Phinney Ridge Lutheran Church

Jesus said, “Put out into the deep water…”  (Luke 5:4)

I’ve never learned to swim.  Despite growing up on a farm with a pond (and despite ice skating on it almost non-stop in the winters!) I have never learned to swim.  So moving into deep water sounds scary to me.  If the undertow is vigorous, or the sand beneath my feet shifting, the deep water would be no place for me to be.

Yet this is exactly where Jesus sends us – into the deep water.  To fishermen who knew that the fish ran in the shallow feeding troughs of the Lake of Gennesaret, he comes with an authoritative word and a new suggestion:  “Put out into the deep water…”  It sounded scary to those fishermen, too.  Maybe not so scary in terms of their fear of the water, but scary in terms of its obvious waste of their time, energy and familiarity with their craft.

Put out into the deep water.

That invitation comes as clearly to us from Jesus in our own day as it came to Peter, James, and John as recorded in the Gospel of Luke.  But what does it mean?

Jesus invites us to move with our story of faith into unfamiliar territory.  Deep water.  For each of us, that will probably mean something different.  It could mean talking to someone about our life in Christ who impresses us as uninterested in such a conversation.  It could mean digging into an old family wound with some conviction around reconciliation and forgiveness.  It might mean learning more about Christ and the work of Christ’s church through study, conversation, deeper worship.  Maybe the deep water for some will be a challenge to a new ministry – serving inside the church, in the larger church, or in every day life in a way that we hadn’t quite imagined for ourselves before.  Put out into deep water.

If Jesus were simply throwing us into the deep end to sink or swim, it would be a scary thing to imagine.  But this is not how Christ works among us.  The deep waters that Jesus proposes are waters that he has already navigated.  This bridge time in which we find ourselves between Epiphany and Lent is the perfect time to consider his invitation.  The waters of baptism are waters that have washed over him – even him!  And the walk we are about to make in Lenten baptismal renewal and toward new Easter life is the walk which he emblazoned.  Put out into the deep, brothers and sisters.  But remember, that Jesus has been there for us.  And will be there to hold us afloat in all that we might encounter in those new depths.

One of the mysteries of water is that it both drowns and gives life.  It kills and heals.  It is where we are both baptismally buried and risen from the dead with Christ.  Getting wet in the deep waters of a new call to service in Christ will no doubt cost us something.  We will be leaving something old behind.  But in that deep, deep well of Christ’s love and mercy we will also begin to experience something wonderfully new as we are held in the buoyant arms of Jesus.

Put out into the deep.  Really.  It will be okay.  It will be more than okay.  It will be life-giving beyond our imagination.  I look forward to learning to swim alongside you.

Yours in Christ,

Pastor Hoffman

Photo by Paul E. Hoffman