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"Salem.....Where a Warm Welcome Awaits You"
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DEEP WATER
(The following sermon was preached by Pastor Barbara Melosh on February 4th, 2007.)
When I was seven or eight, my family used to go to a lake in northern New Jersey to spend the day. It had a gritty beach with a small shallow section marked off by a rope strung with buoys. You could walk out a little ways on the gravel dredged in to cover the lake bottom in the shallows, until the water reached almost over your head and the bottom turned from gravel to lake muck—that squishy blend of mud and dead leaves and I didn’t want to think about what else. You couldn’t go beyond the buoys unless you could swim, because from that point on, the lake bottom dropped off fast and in a couple of steps you’d be in deep water. On one side of the shallow area, there was a dock with a diving board at the end. My dad was teaching me to swim, and once I could manage a few strokes, he began to encourage me to jump off the diving board into the deep water, and then thrash my way back to the ladder on the side of the dock. I would walk out on the dock, my stomach clenching in fear. I’d inch down the board, feeling its scratchy jute covering under my feet. At the end, I’d stand with my toes curling over the edge, gripping the board in panic. I would look down into the murky water, where bars of summer sun would light it for a few feet. Sometimes I could see large fish gliding along, or the shadow of a floating weed below. But even on the brightest day you couldn’t see the bottom. Instead, you could look down only to where the sunlight faded into murky depths, and the yellowish cast of the water turned into a dark forbidding green. When you jumped in, you’d go through a few feet of sun-warmed water at the top and then down, down into the deep water, chilly even on the hottest summer day. The deep water filled me with dread. And so, as my dad patiently treaded water a few feet from the end of the board, I would do whatever I could think of to delay that stomach-dropping moment when I had to jump. I remember asking him over and over, “Dad, how deep is the water?” Sometimes he would estimate—I remember him saying he thought it was about forty feet deep, there off the end of the dock. But other times he would answer impatiently, “What difference does it make? When the water’s over your head, it doesn’t matter if it’s eight feet deep or four hundred. C’mon, jump in and swim.” In today’s gospel, Jesus sends the disciples into deep water. They don’t want to go there. What happens out there, in the deep water, nearly kills them—and then it brings them into a whole new life. At this point in Luke, Jesus is already launched on his life work, roaming all around Judea to proclaim the message. This day, he’s at the lake of Gennesaret, which is another name for the sea of Galilee, and already he is attracting huge crowds of people. Arriving at the shore, he sees two boats beached there and asks a fisherman—Simon—to take him out a little way, so he can teach without getting crushed. When he’s finished talking, he turns to Simon and tells him, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” Simon and the others have been working all night without catching a thing. They’ve come back to shore and cleaned the nets, ready to give it up for the day and go home. So he’s probably groaning inside, to think about rowing out into the deep water, casting the nets again, hauling them up empty, and having to clean them all over again. Still, he’s already seen enough of Jesus to know that unexpected things happen when he’s around—just a few days before, Jesus came over to his house after church and healed his mother-in-law. So even though he finds it hard to believe this will come to anything, he’s ready to go ahead and try it. He calls Jesus “Master”—a term of respect, and maybe too Simon calls him that to remind himself of what he’s seen and heard of Jesus, even though the guy obviously doesn’t know anything about fishing. “Master,” he says, “we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.” Out in the deep water, they drop the nets—and unexpectedly the nets are filled with fish. So many, in fact, that the nets are straining under the weight, and the boats start to sink. Simon cries out to Jesus, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” He’s a man who has just realized he’s in way over his head. Jesus tells him, “Do not be afraid.” It’s the fourth time these words have been spoken in Luke, and each time they’re words of encouragement spoken to someone who is amazed at the sudden presence of the holy—swept from the shallows of ordinary life into the deep water. “Do not be afraid,” the angel Gabriel tells Zechariah, delivering the news that his aged wife Elizabeth is pregnant. “Do not be afraid,” Gabriel says again, bringing startling news to Mary. “Do not be afraid,” the holy messenger tells the shepherds, nearly blinded by the bright light of God’s glory shining in their fields. And now, Jesus says to Simon, “Do not be afraid.” Somehow they get back to the shore. But for Simon and James and John, life will never be the same again. They walk away from their nets and their boats, their families and their homes, leaving everything, to follow Jesus. You’d think that they would know better, these experienced fishermen, than to follow a man who’s sent them into deep water and then filled their nets with so many fish that it nearly kills them. I often wonder what got into them, these men who followed Jesus without a backward glance. But then again—maybe they’re not so different from you and me. Maybe they are men who have learned that real life only begins when we’re out of our depth. And we’ve been there, in the deep water. Sometimes, we get there when we didn’t plan on it, and it’s the last place we want to be, when the deep water comes up on us like a river flooding over its banks—swallowing up familiar landmarks, and covering the road. Or like a current in the ocean that pulls us out of the shallows and into deep water, with nothing under our feet—laid off, or kids in trouble, or the doctor looking serious and saying, “I’m sorry to tell you that…” Or sometimes, we’re on the edge of a whole new life, and we decide to take the plunge—like stepping off a cliff into a deep mountain lake, the shock of the icy water as you go down, down, and then kick up through the water to break the surface, breathless and exhilarated. As a kid, I came to love that moment on the diving board, poised on the edge, anticipating the jump with a mixture of excitement and fear. I never quite got over the fear—in fact, these days, I find myself afraid of the water again, knowing what I know now about the dangers of deep water. But I’ve also learned that deep water holds you up, if you let it—it’s easier to float in 40 feet of water than in six feet. Jesus sends us into deep water, with nothing but trust to hold us up. “Do not be afraid,” he says. “When the waters are closing over your head, I’ll be there, to lift you up into new life.” It’s the promise of baptism, renewed every day of our lives. So dive in—the deep water will hold you up. |
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