Luke 5:1-11 Jesus Calls the First Disciples
Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of
Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he
saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of
them and were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, the one
belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then
he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. When he had finished speaking,
he said to Simon, ‘Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a
catch.’ Simon answered, ‘Master, we have worked all night long but have caught
nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.’ When they had done this,
they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. So they
signalled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they
came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink. But when Simon Peter
saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, ‘Go away from me, Lord, for I am
a sinful man!’ For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of
fish that they had taken; and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who
were partners with Simon. 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.
Coincidence
or Providence? A Vision and a Conviction
– Luke
5:1-11
7-28-13
I
recently learned a life-changing concept that I would like to share with you.
There is an alternative to that daily grind of an evening meal, the grocery
shopping, the menu planning, the chopping, the cooking and the cleaning
up. The concept is called,
“Unusual Dinner.” When all those
mealtime tasks are too much, I declare Unusual Dinner and we go for ice cream
to Dairy Queen. Well when Graham
told me that we would do a sermon series that was all stories, stories of coincidence
and providence, I thought that this was as wonderful. It’s unusual dinner,
sermon style. So I riffled through
my mind for stories of God’s providence and mine happen to my own stories. So
here is one.
People
treat you differently once you become a pastor. You tend to get trapped in
particular conversations, such as defending Christianity, ideological
controversies and theological parsing. For some reason lots of strangers seem
to want to talk to me about how much better things were fifty years ago and how
kids are different now a days.
But, when people learn that I was once a lawyer the question I get most
often is, “Why did you go to seminary?”
I have a bunch of answers to those questions and some of them are true.
So
why did you go to seminary? The first answer is, “to make up for being a
lawyer.” If you get this answer
you know one of two things, either I don’t like you and I am giving you the
non-answer answer or the setting we are in doesn’t lend itself for long soulful
discussions. Is this the right
answer? BUZZZ No. I really have no terrible lawyerly
misdeeds on my conscience.
So
why did you go to seminary? Answer number two; “I had done about everything
else in the church and this was the next step.” Is this the right answer? BUZZZZ No. It
is true. I had organized potlucks, was a prayer minister, taught Sunday school,
led small groups, visited the sick, and volunteered with hospice to sit with
the dying. But many of you have
done the same and you don’t feel the call to seminary. But if you do, talk to
me after church. This is the
joking deflector of truth, but not the whole truth.
So
why did you go to seminary? Answer number three; “Faith is the most important
thing in my life.” BUZZZ AND A
BING. This is true and false. True, faith is the most important thing
to me. False, just as faith is
important to many of you, it is not the core reason to be led into seminary.
This is the answer I gave to the presbytery and it was true as far as it went. But alone it is not enough.
So
why did I go to seminary? Answer number four; “I had a vision and a prophet
spoke. BELLS, WHISTLES, FLASHING
LIGHTS. This is the true answer. As unlikely as it seems, plain, ordinary old
me has just stepped into the twilight zone. This is not what I told the presbytery committee on ministery
lest they put my application in the wacko pile. But with this church and our sermon series on coincidence
and providence, I step out of the mystics’ closet. I don’t share answer four
with many people. But at its core
that is the real and most insistent reason I went to seminary. Here is that story.
By
the year 2000, I had found my way back from a desert of agnostic non-belief to
faith. But I felt the call to
learn more. So I became part of a
group called the Vineyard Guild, a group of pastors and laypeople who wanted to
take spirituality seriously. In
2000 I went to my first Vineyard Guild retreat held at East Liberty
Presbyterian Church. I got my sister to go with me so that if the retreat was a
bust, we could slip out the back for fun. But it turned out to more worthwhile
than I knew. We took a workshop on
something I never heard of before called Lectio Divina. Lectio Divina is Latin for Holy word.
It is a way of reading passages of scripture that invites your mind,
imagination and God’s spirit into this practice of reading the bible. So my first ever experience of Lectio
Divina was with this very passage from Luke 5 and it was a doozy.
In
Lection Divina we had a quiet time of simple breathing and prayer. Then slowly the leader read the passage. We were instructed to put ourselves
right into the story. If some
aspect of the reading drew us in we were told to stay with that thing to see
what God would say to us. The
leader read that the crowd had gathered to hear Jesus by the shores of the lake
at Gennesaret. The leader asked quietly, “Where are you in the crowd? Near Jesus? Far away?
