Leaving It All Behind

Scriptures: Luke 5:1-11 and Isaiah 6:1-8

You are on the beach cleaning your nets and hanging them up to dry. You’ve fished all night long with no results. You’ve been at this occupation for many long years and you know what you are doing. But, still no fish last night. While you are cleaning your gear and hanging out your nets to dry, a popular teacher draws a crowd of people to the beach nearby. The excited people have now almost pushed him out right out into the water. He asks if you can’t let him use your boat as his pulpit and speak to the crowds on the beach that have come to hear him. His voice will carry better over the water to them from your boat. You agree and you launch your boat back into the shallow water.

You listen to his teaching. This isn’t the first time you have met Jesus. You have heard him speak before and you have been impressed by what he says. When he’s finished teaching he challenges you to go fishing one more time. You protest, “We’ve done this all night long with no good results.” He encourages you anyway with his laughing eyes and his gentle, but firm suggestion, “Launch out into the deep water this time.” You sigh and you and your men collect your nets from shore and following his request you launch out in the direction of the deepest part of the waters.

You guide the boat to the location he has pointed out, just to humor him, knowing the results will be no different this time as they had been during the night. You know this water, you know the way the fish live in these waters, and there isn’t anything about this situation that is new to you. Nothing will change, you tell yourself, why it isn’t even the right time of day to be doing this kind of fishing, but you follow his directions anyway, mostly so you can later point out how little he knows about fishing, and how much you do know.

You glance over at him sitting there so relaxed and comfortable, and he winks back at you waving you on toward the deepest part of the waters. You nod your head at him, but you do not smile back. You don’t want to encourage him any further with his ludicrous ideas. Just what does a teacher like him know about fishing? You are the professional. He’s just an amateur. Soon he will understand. You’ll all laugh and then you can go home and get some much needed sleep.

Then something twists within your heart and you think to yourself, “But what if he is right? What if he knows something I don’t know? What if there were fish to catch here? Maybe this won’t be a wasted effort after all. Maybe we won’t go home empty handed. Maybe we’ll have something to sell at the Fish Market today anyway.” For a moment a glimmer of hope captures you, but then long years of experience, and reason and knowledge return and you tell yourself, “No, nothing will change today. Nothing will be different.”

“This is the place,” he finally says to you and so you drop your anchor. “Throw your nets out one more time,” he says smiling and then sits back to watch you work. You go through the same tasks you’ve gone through so many times before, thinking how ridiculous this is and you ask yourself, “Why are we throwing out the nets we just cleaned. It will take us hours to clean them up again and for what? Just to humor the Teacher?” And finally, for no other reason than the fact that the Teacher asked you to do it, you cast your nets into the water one more time.

Surprise! Something’s different this time. Something has changed! Immediately your nets are filled to capacity and beyond, to the point of bursting with teeming schools of fish. You and your workers cannot bring in the haul. Your boat is in imminent danger of capsizing from the overabundance of fish weighing down the net and your boat. You call for another boat nearby to help. The catch is too large even for two boats and both of your boats begin to take on water with the enormous weight of the catch that is far, far greater than you ever thought possible or could have ever dreamed about in your wildest imagination. This will be a fisherman’s story that no one will believe.

You look over at the smiling Teacher. Who is this man, you ask yourself? Exactly how has he caused all of this to happen? There is no question about it. This Jesus must be more than just a Teacher, he must be a holy messenger from God. That is the only explanation your mind can come up with. You may even be in the presence of God. Now you feel so unworthy, so sinful, so out of place with this kind of miracle working power calling into question everything you thought you knew and believed. “Leave me alone, Teacher,” you cry as you fall down before him, “I am not worthy to even be near to you.” Truly a miracle has just happened.

“Don’t be afraid,” the teacher says to you and your two best friends who were in the other boat, “You think two boatloads of fish was a miracle? Why that is nothing compared to what is going to happen! From now on, if you follow me, you’ll be bringing in boatloads of people to the New Community of God.”

Then, comes the second miracle of the day, you and your two friends leave your expensive fishing boats behind, and all of your costly gear and nets, everything that defines you as a professional fisherman, and you go off with the Teacher to become Fishers of Men and Women, growing the New Community of God.

What, you all are asking yourselves? How could they leave behind everything they’ve worked for, everything they’ve accumulated, everything they’ve sacrificed to attain and hold on to all these years. What’s the point of working so hard to provide for yourself if God come into your life one day and ask you to give it all up and begin a new life?

