There is a wonderful song by the brilliant Australian singer-song writer, Paul Kelly, that speaks into some of the rich and powerful themes of our Gospel. It’s called Deeper Water. Don’t worry, I am not going to sing it, though you may know it already.
The song uses the symbols of water and waves, swell and ripples, depths and surface to explore how we grow as humans, as people connected to each other in love. The evocative lyrics and music, like deep waves themselves, pull us on a journey towards wholeness as we hear of childhood, maturing, new life in childbirth, joy and connection – and always the pull, the call for us to go into the deeper waters, deeper into ourselves.
As magnificent as the journey of life the song depicts is, however, it is inevitably bounded, contained and limited as these lyrics attest:
So the clock moves around and the child is a joy
But Death doesn't care just who it destroys
Now the woman gets sick, thins down to the bone
She says 'Where I'm going next, I'm going alone'
Death. Decay. Aloneness.
This is the reality of the created world around us. It seems to be the inevitable, the natural, end of all creatures, of all life, ourselves included. We are born, we grow, we age, we wither, we die.
But our glorious Gospel today brings us the Good News of different story, one where the holy uncreated One, the invisible God of All enters creation, as one of us, for all of us, and brings all of us to the Life Eternal and the Life Abundant.
To enter this deep and sacred story, we need to bring ourselves closer to how the first hearers would have heard it. Otherwise, we can simply see it, as it is often described: “Jesus Calls the first disciples”. But it is so much more, in fact, the essence of the Gospel itself.
The first thing we notice is when compared with the other Gospels, the Call here is reversed. In the other Gospels Jesus calls to his disciples, without meeting them. “Follow me”, he says, and they leave their nets and follow.
Here, before they follow, the disciples are already helping, already assisting Jesus – they take him out into the lake, they take him deeper, they help with the abundant catch of fish.
This speaks to us of our participation in God, how we participate in the divine with our bodies, our intelligence, our minds and strength – and how that participation is used to further God’s plan, God’s provision of abundance for the world. We are not passive, but an active part of the working out of salvation, for ourselves, for each other and for the entire Creation.
And our sacred story today shows Christ bringing this salvation to Creation and to each of us. To understand this, we remember that in the ancient Jewish worldview, deep waters, lakes, the sea represented and were signs of the constant threat of chaos, discord and uncreation. This is not simply the personal sense of danger and fear of the unknown we may feel, when, like the Paul Kelly song, we enter “deeper waters”.
This is a mythic, spiritual, cosmic reality.
In the Book of Genesis, the world of Good Order, the world of Life is created by God from the chaos of the waters. But the ordered power of creation is always threatened by the chaotic forces of decreation, forces embodied in the waves and the depths.
So, when Christ, responding to the pressing of the crowds, enters the boat and speaks from the waters, he is doing so within decreation and chaos. And he speaks the word of God! He uses lips and breath to speak – and in the Jewish worldview and language ‘breath’ and ‘spirit’ and even ‘wind’ are expressed by the same word, ruach.
So, he brings the Word and the Breath and Spirit of God to and over the waters … just like we hear in Genesis:
When beginning, God created the heavens and the earth and the earth was complete chaos, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind, a breath from God swept over the face of the waters.
In our Gospel, Christ is initiating a New Creation.
And this new creation is one where decreation, where death and decay are forever defeated because God has entered creation and, in the person of the Christ, conquered the deep waters and overcome all forces of chaos.
In this New Creation, unlike the Paul Kelly song, the deeper waters are not places of personal depths where we grow and change, but where we ultimately and inevitably wither and die. Rather the deep waters are places of communal new life and abundance. Surprising abundance, like the vast number of fish caught in our story today.
So, like Simon, like the disciples, participating with Christ in the deep water, we too are called to bring Christ into the deep waters of our lives, our personal life, our family and social life and our life as church.
We are called to bring Christ into those deep, those unexpressed parts of ourselves, unexpressed perhaps even to ourselves, those depths where we dimly see and sense who we really are. Those depths that, while unknown, support the whole of us.
And we do this, when we travel this journey, not alone but with each other, like Simon with James and John, when we travel with each other and with Christ into the depths, we can expect abundance. We can expect new life. We can expect eternal life.
And it is no accident that here in St Cuthberts we are sitting in pews in the part of the church known as the Nave – this is from the Latin word for ‘ship’, an early Christian symbol for the church. We are right now, travelling together into the deep water, the deep where in Christ, as the Holy Eucharist, we find the Life Eternal and the Life Abundant. Our very participation today calls and allures us to enter deeper waters of life; by simply being here, by sitting here today, we have committed our bodies to this journey – Christ also calls us to commit our minds, our hearts and souls.
When we do, when we find the life eternal, the life abundant, when we like Simon see uncreation and chaos conquered, we will, like him fall on our knees. And being creatures of God, we will, inevitably feel wholly and utterly different to God, and perhaps even unworthy compared to God. We may, like Simon using traditional language, express that we are ‘sinful’, separate from God.
But when we do, let’s remember that Jesus’ only response to Simon was, “Do not be afraid”. He does not admonish him, he does not forgive him, he does not tell him to rise and sin no more. He does not even acknowledge that the sin actually exists; he only wants him not to fear.
Isaiah in our first reading has similar feelings of unworthiness. During his vision of the Holy One, he declares himself lost and having unclean lips. But we must remember that even the Holy Angels, the Seraphs, beings without sin, created only to adore God, even they cannot fully look at God: they cover their faces in the presence of the Uncreated One.
But amazingly through the Incarnation, when God becomes as we are, body and flesh, warmth and blood, amazingly we CAN see God fully and with uncovered eyes – in the Body of Christ. Not only each week here on our altar, but each and everyday in and as each other.
And in him and in each other, may we find the life eternal and the life abundant. Amen.