Alone?” The leader read on
that Jesus stepped into a boat and was rowed a little bit out from shore and
preached to the crowd. The leader
asked, “Where are you, in the boat, left on the shore? Where? The leader read on, ”Jesus told them to
go out to the deep water.” That is
the point where the library room at East Liberty Presbyterian Church fell away
for me. Whatever the reader read
further on I do not remember. I
was called by Jesus to the deep water and I was IN the deep water. I have tried
with these slides to give you an idea of the beauty of the deep blue. It became a mini obsession with me to
look through Internet picture after picture. But after hundreds of photo’s I never found a blue as deep
or as blue or as vast or as open. I could not find a photo to give you the
sensation of floating of being in the presence of the great blue. My imagination or my vision or this
gift from God seemed to last for a long time. But as I gazed and gazed in
wonder, I started to become afraid.
This was too blue, too vast, too much. But just as that thought registered into my consciousness my
vision changed. I was in the deep blue but a wonderful net of gold, like the
light on the water, encompassed me and kept me in the safety of God’s
presence. I would not have the
atoms of my being disbursed into that vastness because this net of light kept
me safe in the proportion of God that I could bear.
Sometime
later the reader said, “Amen.” I
guess she went on through the passage with Peter and the fish and so on and so
forth. But I never heard it. As I reflected on my experience, I took
away something quite specific. God
was calling me to the deep water.
I was to put away dabbling in spirituality and playing at faith. I was to go as deep as I could into
that vast blue. And so I did, as I
was able. I read and read whatever
Graham suggested. I went to each class of any Faith Groups Graham offered. I listened and tested and savored
writers and ideas and spiritual disciplines. All the while feeling that I was
bit by bit falling into that deep blue.
Following
God into the deep was not just reading. It involved doing too and doing leads
to more learning and the need to learn even more. So I felt a call to delve deeper. I settled on a program at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary
called the Spiritual Formation Certificate Program. This is a course of study where about four or five books are
assigned that you can read at your leisure. Then there is a one-week course. Then you write a paper in
the next three months and then your done with that little course. This was a program that I felt I could
handle. I could still be a wife,
mom, run a house and a garden and a farm and help at church, but not go
crazy. So off I went to my first
class.
During
that week I made several new friends but one was quite special. A woman named Janet Brown was
there. Janet was about twenty
years older than I. What bonded us
immediately was a shared concern and love for children with Cerebral
Palsy. At the time my son was just
in second grade and struggling with large motor problems and the perceptions of
his teachers and classmates. Janet
had a grown son of 28 with Cerebral Palsy. Janet’s son was smart and successful
and living a full independent life.
Janet understood what my son and I were going through. Another bond was the love of several
Quaker writers. Janet had enrolled her son in a Quaker grade school years
ago. Janet and I enjoyed each
company and had lunch each day together. One day someone asked for prayers for
their friend in California who was very ill. After our prayer time, Janet said, “Oh her friend died in
the night.” I asked how she knew
this and Janet ducked her head in a little embarrassment and said that she had
the gift of prophecy. She said she
just knew things that words or events would come to her in her prayer
time. Later in the day the woman
whose friend was ill in California told us that she had called and that her
friend had in fact died in the night.
Janet was very quiet about this gift. She was the moderator of a Presbytery and very respected.
She definitely did not give off a new age vibe. So I took Janet at her word. But didn’t think that her gift
would have anything to do with me.
On
the last day of my week with this little class we separated into two groups.
Janet was in one and I in the other.
My group was scheduled for Lectio Divina. Guess what the passage was? It was the very same passage from Luke 5 verses one through
eleven, that had started me on this journey. So with a great deal of anticipation I looked forward to
falling into the deep blue of the Lake at Gennesaret. I was so looking forward to this. If I were a dog, I
would have wiggled in delight. But
as we prayerfully settled into the passage, I didn’t have a repetition of my
prior vision. Instead, the parts
of this passage that hit me between the eyes wasn’t the deep water but the
interaction with Peter. Peter
falls to his knees and says to Jesus, “Get away from me, I am a sinful
man.” Jesus tells him, “Don’t be
afraid you will catch people.” This bit was uncomfortably real and provoking. I felt Jesus was calling me to
something I was afraid of, something I would just as soon dodge. I felt I was being told to go to
seminary. This was
disturbing. Seminary would ruin my
comfortable and perfect life. It
was too much work, too much trouble, too much cost, too much commuting, too
many ancient and archaic languages.