Many of you aren’t any different than Simon Peter. You know what to expect from your life. You have been living life the same way for far too many years. We tend to just keep on doing things the same old way, feeling the same old feelings, complaining about the same old disappointments, arguing the same arguments, missing out on the same opportunities to change, over and over again. We often do very little to change those things about our lives that we don’t like and could change if we wanted to. We become complacent and hopeless that anything about our existence will ever change. To put it bluntly, we end up living in a rut And you know what a rut is don’t you? It’s a grave that’s open on both ends.

And then along comes Jesus. Jesus who smiles and laughs and who wants to stir things up in your life, to get you moving again, to get you thinking and hoping and believing that perhaps your life could be better, or at least different.

We don’t know what Jesus preached about to the people that morning on the beach. But we can surmise something of the lesson by what he did that day. Jesus often taught a principle and then demonstrated that same teaching by what he did. Here we have a demonstration of the abundant blessings that God will and can pour out on God’s people, a boat-sinking abundance of fish where there had been no fish earlier. Perhaps Jesus had been teaching the people about God’s abundant love and grace and how God will have mercy upon everyone, even those that they don’t feel deserve God’s love. But the miracle of fish demonstrates to Peter and James and John that even if you feel unworthy of God’s blessings, God will still pour out those blessings upon you.

Peter is struck by his own unworthiness to receive such a blessing. Peter feels that God has made a mistake by giving this miracle to him, not unlike many of you who don’t believe you deserve God’s blessings in your life for whatever reason you have selected to believe makes you unworthy. But Jesus says to Peter, “Don’t be afraid.” Jesus gives Peter the reassurance that God hasn’t made a mistake, that God has deliberately selected Peter for this honor and this work. It is the kind of reassurance that makes Peter and hopefully you and I willing to listen to what Jesus has to say next. Jesus tells Peter, “That? You think that was a miracle? Just wait until you see what God can do with you if you will walk with God in your life. You won’t believe the miracles that you and God can work together.”

The truth is that you and I often concentrate on the past, on what has been, on what we have done wrong…usually failing to see all the right things we have done right…it’s as if one wrong thing, one sinful decision in our lives, outweighs everything else in our lives and therefore makes us unworthy and unable to follow God or do God’s will.
Let me give you some advice. Get over it! Leave all those feelings behind. Move on. God isn’t concerned about the mistakes you have made in the past. God has already forgiven you for those mistakes. God wants to put God’s power and God’s presence to work in your life today, but you have to be a willing partner in this. You have to decide that you are going to allow God to let you and God make a difference in your life and in the lives of others that you will come into contact with.

The prophet Isaiah had a vision of God when he went to worship in the Temple on the death of his relative the king. Everything seemed hopeless to him. The threat of war, the nasty internal politics of the palace and Temple, the failing economics of the day weighed him down and made him give up hope for the future of himself and his country. But the power and presence of God awed him, much like Jesus awed Peter that day in the boat with a miracle. Isaiah felt inadequate and powerless, sinful and unable to be the kind of servant that God wanted. But God was still there powerful and mighty, holy and present just as God had always been. The facts of human tragedy all around Isaiah made absolutely no difference to the power and presence of God. God demonstrated to Isaiah that the prophet was the exactly the very one God wanted to use and when God said, “Who shall I send and who will go for me?” Isaiah got over himself and forgot about his problems and Isaiah answered God in the affirmative, “Here am I, send me.”

It does you no good to hang on to the past, especially if it negative. God is all about the future. God knows all about your past. God has used it to make you who you are today. Stop dwelling on those things that you’ve done wrong or simply think you’ve done wrong. Quit psychologically kicking yourself in your proverbial ass. God forgives your past. God wants you to claim the miracles that God has waiting for you.

Sure there will still be disappointments from time to time. Sure things won’t always go your way. We live in a world where other people can and do mess things up for us by their own decisions against what God wants, even when we are choosing to go with God. It’s just the kind of world we live in. Jesus had to deal with that, so did Peter, so did Isaiah, so do you and I.

But when you decide to move forward in your life claiming the power and presence that God wants to give to you, you have a resource that others don’t have, that others usually fail to rely upon. Go with God and wait and watch for the miracles to happen, for the open doors of possibilities, for the answers to your questions, for the hope and help that you need to accomplish God’s will and way in your life.

