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hortly after Andrea was born my parents gave us a video camera, and while the girls were little, we recorded virtually every facet of their early years– first Christmas, first birthday, first Halloween. It’s kind of interesting when you think about it. Andrea and Kelsey are really the first generation of children to grow up with so much of their lives captured on tape. I know we had home movies when I was a kid, but it’s not really the same thing as watching your own life unfold over and over again like a reruns on the television set.

        We stopped filming years ago, but every once and a while the mood will strike and we will pull out one of those old tapes. One of my favorites is Kelsey’s first day home from the hospital. There’s a clip of Andrea holding her for the first time. Cheryl breast feeding, and wincing for the camera as Kelsey latches on. Cheryl’s mother giving Kelsey a bath in the kitchen sink while Kelsey exercises her lungs for all they’re worth. Of course, no one really remembers those first days of life, and like most of you, I have no real image of my early years, but here is this indelible image stamped on Kelsey’s memory– not because she really remembers being there, but because she has watched it over and over on tape. It’s a little narcissistic, I suppose, but also positive in a powerful way: she knows from the very beginning that she was born in to a family that loved her and took care of her basic needs.

        We can wax eloquently about a Reformed theology of the sacraments, but at their core the sacraments are about the basic elements of life. At the font we are washed and at the table we are fed. No wonder children enjoy participating as much as they do. There’s water, there’s bread, and there’s juice– what more do you need? One of the most memorable lectures of my seminary career was by my professor of theology, John Burkhart, where he made the point that, unlike the Old Testament writers, the New Testament authors were very reticent to use sacramental language. In both Greek and Latin there is a whole family of words that share the same root: sacrifice, sacrament, sacred, but also words like hierarchy, altar, and priesthood. Sacred language suggests something that is set apart, separate, not of the ordinary, and requires a place that is set apart, like a temple, and a people that are set apart, like a priesthood, and a system for setting people apart, like a hierarchy.

        Except for the Letter to the Hebrews, which talks about Jesus as the High Priest, and his death as the sufficient sacrifice to end all sacrifices, you hardly find any of those words in the New Testament. What you find instead is the word “holy.” The word Holy is not about finding God in something that is set apart, a special place governed by special people, it is about finding God in the everyday and the ordinary. Like bread and wine and water. This is where I think our Reformed theology is so clear: The bread and wine and water in worship remain bread and wine and water. Yet they are holy, because through such ordinary means we come to know the love of God.

S o it should not be a surprise in our gospel lesson from Luke that Jesus comes to Peter in the midst of his everyday life. Peter is not off on some mountain top or retreat center searching for life’s meaning. He is tending his nets, minding his boat, going through the daily paces of his life, when Jesus unexpectedly shows him how to reach down to a new depth. Peter discovered a deep connection to the Holy right in the middle of his ordinary life. And there is no reason to believe that Peter was anything other than ordinary. There is nothing in the story to suggest that Peter in some special way deserved or earned Jesus’ extraordinary attention. And if Jesus brings the gift of abundant life to this ordinary fisherman there is no reason to doubt that Jesus offers the same invitation to you and me.

        It should also be of no surprise that this encounter with Jesus takes place on the water. I visited the Sea of Galilee on my trip to Israel and Palestine last May. It is a beautiful setting. It is not hard to understand why water had such power in the ancient world, especially in Israel where so much of the land is bone dry. In both the Old and New Testaments, water is a place of boundary, renewal, cleansing, healing. Time and again, from the Red Sea to the Jordan River to the Sea of Galilee, this is where the people encounter God.

        Peter must have thought Jesus was off his nut suggesting he cast in his nets again after such a fruitless night of fishing. Where does this carpenter from Nazareth get off giving fishing advice to him? Yet the invitation to put his nets out again into the deep waters was mysteriously compelling and, against his own best instincts, he once again casts the heavy net, discovering in the process an abundance that he had not known before. Yet it somehow immediately became clear that what Jesus was offering to him was not mere techniques for better fishing. Somehow, however inchoately, Peter grasped that Jesus’ invitation was to cast into the deep waters that lead to abundant life.

“D eep water” is such a rich metaphor. It can be frightening, as Peter acknowledges. There is terror in the dark and murky deep that engulfs and overwhelms. Many describe depression as not unlike plunging into the dark and hidden recesses of the ocean depths. You can drown in deep waters. They are life experiences you want to avoid, or, having experienced them, you want to escape.

        Yet there is another sense in which the deep waters are a wellspring to God, a source of life, a tap-root into the heart of mystery. The challenge, then, is not how to escape the deep waters, but how to reach them. In the deep waters lies the promise of abundant life, a deep and unquenchable source of connection to God. How do we cast our net into those deep waters in order to discover that abundant catch?

        Isn’t that a part of our hope for Ryan this morning, that he find a way to the deep waters of God’s presence? How do we cast our nets into that deep water? There are many ways to reach them. We will not all find them in the same way. The good news of this story is that we can discover that source in our daily lives. The invitation to follow Jesus is an invitation, no matter who we are and how we spend our days, to find the deep waters that offer abundant life for our daily living.

S o today Bob and Ashley promise to bring Ryan into the community of faith to worship and hear the stories of our faith as he grows into his own faith in God. They do so with the lively expectation that church is yet a place to discover our connection to God, a pathway to the Holy, to the source of abundant life– worship that connects us to God and to community; Bible study that open us up to the depths of divine mystery, still our best guide to the deep waters; prayer, alone or in groups, silently or out loud, contemplative or charismatic, that connect us with the source of life. Of course there are other pathways to God outside of worship. A conversation with a friend. A walk in the park. Time spent serving another human being in need. Whatever connects us to something bigger, deeper, larger, broader than our own lives. Indeed, the greatest gift Bob and Ashley can give to Ryan is to help cultivate in him an openness to discover God’s presence in the midst of his daily life, and to not be afraid of plunging in to those deep waters. 

        It is important to notice that Peter’s first reaction is to be afraid. He falls on his knees before Jesus and says, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.” The power of Christ’s presence is overwhelming. There is a resistance to those deep waters. We may or may not drop everything, as did Peter, but one way or another whenever we encounter Christ’s presence in our lives, we come away transformed, and that is a frightening prospect. When Christ encounters us on the seashore of our lives, we live with a new sense of depth and meaning and purpose. And that requires something of us. Before Christ’s encounter, Peter was focused on fish. Afterwards, he was focused on human beings. No wonder he was afraid.

I n our Adult Class these past couple of weeks, Gerry Hendershot has been inviting us to listen for prophetic voices– voices of the Holy– in popular music. Today I thought of one of my favorite songs by The Indigo Girls, from their album Swamp Ophelia, called “The Wood Song.” It imagines life like a journey across choppy waters in an aging wooden boat, in which the storms are all a part of the journey.

        They sing:

...Now I see we’re in the boat in two by twos...
Love weighs the hull down with its weight...

No way construction of this tricky plan
Was built by other than a greater hand
With a love that passes all our understanding
Watching closely over the journey

Yeah but what it takes to cross the great divide
Seems more than all the courage

I can muster up inside
Although we get to have some answers

when we reach the other side
The prize is always worth the rocky ride

Sometimes I ask to sneak a closer look
Skip to the final chapter of the book
And then maybe steer us clear

from some of the pain it took
To get us where we are this far
But the question drowns in its futility
And even I have got to laugh at me
No one gets to miss the storm of what will be
Just holding on for the ride

But he wood is tired and the wood is old
We’ll make it fine if the weather holds
But if the weather holds

we’ll have missed the point
That’s where I need to go.✞

© 2007 Jeffrey K. Krehbiel