And the worst part was that at the end you had to be (gasp, horrors) a
minister. At the end of the
session I didn’t actually run out the door but I walked swiftly and did not
look back. I skipped lunch with my
friends. I walked, or more truthfully, stomped around Highland Park and argued
with God.
When
I returned to the room where we met after lunch we were to prepare for a
session on prayerfully journaling.
We were told to find a little place where we could be quiet and
undistracted. So I turned my back
to the larger room put up my feet on a windowsill and brooded. As I scowled at my paper, my friend
Janet came up and cleared her throat to get my attention. I looked up and Janet rushed into a
quick speech. Janet said, “I know this sounds weird, but when we
were in prayer before lunch I received a very clear message. God wants you to go to seminary.” I
looked right into her eyes in horror and I burst into tears, crying, “I don’t
want to go to seminary.” Janet’s
natural good girl response was a flustered, “Oh no, Oh my, I’m sorry…” but then
her back stiffened and she said with uncharacteristic force, “you really are to go to seminary. That is what I am supposed to tell
you.”
The
afternoon session began. Janet
scurried to her seat. Our instructions were to think of a question that is the
most pressing and important question of
your life and write it out at the top of your paper. Guess what was at the top of my paper?
SHOUD I GO TO SEMINARY? The letters were big and angry. The pencil dug mad little
grooves in the tablet. We were
then instructed to think of an important person, living or dead, famous or
unknown, and to dialogue back and forth with that person about the important
question, recording each side of the dialogue in out journal. I picked my mom
who had died eight years earlier.
My mom told me that I could have gone to seminary after college. Didn’t
I remember that? Remember how much
my faith had meant to me in high school, how important God’s love was when
daddy died. Remember all those friends of mine in seminary, the two guys I
dated from seminary, and the times I helped with their sermons and talked with
about social justice? My mom said I only went to law school out of fear of
financial instability and that wasn’t an issue now so the way was clear. Oh course I should go to seminary. She
saw it all along. I hate it when my mom is right.
So
in the weeks following that time at in my little course I needed to make a
choice. If coincidence and
providence come together, do I follow where they point or look the other
way? I went to seminary. That difficult choice has led to the
best and riches place for me. I
think I am in the center of God’s will for my life.
I
learned three things from this experience. First, God loves you and has a difficult plan for your
life. Whoa. That doesn’t sound like the prosperity
gospel. This must be the Christian
fine print. God loves you and has
a difficult plan for your life.
The difficult plan could be hard to swallow. But if you make the effort
to follow God and it is indeed the right plan then it will go down like honey.
The difficult part is often our own willful ideas of our life that have to be
rooted out. Once the false and selfish will is booted out the yoke is easy and
the burden light.
The
second lesson is this. “You don’t need to anticipate every turn in the
road. When you are at the
beginning, don’t obsess about the middle. Because the middle will look
different when you get there.”[1]
I remember a conversation with my husband, Allen, when we talked about me going
to seminary. Allen very gently
asked, “What do you think it will look like when you are done with
seminary?” And I remember
answering that I had no idea. I
kinda figured that I would do what I do now but do it better and deeper. My ‘I don’t know’ answer was enough for
Allen. He completely supported
me. He often joked that I was in
training to be a minister and he was in training to be a church custodian. But the middle looked quite different
than anything I had anticipated.
Allen unexpectedly died half way through my seminary years. But that hard time was met not only
with the community of my family and my Calvin church, but also my seminary
community. My middle was
drastically different. Glad I
didn’t spend too much time running ahead.
God had already prepared for a middle I would know nothing of until it
happened. Just as God prepares our
future that we know nothing of now.
The
final lesson is to look for the bright spots. God is putting light on the water in front of each of
us. Pay attention to what catches
our eyes and our hearts. I was
caught in the deep blue and the flashing gold net. I didn’t intellectually know what that could be but I knew
it was important to pay attention and to look for how God would reveal step by
step the days and years to come.
The
question for each of you is, “What are you called to?” AMEN