The truth is that when Jesus comes into our lives we need to open ourselves up to the possibility of life-changing, life-shaking miracles, awe-inspiring miracles! When Jesus calls us to become Fishers of Men and Women we may be truly amazed at what God does to cause our small faith community to grow beyond what we ever imagined possible.


When I was a child, people kept telling me that one day I would be a great missionary. Even then, I think they saw something different about me, and not being able to exactly name it…That boy is certainly different…they decided that being different, being QUEER, meant I must be special to God. Well, I’ve got news for them! They were right! I was special to God because I was QUEER! They kept telling that they believed that God had called me and if I would respond that God would send me to some foreign land to preach the good news about Jesus Christ to people who had never heard about Jesus or God.

Isn’t that just like us American Christians? If anyone is to do a great work, then they must do that great work someplace else, as if no great works of God can ever be done where we already live, where we already are. Mother Teresa sent her life serving the poor in India. She once spoke to an American audience saying that Americans are always saying that they wanted to leave their lives here and go to work in India with her. “Stay here, right where you are,” she told them that night, “Love the people God has given you to love. Care for people right where you are.”

Jesus is calling MCC Seattle to throw out the nets of God’s Love and Mercy to those who live and work around us. We are called to share God’s love in all its overflowing, boat-sinking abundance with the QUEER people all around us. There is more than enough forgiveness, more than enough healing, more than enough grace to go around for everyone.

When we partner with God, you and I aren’t responsible for the results, but we are responsible for finding ways to throw out the nets of Love that will bring in those that God has desires to be a part of our growing community. We may have to work in ways that we have never even considered before, unconventional ways of being the church and doing the work of God. We may have to change. We may have to think very differently about what it means to be a church to our Queer Community. It might not end up looking like anything we’ve ever been a part of previously. It might be something new, something miraculous.

We have to strike out into the deep waters, even when we’re tired, even when we’re sure it won’t work. We have to find ways to share God’s love by making the right kinds of choices in our votes, in the giving of our money to causes and organizations that support the creation of God’s new community. We have to r build coalitions of hope and compassion with others to consider the needs of the poor, the homeless, the emotionally disturbed, the elderly, those living with HIv/AIDS. We can’t take care of everyone, but we can take care of someone. And by joining forces with other congregations and groups we can make a real difference in our city and beyond.

Maybe the deep waters also speak of the places we would rather not go, places of discomfort and unfamiliarity where we might get in over our heads. What if you and I were to actually forgive those who has hurt us in the past. What if we were to give up those feelings of being put down and rejected and actually offer to those persons the same kind of forgiveness that God has given to us? What if you and I actually took a clear-headed view of our own personal talents and abilities and stepped forward with excitement and eagerly volunteered to begin to use our skills to help others and to build this New Community of God into the miracle working place that I believe God wants us to become? There is much that needs to be done, but those things won’t happen until more of us decide we are the ones through whom God will make it happen.

This is the season of Epiphany; when we are suppose to be especially aware of the many different ways that God is at work in the world. Hopefully, we will be like Peter and decide that we can’t just go back to our ordinary nets and our ordinary lives trying to deny that this story is about us, and this calling from Christ to be fishers of men and women isn’t our calling. Renita Weems says that the last thing those tired fisherman were expecting was a showing of God’s awesome power right there, at the end of their workday. When Jesus shows up and surprises us with miracles, the next thing you know, our lives will be changed forever. Hopefully, like Peter, we will allow God to transform our lives right where we are. Hopefully, we will begin to make a difference to the lives of those we know and love and live with.

All of us have had life changing experiences with God at one point or another in our lives, some kind of spiritual experience that caused us to realize that God was there and God was with us. What would happen if we let God give us that kind of life-changing experience as a community of faith today? What if we started sharing this life-changing power and presence of God in our lives with our co-workers during coffee breaks this week, over lunch or dinner with friends, or speaking a kind word to a stranger in need on the street? That’s exactly what we should be doing, telling others the good news about what God has done in our lives in such a way that they might find some hope to hold onto that God could do the same thing in their lives for them.

Wait, you say, we already did that. Why we’ve worked at it for almost 38 years with no good results. But the Teacher is calling us to go out into the deep waters of this community one more time and throw out the nets of God’s Love and Mercy one more time. You know I can’t help but I wonder what will happen this time?