Put out into the deep
In the gospel lesson appointed in the Revised Common Lectionary for Sunday, 9 February 2025 (Luke 5.1—11), we received the story of Jesus calling Simon (Peter) and James and John, telling them that in following Him they shall become “fishers of men”. This is after they have followed His instruction to “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” They follow His instruction, having toiled throughout the night without result, and catch so many fish that their boats are near to sinking. Peter’s reaction is to adjure that Jesus should leave him, for Peter tells Him “… I am a sinful man”.
There’s a lot going on in the story, but my first reaction when I encountered yesterday was to recall the motto of The Episcopal Diocese of Fond du Lac, now subsumed into the Diocese of Wisconsin, but formerly the Episcopalian presence in the northeastern section of the state. The motto was In Altum (sometime rendered as Duc In Altum), Jesus’s words, “into the deep”.
The diocese, where I served for more than seven and a half years, was founded not long after the Civil War, and less than a quarter century after Wisconsin became a state. In other words, the territory of the diocese could fairly have been described as in the deep, on the frontier. But Jesus’s injunction to Peter and James and John should remind us that whenever we are tempted to think of faith as safe we are in for a surprise.
As we witness the ongoing diminution of the place of the Church in the culture, we need to first stop and consider that in the United States, at least, the idea that the Church is somehow being persecuted is not much more than hyperbole. Persecution certainly exists in the world, but in this country what we witness is not something like soldiers arriving and boarding church buildings up, not something like clergy being arrested, but what is better recognized to be a loss of privilege. In the post-WWII era in particular, the Church was privileged to be thought of and treated as something a little bit special, in the sense that church congregations were founded more commonly, buildings were grander, more people thought it normal to ask where one went to church, etc. That’s gone, to the point that it is now common at weddings and funerals to have to explain to at least half of the attendees what is actually going on. But that’s not persecution, and even where (and when) real persecution arrives (my own father’s Marist brothers grammar school teachers were all executed in 1928, during the Cristero War in Mexico) it shouldn’t’ surprise any follower of Jesus who has paid attention to Him (e.g. at John 15.18, “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.”)
All of which is to say that the world is the “deep” to which we are to place ourselves in, in the Name of Christ. We are to expect no reward from the world, to put it mildly. But note what happens when Peter and his companions obey Jesus’s instruction. They lower their nets and are overwhelmed with the catch of fish. In other words, when we trust and do God’s work then the result is because of God’s power, not our own—not our abilities, efforts, persuasiveness—God’s power. And we notice something else when we compare this little story in Luke 5 with Jesus’s instructions to the disciples He sends into the world in Luke 10. In sending the seventy ahead of Himself, two by two, Jesus tells them, “I send you out as lambs in the midst of wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and salute no one on the road” (Luke 10.3—4). As congregations we tend to worry about budgets, resources. Jesus sends His disciples in mission with nothing. In other words, whatever is needed in mission in a hostile world shall be provided by God to those who go in mission faithfully. Put our into the deep, indeed!
A final detail in the story of the miraculous haul of fish: Peter reacts by saying to Jesus, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Luke 5.8). Who among us when encountering the holy could not truthfully say “I am a sinful man/woman”? Jesus knows this, and still He calls and still He sends. We’re part of the deep. Like the miraculous haul of fish we are called out of the deep of the world in order that in following we may be sent, in order that in being sent we may be those who say to all the others in the deep “The kingdom of heaven has come near to you” (Luke 10.9), that all of the other fish in the deep with us may recognize that the net let down at the Lord’s command is not a trap but an in-gathering.