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"Go Deeper? Are You Serious, Jesus?"
Listen to this story from the Gospel according to Luke:

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 he 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 we haven’t caught a thing. 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 signaled 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 that, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, and said, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” For he and all of those who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; and so also were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.

One morning I passed by a church and I noticed there was only one word on the sign out by the street. Maybe they hadn’t finished a sentence they’d planned to put there, or maybe they were taking a sentence down and left this one word. For whatever the reason, the one word left on the sign was “Call.” That was it! “Call.”

It started me thinking that I hadn’t heard that word mentioned in a sermon in a long time. When I was growing up in the Baptist church, people would always talk about their “call.” If they didn’t have one already, well, they were all looking for what God was calling them to do. A “call” was something certain people got that came directly from God. People in the Bible certainly got one. Moses did, and Isaiah, certainly Jesus and definitely the apostle Paul. Having a call gave you a great story to tell. People would admire you; you became unique and special. It was a sign that God had something special for you to do.

Unfortunately if you didn’t have a call like that, a “call” to special service—as we used to say, to be a pastor or a missionary—then you were tempted to think that God had overlooked you in some way. That God didn’t consider what you did as being special or important. And maybe for you, some deep doubt or disappointment have set in.

If that is how a community of faith is going to think about call, then perhaps it is a good thing we don’t use the word much anymore. If there is one thing we don’t need it’s a word that’s going to make some folks feel special and other people just ordinary in the eyes of God. Still, I would hate for us to give up on the word altogether. Just because a few people misunderstood or misused it, it is a good word—and it can help us understand how the Spirit of God moves in all of our lives.

One reason that I like this story from the Gospel of Luke is that it has helped me to think differently about what a call from God is. You recognize the central character in this story, don’t you? It’s Simon Peter. I like it when Simon Peter shows up in a story. You can always depend on him to say things that you might say if you were in his shoes. That’s why the story of Simon Peter’s call to discipleship has a lot to say to us. It doesn’t look like other call stories does it? There is no burning bush like the story of Moses or no blinding light on a road to Damascus like for Paul, there’s no distinct voice of God in a Temple filled with incense like Isaiah. No, in this story, the call doesn’t come as a summons, but as an invitation. And it comes to an ordinary man who is in the midst of his own struggle to make a living for himself and his family.

So, Jesus is sitting in Simon Peter’s boat after the crowds have gone. Jesus knows that Peter is exhausted from his own efforts at fishing all nigh. He knows that he has caught nothing, but even still he turns to Peter and invites him to do something. “Go out into the deep water,” he says, “and there let down your nets.” It sounds pretty simple doesn’t it? But is it really? Do you know what Jesus is really asking here? He is asking Simon Peter to trust him. To trust him so much that Peter would be willing to leave the shallow places in his life and in his work and begin to explore the depths. To go to the limits of what he thinks is possible, not only for him but for those all around him. “Go out into the deep water,” says Jesus, “trust me and see what happens.”

Well, that must be why Peter is reluctant to do it at first. He knows that once he takes the risk of leaving what is familiar and comfortable the direction of his life might very well change. He knows that when he leaves the shallow places behind—shallow places in his work, shallow places in his relationships with others, to himself and to God — and dares to go just a little bit deeper in trust, things are going to be different for him and for anyone who is around him.

A good way to resist responding to God’s call to enter the depths of your life is to say something like Simon said to Jesus: Oh, there’s no use for me to go into those depths, Jesus. I have fished those waters already. I have tried to pray. I have tried to study. I have tried to become a servant like you, Jesus. I have tried to live out my faith in a way that would please you, Jesus. And I have come up empty every single time. I am just tired. I’m tired of fishing those same waters. There is nothing out there in the depths for me.

It’s just another way of saying I am not good enough to do this. I am not smart enough, Jesus. I’m not young enough, I’m not old enough, I’m not faithful enough. It is just best that you leave me alone. It’s best the you give up on me like I’ve given up on myself. I am a sinful human being. I have tried everything that you have asked me to do, and it doesn’t work.

Right then is when Peter becomes a model for discipleship. It happens in the moment when Peter responds to Jesus’ call and says, “but, if you say so.” Then off he goes—perhaps reluctantly—out into the deep water and there he finds abundance like he has never imagined.

Oh, it’s not the kind of abundance that makes him rich. It’s the kind of abundance that shows Peter how rich God’s grace and love are. And how much God wants to be in relationship with all of us.

That is why I like this call story better than some others. Because Jesus doesn’t call Peter to be anything other than who he is. He doesn’t call Peter to be a rabbi like him, or even to a career in carpentry. Jesus calls Peter to live in the depths of his own life, not to try to live out Jesus’ life. Peter remains at heart a fisherman who has a heart for Jesus and for the humanity that Jesus serves. This is not a call to a new career to be a professional Christian. It is a call into a deeper relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

 

Conversation with Richard Ward

Daniel Pawlus: Richard, thank you for sharing your message with us today.

