Sermon, 2/6/22: Daring to try something different!

5 Epiphany​​

Psalm 138​; Isaiah 6:1 – 13​; I Corinthians 15:1 – 11​; Luke 5:1 – 11

Simon answered, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing.  Yet if you say so, I will let down the net.” Luke 5:5

My reflection this morning has two related focuses.  My high school Latin teacher, about whom you have often heard, would correct me and say “Mr. Butler, may I remind you that the plural of ‘focus’ is “foci.”  She is correct, although modern English-language usage does allow “focuses.”  May the philologists sort that out among themselves!  What is of greater interest to me, is my sense that what we have heard today from the Gospel according to Luke, has direct bearing on us as a congregation, as we prepare for Annual Meeting.

Our Annual Meeting has been warned for Sunday, 13 February 2020, to begin approximately 12 noon, via telephone conference because of constraints imposed on us by Covid-19.  Other details are forthcoming.  Important to me today, in what present to you as a prologue to my annual report, is that like Peter and his crew, we are confronted with reviewing the past.  However, are we wedded to the past, even as we dare not ignore—using the image of marriage—that marriages evolve.  Marriages changes, because we and our circumstance change?  Being myself the eternal introvert optimist, I declare that Annual Meeting presents us also with the opportunity to discuss the “whither,” the “where to.”  So, Annual Meeting has two foci, or focuses.  I explain.  However, to explain, I review with you a synopsis of the gospel appointed for today.  

Focus One: As Jesus is preaching, he sees two boats docked on the shore, having just been brought in by Simon Peter and Company, who had put in a hard day’s work, but caught nothing.  Jesus gets into the boat occupied by Simon Peter, whose mother-in-law, you will recall, he had just healed. So, Peter is not unknown to Jesus, nor Jesus to him.   Jesus advises Peter and his crew to go out again, away from the shore, and cast their net again.  Peter does, but not without expressing some reservations. “By what authority do you tell us go further out onto the water and to cast our nets?  You are a trained carpenter, and you would tell us how to run our business?“

We hear this account of Peter and Company and the subsequent catch that they made, which was so enormous that their nets threatened to break.  And we have so conditioned our minds to see this event simply as a miracle.  What we witness is not a miracle, at least not in the conventional usage of the word, as we so declare Jesus’ conversion of water into wine at the wedding celebration in Canaan of Galilee, or the restoration of sight to the blind, or hearing to the deaf.  Catching fish is simply catching fish.  It is a livelihood for some, and nothing more!  Or?

We marvel, nevertheless and rightly so, for it is a miracle.  And thus, like Peter at the time, are we awe struck that Jesus knew to do and say the right thing at a moment of need.  And this is all the more awesome, as he stepped into a situation, about which he had potentially no knowledge, given his background in carpentry.  Perish the thought that we should think about the real-life event which is preserved for us by Luke.  Can this non-conventional miracle stand as a challenge to us even 2022?

So, what here is the dilemma?  Simon Peter falls to his knees and confesses his sins.  Peter does so, at least according to Luke, because Peter, “was astonished, as were all with him, by the catch of fish which they had taken.”  A confession of sin because they had caught a lot of fish strikes me as unusual response to good fortune.   Why did Peter not respond so, when Jesus healed his mother-in-law?  Thus, we end up puzzled by Peter’s declaration of sin.  

May I suggest a plausible alternative?  It is clear that prior to the events onboard Peter’s fishing vessel, that he and Jesus were more than simply acquaintances.  Should Peter’s response be: ‘Forgive me, master, that I have doubted the depth of your understanding and of your ability to heal and to make whole.  Or stated another way, can we, you and I, separate ourselves from a more narrow definition of sin as a decline ofsocial morals, and expand it to include anything which causes a fissure between two human beings? 

If Peter were a businessman, what was it that persuaded him to risk name and equipment by going back out onto the water, when they were exhausted, perhaps demoralized, or anxious, recognizing that they had families to support?  Would it not be safer to delay and live to see another day?  What could a man, trained as a carpenter, know about the fishing enterprise, in which he had not served as an apprentice? This brings me to the second of my foci.

Focus Two: I share with you a word that has roots inmy previous life.  That word is “interdisciplinary.”  I understand that the word today on the campus street is “intersectionality.”  However, I give you “interdisciplinary.”  At the college or university level, there has emerged over decades the conviction that learning and scientific and social progress are better grounded, enhanced and perhaps even accelerated, when individuals of different background sit together, work side by side, and share thoughts and investigation results regarding a common issue or problem.  

A staple in most kitchens, the ever-present and useful microwave oven, is such a discovery, that came about as men and women were seeking an answer to another problem.  And in our own time, researchers in laboratories and epidemiologists and sociologist and psychologists are combining their efforts to combat Covid-19.  Interdisciplinarity/intersectionality, terms which we academics use, in order to state the obvious.  In common jargon, there are times when two heads or two approaches are better than one.

You may never use the term “interdisciplinary,” and I confess that the term does not often cross my lips.  Yet, I suggest to you that such is the life which you and I live, every day, 365 days each year.  Even the common thought “what would mom do in this situation?” can be rightly categorized as interdisciplinary, even intergenerational disciplinarity in our being truly human.  

When Luke the Gospeler records that Peter, exhaustedas he and his crew were, agrees to the recommendation, suggestion, challenge, demand—call it what you will—Luke lays before us, even on this fifth Sunday after the Epiphany, the ways in which God challenges us.  And in this instance, to lay ourselves open to embracing a different approach to sharing the Good News of Christ that actually, as in Peter’s case, may prove to be even more productive, more rewarding.  Faith encourages us, does it not, to confront our fears and anxiety of change, of the unknown, of not being in charge, of not being able to predict the outcome.  

And thus, I return to my opening thoughts.  Luke’s gospel offers great encouragement, as we are on the eve of our Annual Meeting, Sunday, 13 February.  Not only shall we review where we have been in this last most challenging year, but we shall also have opportunity to imagine casting our nets perhaps from another side of the same vessel.  When Jesus advises or instructs Peter and his crew to cast their net off the other side, what I hear is a simple question in two parts: First, “You have tried it your way, so what do you have to lose?”  And the second question is a corollary: “Have you sufficient faith in me that I might offer a solution to a vexing problem?”  This tale, recorded as a reaffirming miracle story, addresses my two foci.   So shall we, like Peter, also listen to the invitation of Jesus to have faith in his Word?  Amen