A Call to Go Deeper
Isaiah 6: 1-8, Luke 5: 4-11
Rev. John P. Wesley
February 7, 2010
Sir Frances Drake lived during the sixteenth century. If you were a Spaniard, Frances Drake was a pirate. If you were English he was a great sea captain. Much of his life was spent in the New World playing havoc on Spanish galleons laden with silver and gold from the mines of central and south America. Sir Frances was knighted when he completed the first voyage around the world by an Englishman in 1581. Now Sir Frances grew up in a farmer’s home. Besides being a farmer, his father was a Protestant minister. From his father, Frances learned to have a belief in God that fueled his courage during his many exploits. It is believed by some that Sir Frances held the first Protestant communion service on North American Soil when a French Huguenot minister, traveling with Sir Frances, went ashore on the West Coast of what is now America, and held a communion service in 1579. This morning I wanted to share one of the prayers attributed to Sir Frances.
Disturb us Lord when
We are too well pleased with ourselves
When our dreams have come true
Because we dreamed too little
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to shore.
In Sir Frances’ day many of the maps of the world didn’t even picture the new world. They had a mark that said the end, or they might have a picture of monsters beyond a certain point. Few had traveled beyond the close shoreline, and so the deeper water, the unknown territories were thought to be too dangerous, too threatening to deal with. But Frances Drake felt a call to go deeper, and he gave much of his life to that pursuit.
Jesus in our text today invites Peter, James and John to go deeper in their search for fish. They had been fishing all night with no success. So Jesus invites them to try something different, something a bit radical. Leave the safety of the harbor, leave behind the place where you’ve always caught fish, and push out into the deep. And later that morning Jesus invited them to go deeper in their faith, to leave behind the security and safety of their fishing business and to become novices, disciples in his ministry.
The invitation to go deeper does’nt seems strange when our efforts in the shallow waters of life have been met with success. When we get a bumper crop from seed planted in the spring, it’s not very difficult to plant even larger fields the next year. When a church has had a lot of success reaching new members, when people come in such numbers that the church is required to build more space, it isn’t difficult to go deeper. There is an intoxication that comes with success. It makes one feel you cannot go wrong by giving more time or energy. There is just that feeling that nothing can possibly defeat you.
But the challenge comes when we are faced with hard, lean days, when the things we’ve tried have not come out the way we planned or wanted. To go out deeper when the shallow water has been unproductive, to commit ourselves more fully when past efforts have been ineffective, to reach for a deeper faith when the faith we have seems frail and weak, that is a hard thing to do. Sometimes it’s just easier to quit, pulling our boat in close enough to shore so we can jump off and go home. There are times when nothing seems to be working out, when the things we pray for don’t come to fruition, when the challenges get more and more plentiful and the rewards get more and more scarce. Those are the times when the call to go deeper fill us with fear and uncertainty.
Isaiah had only known of one king throughout his lifetime. Israel had been held together by the leadership of Uzziah. He reigned for 52 years. But then he died, and the whole kingdom of Israel was beside herself with grief. What would they do without Uzziah to guide them. Feeling his lost, frightened by how the world was changing Isaiah went to the temple to pray. What he received wasn’t just a word from God that everything would be alright. In the temple Isaiah came into the presence of God and was invited to go out into deeper water, to entrust his life not to a great King, but to a great God. There were all kinds of reasons why Isaiah thought he couldn’t go deeper, but God met each of his challenges with an affirmation and sent him out to be a mouthpiece for justice and mercy.