Richard Ward: You’re welcome.

Pawlus: I loved what you said about exploring the depths and I’m wondering, that requires a bit of a persistent openness and patience from us, doesn’t it?

Ward: Yes, it does.

Pawlus: It’s not something that comes lightly.

Ward: Yes. And I think that’s what we think.

Pawlus: That’s how it’s supposed to be.

Ward: It is. And I think of call, as I grew up thinking about it, as something that happens suddenly. Often times when I heard this preached it was more like they left everything and followed him right away. His way of thinking means that we’re called into a relationship which does involve openness, risk, trust and a gradual accepting of that relationship over time.

Lydia Talbot: The call to discipleship perhaps is costly, as German Christian martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer conveys in his Cost of Discipleship. Costly because it calls us to follow, grace because it calls us to follow Christ. I’d be curious, Richard, what are those moments in your own personal journey where God has called you into deeper waters? Have you gone kicking and screaming?

Ward: Yes. Oh, yes! I think it’s really a call, in those moments when I know that I have to let go of control, of how this is going to go. When I let go of the way I think my life should go or if I were to get this qualification or get that degree—or something of that sort—then I’ll be responding to God’s call. When all along it’s: I want you. God says: I want you. I want you to live into the depths of who you are. And that is risky.

Talbot: You’re saying the day to day concerns and challenges of your professional life?

Ward: Sure. I think we believe that what we have to sacrifice is what I’m doing, a job that I’m doing or a profession that I’m doing. And sometimes it may certainly involve a redirection in our vocational path. But I think the abiding concern that God has is to call into a knowledge of God’s love not only for just ourselves, it’s not something we hold onto for ourselves, but how much God loves and is looking for a relationship with all humanity.

Pawlus: It sounds like it’s allowing God, through Jesus, to lead us to our call, as much as anything. You talk about control, but again, being open to that idea that we will be led if we trust as Simon Peter did, in this case.

Ward: Yes. And I think the place where we are led is to the depths. It’s there, in this passage at least, Jesus says, “If you would let down your nets, once again, into the depths of this water then you will find the abundance I’m talking about.

Talbot: Now, you grew up in the Baptist church. Your father is a Baptist minister today.

Ward: Yes, he is.

Talbot: In the Southern Baptist Convention, in South Carolina?

Ward: Yes. That’s right.

Talbot: What was that like? Is that where you learned your art of storytelling?

Ward: My dad is a very passionate preacher and has always a concern to relate the claims of the Gospel to everyday life and to the questions people are asking. He has a pastor’s heart and he is enthusiastic about what he says. And he does tell some really good stories and he comes from a story telling family, which is where I learned from my uncles and my relatives.

Talbot: You do workshops on storytelling.

Ward: Yes. Right.

Talbot: Now, take us into one of those.

Ward: Oh my goodness! Well, what I would do is to say, first of all, we’re all storytellers. We all know how to narrate ourselves. We have the gifts to be expressive. We have the gifts to use our bodies, to find the language that is for the ear. We have the capacity to bring people into another world, a world of the story. We do it all the time in everyday speech and in conversation. So it’s not this rarefied thing that people think they’ve got to grasp. It’s basically to give the person permission to build on what they are already doing naturally. People will say, I’m not a storyteller. Well, you’d be surprised at how often you tell stories in your everyday life. So that’s how it begins.

Pawlus: You talk about the art of preaching, for instance, that pretends to have a higher kind of value to it, but you’re saying it’s really simpler than that. It’s embracing the gifts that we’ve been given and bringing them to full fruition.

Ward: Yes. I think it is. I thing it’s a God-given thing. There is a story that I tell where at the end it says God loves stories. I think the Scriptures are evidence of that. All the great religious traditions are evidence that God loves stories. God likes to hear a good story!

Talbot: You have a background in theater. God loves drama in the pulpit, too, right? If it’s authentic.

Ward: Yes. If it’s authentic.

Talbot: Your sons, Colin and Dillon, growing up on stories from grandfather and father. How has it made a difference in their understanding of faith?

Ward: My older son is a playwright so he puts his stories on stage. His vision is a little different than mine. It’s his own vision and I think he learned that from all of us, to get clear what your vision of things is. My other son is a musician. He tells his stories, as it were, in music. I don’t know that he would say it’s a story that he tells in music, but it’s expressing himself through music. So I think that’s the legacy. Their faith, I think, has not much to do with what’s codified and outlined in some kind of system. Their faith, I believe, has to do with their own faith in each other, in the love they have from their friends, and in looking for that which is authentic and truthful to their lives.

Talbot: Thanks for bringing that to us today, Richard.

Ward: You’re welcome.      

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