushed because, compared to the past, we are doing exponentially more actions inside the units of time. Recalling our art professor from way back in chapter 5, he's right: things are objectively speeding up. The pace has increased. Technological acceleration doesn't give us more time for leisure, rest, and contemplation of our humanity. It gives us more access to more actions inside our units of time. This makes us feel busy! This push to get more actions inside more units of time (to do more at a quicker pace) becomes part of our social norms. This desire to get more actions done is a good, even pushing us to blur lines between distinct units of time, doing actions set for one unit in another unit to catch up or get ahead. Like brushing our teeth in the car.

We call this "multitasking," or increasing a task or action within a unit of time as a way of quickening our pace. The innovation of email ideally allows you to spend only twenty minutes on correspondence, but in reality it creates the conditions for you to not but fifty-five emails a day. You now have the tools, if you push hard enough, to respond to them all. You feel frantically busy increasing the pace of actions in this unit of time. But responding to fifty-five emails also gives you a sense of being in demand. Your busyness is a sign that you're living with a kind of fullness, which seems to accelerate the pace of your life by the week, threatening you with the risk of alienation from yourself and from the world as you rush.

Soon enough you realize it's very hard to keep pace with all those emails. You decide you actually need three hours a day to do your correspondence. You'll have to take that hour from somewhere. To not fall further behind, it's best to take it from sleeping, eating, or another human-induced task that asks us to downshift. Rosa explains that we have empirical studies showing that people sleep less, eat faster, and walk more quickly than in the past (we even talk faster).10

This may sound lofty but I can imagine your lives bear witness to your allegiance. I have a 14 year and I know he feels busy and tired. I imagine that most of you came here after a full week. No doubt every day you got up and had to make a choice about how to dress, what to eat, how to groom yourself and how to get to school. Likely you carried a feeling of stress and pressure all week because on the one hand you had to get good grades,  but you also had to choose which classes to take, which activities to be a part or not, which friends to have or not have, on top of that you live Ina world where many of you feel pressure not only to pick these choices to create your future but you may feel that you have to take your phone out and log on to insta or snap and show everyone just how great you are doing in all these areas of your life. You each probably feel that your friends, or even strangers and enemies have constant access to your social media posts or even directly to you. On top of this your parents every bit as much as your are probably busier than ever during the weekend. Going to scouting campouts, in fifteen activities, posting on social, not to mention the constant information you have deal with that lets you know what everyone else is doing.

Is it ay wonder that many of you have responded to your parents on Saturday night the same way my boys often do “Dad have been working all week LONG on homework and scouts and chores, and I am exhausted, do have to go to church?”

IF this sound familiar, don’t turn your back on the Gospel of Luke just yet. Verses 4 & 5

“When Jesus had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” 5 Simon answered, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.”

Simon hears Jesus and responds just how we might expect. However, the next line may have far more significance than you likely know.

“When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink. 8 But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” 9 For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; 10 and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon.

In the culture of the day, under the Roman Empire, this simple and strange act of reverence, to fall down at Jesus feet, is a clear and meaning laden symbol that anyone in that day and age would have immediately recognized. It implied not only that Jesus was a man of great honor and power but even more so that Simon was recognizing him as a being a Patron.  In the culture of that day one’s identity and worth came from the honor or shame one had. Frankly it was not unlike social media. The more honor you either received, from your friend group, your family name, your national or ethnic identity the worthier your were thought to be. Similarly the more wealth, or power, or success you demonstrated with your actions made your even worthier. If someone was as the very top of worthiness, say like Caesar, they were seen as being god-like. IT was not uncommon for these powerful wealthy and highly honorable folks to bring lesser citizens under their patronage. That is, to welcome them under their wing, and provide them with food, clothing shelter, belonging in exchange for service.

Not long before this story, at the end chapter 4 Jesus goes to Simon’s house and heals his mother in law. This would be a sign of great power. What is more, to have a sick mother in law might be a source of shame, the opposite of honor. To be a fisherman, to work long hard hours away from home doing a dirty difficult and treacherous job of hard labor, that was also not a place of great honor. To abandon one’s business partners, or to a sick parent, or not pay one’s taxes there are all source of great shame. Frankly, in the Roman Empire to be wealthy or a roman citizen is to be greatly honored but to be an occupied peasant and a Hebrew are all sources of shame.

Yet, Jesus walk into all of this, as a Jew himself, and invites these fishermen out into the deep place. Where they catch enough fish to free them from all of that. Jesus frees them from the burdens of a never ending cycle of having to prove their worth. What is more, Jesus, as Hebrew himself, heals a mother in law, provides enough fish to free Peter James and John from all the traps and oppressive burdens of the world and earthly power under which they struggled. This is what shows that Jesus possesses Divine authority. Not wealth or popularity or an army, but he gives life, freedom, meaning and joy.

But this is still not the end of the story. After all this takes place, the story is really only beginning. Verse 10: Then Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.

This story isn’t really about the miracle. The fatigue of Matthew “Do we really have to...” isn't really about working more. It about what kind of people we are. Jesus doesn’t invite Matthew just to fish but “Put out into the deep water”. In The Bible deep waters are always a reference to Genesis 1, where God’s Spirit “hovers over the face of the deep”. The desert and the dep waters are the places where God’s mystery is loose. This story in Luke is about the Spirit of God that invites us to go deeper in ourselves, to the places that untouched, unknown, unfamiliar and uncolonized. Jesus doesn’t just free them with a miracle, the miracle is a sign about God.

And notice something, this doesn’t happen in the synagogue or in a church and Jesus doesn’t send Peter James or John to house of worship but on to another village. The desert and the Deep waters are untamed places. God is loose, and for Luke God got particularly loose in Jesus. Its not that God isn’t in church, or can’t get loose in here, its just that in the Bible God is always way ahead of us, guiding us, surprising us, and setting us from a thousand burdens a false Gods so that we can revere the right ones.

And one more thing, after he tells them to go to the deep place, and Peter falls down he sends them off again not a to a church but to another village and he sends them with a mission . But here the English isn’t helpful. Jesus tells them that from now one they will be fishing for people. But the way the Greek forms its sentences isn’t quite proper. He more literally says that form now on they will pulling other people out of the deep waters alive. Its more distinct than the [phrase for fishing and implies something closer to saving others and setting them free than it does catching and gutting a dead fish for a meal.

So welcome to church. But just know that we do not come here because this is where we meet God. God is loose out there. We come in here to check ourselves, and to calm and quiet everything in our hearts and heads so that we can examine intentionally the duty we owe to God and the duties were are paying to many gods, even to ask what are the gods we have received from out culture, that is to examine the motivation behind the values, habits and priorities we learned just by being in the midst of Illinois, or Chicago or the North Shore, ways of living and assigning value so taken for granted we might ever question and we certainly might see them as “gods” but are habits values and priorities that our culture gives great great reverence.

If it is true that Across a lifetime, what we revere, we will grow to love and that which we love we will become, than what are we to do with a God who can't be trapped by our human labels institutions, whose is loose freeing others from burdens and drawing them to be nourished in the deep place. Perhaps all we can do, is offer our profound reverence and watch for that God to show up in the real world. AMEN.