We Are In A Sailboat

We Are In A Sailboat--January 9, 2017

"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 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 have caught nothing. 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...." [Luke 5:1-6]

Sometime, when you and I were looking the other way and not paying attention, Jesus got into our boat.  He never left, but has been directing us to other waters ever since.

In a way, you could say that's the whole Christian life, the whole life of faith and discipleship.  It begins with Jesus--Jesus, who has a way of inviting himself over to people's houses (Zacchaeus), for drinks (the woman at the well from Samaria), to crash funerals (the widow from Nain), and even just inviting himself on board someone else's boat (Like Simon Peter here).  Jesus just shows up--he invites himself over into our lives, into our hearts, while we are too busy to notice or too distracted by other things.

And then the next thing you know, he is telling us--from onboard our own lives, thank-you-very-much--to head in a new direction, so that he can bring Good News to people more clearly and loudly through us than he could otherwise.  He leads us out to deeper waters, and then he dares us to trust that he just might know more than we do about where the next big catch is.  He dares us to believe that he knows more about the things we pride ourselves for being "experts" on.   And we are never the same.

I want to invite you on this day to picture your life in a new way starting this morning.  Just try this metaphor on for size, and see what it does to your head and your heart.  Here it is: your whole life as a follower of Jesus is this little scene from the opening chapters of the Gospels.  You and I were minding our own business, and Jesus came aboard, and now he is the one giving us directions in our little boat, and along for the voyage himself as he goes with us.  We are all in this together, you and I, and all of us followers of Jesus.  We are all on this boat--which, until a moment ago, perhaps, we thought was ours to command, but which now Jesus appears to be directing.  He is leading us out to deeper waters than we had been in, which means that we are all, to some degree, stuck with each other on board because Jesus has chosen to include all of us.  And while we do not know quite what to expect from here on out, we have a sneaking suspicion that Jesus is up to something amazing and wonderful and beyond our power or comprehension.

That means that Jesus is now the one who sets the direction of our lives.  It means that Jesus gets to have the say in who else he is bringing with us on this voyage, whether or not I like them or think they are sufficiently qualified.  It means that Jesus has the authority in our world, yours and mine, like a police detective in the movies, to "commandeer" the vehicle in which we had been living, and to open us up to so much more. 

We so easily settle in this life for just keeping ourselves comfortable.  Enough income to pay the bills and keep the cable or dish network on for entertainment.  Enough praise or recognition at work to make ourselves feel like we are successful.  And enough insulation from the rest of the world's troubles that we don't have to be too burdened by tragedy or heartbreak or injustice.  We can get ourselves into familiar enough routines with modest (self-interested) ambitions, and we chart out life-plans for ourselves that are equally small in scope, shallow in substance, and self-interested basically.  Work for so many years, making enough and saving enough to have a nice retirement.  Develop social circles so we can be well-liked and always have a place to go and something to do when we are bored. Get the cookie cutter family... and then raise your kids to accept only the cookie cutter family as "success," too. Build a bigger house... so you can have more room for more stuff... and then you'll be ready to prepare for building more and more and bigger and bigger.  Do any of those seem ridiculously circular to you, too?

That's Simon Peter, and that's you, and that's me... before Jesus steps into our midst, onboard our boat, and brings us out to a new place and a new kind of life.  His movement.  His vision.  His agenda.  And those are always bigger than our own self-focused ambitions, deeper than our shallow quest for creature comforts, and more daring than our timid step-by-step plans to save up enough to retire somewhere sunny.  Jesus has bigger vision--something so vast and wide and beautiful that the imagery Jesus uses for it is like a "kingdom," a "realm," a "reign," or a "movement."  It is always bigger than just me-and-my-immediate-interests, than just me-and-my-job, or than me-and-my-nuclear-family, or me-and-my-best-laid-plans. 

We talk about having "dreams" in this country and culture, and we usually mean something narrow and often self-absorbed, like, "I want to make to the top of the company and be the boss one day!" or "I want to have a beach house!"  But Jesus, he talks about God's vision of a whole new creation, of a new kind of commonwealth of all creation where old debts are cancelled, sins forgiven, bread is shared, all are honored, the lowly are lifted up, hearts are mended, the outsider is welcomed, and justice is done.  If we are going to talk about dreams in life, that's the size we need to be talking about.  Those waters are deeper than the shallow tide pools we had been circling around in with (not surprisingly) little success and no fish in our nets.

So today, picture yourself (and I will do the same for me) on a sailboat with Jesus--we are on this adventure together, going where he leads us, with a purpose that is bigger and wider and deeper than the small fish we had been going after and never catching. 

We will go where he leads us, and we will move as he does--after all, ever since he invited himself over and snuck on board while we were busy staring at our nets, he has been on deck with us all the while.

Lord Jesus, take us where you will, and lead us into the deeper hopes of your Movement, of God's Reign, than the tiny dreams we had been straining after.