Several years ago a family I knew went through a tragedy that no family should have to endure. There was a young son in his early 20’s who was struggling with addiction. The struggle had filled him with anger and paranoia. One afternoon as the family set down for dinner, the young man got a phone call from his girlfriend. She told him she was seeing someone else. He pulled a pistol out of his pocket, shot and killed his younger brother and sister and wounded his step-father. A short time later, as a police officer approached the young man’s car, he took his own life. In a matter of a few moments this husband and wife lost their children. It was a devastating moment, not just for them but for the entire community. The family’s pastor was amazing in the love and care he and his church poured out. But no one knew whether the family would be able to get through this great tragedy. The time came for the funeral, and the husband got out of the hospital to come to the funeral. And there they had all three children together at the church for one funeral service. And they cried over the loss and the tragedy. And they struggled to understand. Give up! That would have been the easy thing. The wife, Becky, said in a speech, years later, “I was in a deep dark hole that I could not find my way out of. I could not even find a reason to come out of it. I wanted to die. I wanted to be with my children. My thoughts were, no one can help me, no one knows my pain. I am lost, I am sinking and it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters…Nothing.” But then she began to see just a pin hole of light and it grew a little bigger everyday. And that light was enough to sustain her. Becky called that light love and she said the love of others, God’s love for her, drew her out of bed and back into life. To keep from quitting she had to go deeper in her understanding of God, deeper in her search for purpose and meaning.
If you were to meet her today she’d tell you there are still days when the shoreline looks inviting, days when she just doesn’t want to go out into deeper water. But she’s learned that love is the thing that makes all the difference, the love she has for her children, the love they had for her, the love she is now able to show to others who have lost their children in death.
God does call us into deeper waters. Through times of great loss, through times of great failure, through times of difficulty and pain, God calls us to leave some things behind and to go deeper in hopes of discovering what our lives can be. That call is not always an easy one. We are very likely to respond the same way Peter did when he heard the call of Jesus to leave his boats and become a disciple who would attempt to encircle people with God’s love. Eugene Peterson translates Peter’s response to the call of Jesus, "I'm a sinner and can't handle this holiness. Leave me to myself." But the assurance comes from Jesus as to say, “Peter, don’t be afraid. You aren’t going to have to handle this alone. I will be with you. I’ll surround you with all you need. Just take that first step and I’ll be with you in every other step you take.”
One of the great blessings of being a minister is the wonderful people you get to know, get to share a bit of life with. There are a lot of professions where you can make more money, have more power and prestige. But I’m not aware of any other calling that allows you to get close to so many wonderful people and share some of the most intimate moments of their lives. One of those great people was named Lou. She was up in years when I began to serve as her minister. She lived by herself, but had two sons in the community who loved her dearly and treated her like she was royalty. Lou and I became good friends. We shared time together as she dealt with illness and operations, as she went through family issues, as she lost close friends, a dear cousin, a sister. What always amazed me was how she could set her face in a determined way, and dive into the future when these tragedies happened to her. She once told me what had happened when her husband had died. She said she was a mess. She didn’t know what she was going to do. She had never been alone and didn’t know how she would make it. But she said that first night after the funeral, there in her home, alone, God’s spirit became real to her in a way she’d never known before. And that spirit empowered her to go on with her life, to continue to invest herself in others.
She learned what I hope each one of us knows as we attempt to be faithful to God. When we are called into deeper waters, we are never called to go alone. We are called to follow the one who has gone before us, the one whose spirit continues to empower us today.
When I was a youngster I went to Wildlife Camp one summer, in part to learn how to swim. One of the promises made by this camp sponsored by the State Fish and Wildlife Commission was that you’d learn how to swim during the week. I went to swimming class all week. They taught us different strokes. They taught us how to float. I was confident I’d learned to swim, but that wasn’t enough to win a patch. On the next to the last day of camp I had to dive into the deep end of the pool and swim to the other end. I still remember how frightened I was as I stood over the deep end. More than once I thought about turning away. But finally I mustered all the strength I could get and…..someone pushed me in. There I was in the deep water. I went down, touched the bottom of the pool and came to the surface feeling like I was going to drown. But then I noticed the instructor had a long pole out in front of me. I couldn’t reach it, but I knew if I needed it, it would be there. With some effort I went forward, taking on a little water, still experiencing a fair amount of fear. But I came home with the patch.
There are going to be some moments in our lives when the shallow, easy places will not prevail for us. There will be times when we will be called into deeper water, or maybe get shoved. While those times are often filled with uncertainty, confusion and even fear, they are not places void of God. If we will faithfully go where life calls us, if we will attempt to find that which is life-giving, the deep waters will yield its rich reward. We will find God present in our lives in ways we never imagined before. And we will find new way of seeing and being in God’s world.
