Do you like fishing? I really hate fishing.
It seems that so many people who love fishing all have some wonderful fish tale to tell.
I probably told you this before, but the last fish I ever caught

was one which just happened to be swimming by and got hooked on its side.
And that was after four or five hours of baking in the mosquito infested sun

somewhere near High River as I recall.
I was in Junior High School at the time and I have never been fishing since.
And when it comes to the whole idea of fishing for people,
I do have a tale to tell.
Back even earlier in my life,
when my father would regularly take my brother and I fishing,
and before I was too jaded to know how much I disliked fishing,
we drove out one early Saturday morning to some place around Fish Creek.
It was a brisk, cold morning and I recall that I wasn’t very happy

to be up so early in the morning.
But I was about to become much unhappier.
As my father reached back to cast his rod,
the barbed hook on his line actually caught my earlobe.
As he flicked the rod forward and as I shrieked in pain,
the hook torn through my ear lobe and the blood started to pour.
I don’t think that’s what Jesus was speaking about

when he said that we should be fishing for people.
As I think about it, that experience may have been the start of my hate affair with fishing.

Yet fishing plays a very important role in the early ministry of Jesus

and it was a way of life for many in ancient Palestine.
Back in the year 2000, ay my induction service as the senior minister of Grace Church, the Rev. Drew Strickland preached a sermon entitled, Going Deeper.
It was based on this morning’s text from Luke’s gospel.
I remember Drew encouraging the congregation to go deeper,
in our faith, in our sense of community, in our living.
I recall hearing him saying something in the vein that in order to go deeper

we would have to venture from the safety of the shallow water

into places where the waters were unfamiliar and uncharted.
It’s a familiar theme for preaching on this particular text

and the words of the text lend themselves to this line of interpretation quite well.

But I wonder if the key to this passage is the fact that Jesus invited the fishermen,
Simon Peter and his colleagues, to go into deep waters,
or whether the key lies somewhere else in the text.
The scene is the Sea of Galilee, Luke calls it Lake Gennesaret.
Jesus returned to the area around Capernaum, having left his hometown of Nazareth. Jesus had been driving out demons and healing many.
As Jesus continued preaching in the synagogues of Judea,
the news about him began to spread.
Soon the crowds that began to follow Jesus became too numerous

for Jesus to speak to them standing from the shore of the lake.
So one day Jesus saw a couple of fishing boats,
including one belonging to a man named Simon,
and preached to the people from just off shore in one of the boats.
As the crowds began to disperse, Jesus said to Simon,
put out into deep water and let down the nets for a catch.

As I said, there’s much truth to the theological argument

that in order for us to increase in the maturity of our faith we have to go deeper.
But there is something which must happen

before we can begin to plumb the depths of our faith relationship with God.
We must first be willing.
I don’t know how well Simon, who Jesus would later rename Peter,
knew Jesus by this time.
Obviously they did know each other.
Jesus had recently healed Simon’s mother in law.
It remains unclear whether Simon considered this to be a good thing or not.
All joking aside, Simon knew that Jesus was a teacher and rabbi,
and he respected him enough to address him as Master.
Perhaps he knew that Jesus’ father had been a carpenter

and so Jesus must have also had some carpentry skills.
One thing Simon knew for sure was that Jesus was no fisherman.
You know the old saying, Those who can, do, those who can’t, teach.
No offense to any teachers among us this morning!
But clearly Jesus didn’t know a thing about fishing.
Master, we have worked all night but have caught nothing, says Simon.
Yet, if you say so, I will let down the nets.

Before we can explore the depths, before we can go deeper,
we must be willing to let down our nets.

I think that the key to the story this morning isn’t the depth of the water,
but the willingness of Simon to listen to Jesus and do what Jesus asks.

Jesus can take us out to the deepest places,
but if we don’t listen, if we won’t respond, if we aren’t willing,
then what difference does it make how deep the water is?
And besides, isn’t it obvious that the catch of fish,
a miraculous catch that nearly swamps two boats,
is something that is out of the ordinary?
And if it is a miraculous catch of fish,
what would make it impossible for Jesus to have caused the same catch

in shallow water as well as the deep?

So maybe again, the key isn’t the depth of the water
as much as it is the depth of our willingness to trust in Jesus.
Simon trusted, but I’m not sure that he knew what he was getting into

when he released his nets into the deep water in the middle of the day.

Of course what happened was that the nets became so laden with fish

that they were about to tear.
Once the wondrous haul was finally secured,
you might think that Simon would have been overjoyed.
After all he was a fisherman, this was his livelihood.
Jesus had healed his mother in law,
but this time there could be no doubting about the good that Jesus had brought.
Maybe they could work out an arrangement.
Simon would take Jesus out on the boat to preach to the crowds

and Jesus could take them out to the deep water to go fishing in the middle of the day. No more fruitless nights working the nets,
just a couple a catches per week and he’d be set.

But that’s not quite his reaction.
Upon seeing the miraculous catch of fish,
Simon falls to his knees saying, go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man.
Did you get that?
The man who Simon had called Master, he now calls Lord.
For all we can say about Simon Peter, impetuous, loud mouthed, coward,
he recognizes that in the shadow of the divine, he is unworthy.
He’s afraid.
Why would you be afraid?
Why would we be afraid of Jesus?
Wouldn’t we want to be in his presence?
But would we really?


