Epiphany 5c 2025; 9 Feb.
Luke 5:1-11; Jack Hardaway
THE MIRACULOUS PEOPLE
I like shallow water.
I can swim just fine.
I just like to see the bottom or touch it or just know it’s there. That’s how I like it.
I go out on boats with people and they invariably show me these sonar readings of where the bottom of Lake Hartwell drops away, and I get vertigo.
And then they’ll point to something on the screen and they’ll say, “see that, that’s an old farm house, or a little town”, there at the bottom of the lake. Like in the days of Noah.
I then have to sit down.
The deep.
The depths.
I would have made a good Hebrew, they had a profound regard for the deep, for the bottomless depths that lead to the realms of death, the formless chaos that is always gnawing on the edges of creation.
The ancient Hebraic universe was a small bubble of creation that is surrounded by the immensity of swarming corrosive chaos, of primordial devouring absence and emptiness.
It was a theological and psychological perception of life hanging on the edge.
And the deep, the depths, the pit was a cavernous gateway into that realm. Give it plenty of room. Primordial monsters lurked below like Leviathan, and Behemoth, and Lilith the Night creature.
At first Jesus taught them from the shallow water.
Like my dad first trying to teach me to swim.
And then I had to swim over my head without his help, he kept saying to swim to him as he kept backing up just out of reach. Oh boy did I get mad.
Go out into the deep water. Drop your nets down into the darkness.
And then what had been a fruitless frustrating exhausting day of fishing became mythical, legendary, miraculous, swarming overwhelming abundance, a flood of fish, a plague of fish.
Simon Peter, James and John were quickly drowning and sinking, not in the deep, but in the insanity, the too muchness of the substance of life. Bursting nets, sinking boats, and hearts suddenly terrified of the encroaching holiness.
Give the deep plenty of room. Give the holy even more room. Life is a fragile wisp of a thing easily extinguished.
And then the divine humor, holy laughter, off putting levity.
Jesus plays with words. Jesus must have been laughing as he does his classic arguing from the lesser to the greater.
You think that was impressive? The miraculous catch? Wait till you see what happens next! You are going to catch people, you will be pulling people up from the deep, rescuing them from being eaten alive by the darkness.
People will be the real miracle.
A miraculous people.
Out of the mess and disaster, humanity will start again, starting over, the miraculous people of Jesus.
I think this is really about baptism.
We are pulled up from the waters to start over again, new creations, children born from God, pulled out of the abyss.
The miraculous people.
We are drawn to Jesus and Jesus pulls us back together.
It is a powerful image of God, God’s boat going out into the deep to rescue a floundering creation and our sinking humanity.
The nets of glory, and beauty, and hope, and love sink down so deep to pull us up again.
The Holy Spirit entangles us, reforming, remaking, and retying our failing floundering souls.
People of miracle.
Miraculous people.
Jesus captured the disciples and in turn sends them to do the same, leaving everything to become part of Jesus’ rescue mission.
We are given courage in the face of darkness and hope in the fear of the blazing burning glory of God that is Jesus’ flesh and blood, that is Jesus’ word, that is Jesus healing touch.
The miraculous people.
Evidence of the God who captures our hearts.
People are the real miracle.
(We now sing a Baptismal hymn as we prepare to baptize a miraculous child.)