There’s a story of a young minister who was not present

when the Board of his church met early in the year and voted on the next year’s budget.
The following morning the phone rang.
Great news, preacher, said the Board chair.
Last night we had our meeting and as I opened the meeting in prayer,
it was as if the Holy Spirit descended upon us.
With almost no discussion we unanimously approved next year’s budget,
a ten percent increase over this year’s budget.
The minister recalls that he said in his most loving voice, let me get this straight.
We’re behind five percent on this year’s budget

and you’ve budgeted for a ten percent increase for next year, that’s crazy!
I’m the minister of this church and I’ll tell you when the Holy Spirit is leading us

and there’s no way that this congregation is going to support this new budget.
In October of that year the Board chair got up in church on Sunday

and spoke to the congregation.
I never thought I’d live to see this day, she said.
Not only did we make up last year’s five percent shortfall,
we’ve already received this year’s budget in full, with its ten percent increase,
and its only the second Sunday in October.
Now who was it that said that we were crazy

and that we would never support this budget?
Stanley Hauerwas, a theologian at Duke University,
once said that our culture is built on the fear of death.
This explains our health care system, our economy, our government,
Gold’s Gym and all the rest.
His colleague, William Willimon is fond of saying
that our culture is built on an even greater fear,
the fear of being raised from the dead.

Being in the presence of the Holy is something that I think most of would fear,
especially if we were smart.
Simon Peter got that right away.
Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man.
We may think that we would welcome Jesus in our midst, but as Willimon says,
even greater than our fear of death
is our fear of being raised from the dead.
And that’s exactly what Jesus threatens to do,
if only we are willing to listen to him and do what he commands.
And we are afraid of that, aren’t we!
It explains why so many of us would rather live

as if we were more afraid of being raised from the dead than of dying.
We plan our lives around death,
and we do all that we can to stave off its inevitability.
But we don’t even want to think about what life would be like
if died to our selves and were raised from the dead by Christ.
To contemplate that kind of life causes us to fear
because we can’t plan around what God might do with us,
what God might do through us.
We can’t plan around what we can’t control.

When we come face to face with the holy

and we know that we don’t measure up,
wouldn’t we be afraid?

That’s what compelled Simon Peter to fall on his knees

and plead Jesus to go away from him.

But the words Jesus spoke to Simon that day,
he also speaks to us this day.
Don’t be afraid.
Don’t be afraid, from now on you will be catching people.
Why would we be afraid?
Because the truth is that one does not stand in the presence of God
with any degree of ease.
Simon Peter’s exclamation, I am a sinful man, O Lord,
resonates with any person who has ever had the faintest sense
of standing in the presence of God.
Which makes Jesus’ reply all the more amazing.
Don’t be afraid!
Where have we heard that before?
Zechariah heard it at the announcement that he would have a son named John.
Mary heard it when she was told that she would have a child to be named Jesus, Saviour. The shepherds heard it when they watched their sheep by night.
The women heard it when they come to the empty tomb after Jesus’ resurrection.
Don’t be afraid!

Simon Peter feared his unworthiness in Jesus’ presence,
but his sinfulness was not to be a cause of separation from Jesus.
Rather, in the words of Hubert Beck,
Jesus’ receptive grace was to be the entry point of Simon Peter into a life

that was to separate him from all the fear

that had filled him at this early encounter with Jesus.
It was not an entry point into a life that would never know fear-filled moments,
but it was an entry point into a life that needed not fear those moments
for one whose very presence itself was larger
than all the fears that the world could hurl at him
would be with him always.

I know that some of us are afraid.
We don’t think that we’ll measure up, we feel inadequate,

we feel that we will fail to do what Jesus invites us to do,
that we will fail to be the people Jesus wants us to be.
Again, Simon Peter’s sin was not to be a cause of separation from Jesus.
God’s desire for us is not foiled by our failures, our sin or our inadequacy.
God doesn’t require perfection from us.
Simon Peter would follow Jesus to catch people instead of fish,
but for a very long time he wasn’t any good at it.
All the disciples failed Jesus, they were far from perfect.
But Jesus used them, he used Simon Peter,
he used him to be the rock upon which Jesus would establish the church.
Not because he was perfect, but because despite his fear, he was willing.

Don’t be afraid.
My friends, don’t be afraid.
God invites us to be unafraid to die to our sins and be raised to a new life in Christ.
God invites us not to fear seeking his mercy and forgiveness for our sins.
Some of us today stand on the cusp of making a decision

to follow Jesus for the very first time,
to be open to what it means to be raised from the dead, to be born anew.
Others are struggling with the question of going deeper with Christ as our Lord.
But either way, we do fear of what that kind of life would bring.
We fear not being in control over what God might do in our lives, with our lives.
And so our temptation is to run away, to push God away,
to tame God’s call in our lives in order to make it more palatable

or to tame God himself to such an extent

that he would never ask us to do something we weren’t comfortable with.
Our temptation in the face of our fears
is to go back to the way things were before.

But the truth is that we can live our lives just trying to avoid death as long as we can,
or we can live without the fear of dying because we have new life in Christ already.
God doesn’t demand perfection, only that we be willing.
God is gracious and merciful and his love seeks us out continually.
Don’t be afraid.
We don’t have to be perfect, we just have to be willing.
Friends, may we be willing.
Prayer:God of mercy and grace,
we confess that when you reveal your holiness to us, we are afraid.
You are holy and we are sinners.
And yet in your mercy and grace

you have also revealed something so wonderful and so generous in your son Jesus Christ. Jesus as Lord means that our sins and our unworthiness

does not keep us away from you,
but that in him we are forgiven and we are restored.
We don’t know why you would do such wondrous things for us,
and yet we are so grateful.
May we know that its not a matter of being perfect,
but a matter of being willing.
Wherever we may be on our journey with you,
whether just thinking of starting out

or thinking about following you into the deeper waters,
help us to trust in you and to be willing to do what you command.
Through Christ our Lord we pray, Amen.