Sermon: Put Out Into the Deep

Date: February 4, 2007

Text: Luke 5: 1-11

By: Kendall Brown

(Images were projected on the sanctuary screen with this sermon.

Image placement and subject are in the parenthesis.)

(Turner’s Teméraire) This painting done by Joseph Turner in 1836 serves this morning to illustrate the context of our Gospel story and also the story of our life in the church. The painting shows an old French battleship that had come into English possession after Lord Nelson’s defeat of the French and Spanish at Trafalgar in 1805. In the painting the decrepit old warrior is being towed on her final journey 30 year later to a shipyard on the Thames in London to be broken up for salvage.

Notice the ghostly quality of the old sailing vessel. Turner has painted her hull in soft whites and muted gray. The actual color would have been black. Her masts and spars have the look of a lifeless skeleton. Dirty smoke from the towing vessel is covering the canvass space that would have been filled with majestic, billowing white sails years earlier. There are a lot of clouds, morning mist and haze in the background of the painting. Things haven’t taken shape yet. But the sun of new day is clearly rising and showing its strength.

This painting has a bigger story than that of one boat towing another to its demise. In 1837, England was indeed the Lord of the seas. English people proudly and rightfully boasted that the sun never set on the English flag. The English worldwide empire had been made possible by the English navy that had defeated every enemy and opened the door to England’s place as the number one world super power. The English navy with all of its pomp, prestige, power (lots of power) and pride had always been a navy under sail – symbolized by Turner’s ghost ship.

The morning sun is not the only new sun on the rise in this picture. The age of steamship was just beginning and Turner recognized that sail would be replaced by steam. There were plenty of admirals in the English navy who couldn’t imagine any kind of fighting ship accept one driven by sail and who fought the new day fiercely. They were not overly pleased by Turner’s message in this picture. To them the steamship was ugly, lacking in any beauty or grace and even somewhat menacing as the picture suggests.

There is a new day rising for us in the church too and I believe that Turner’s picture speaks to many of our sentimentalities about what is happening. Many historians now refer to our age as the post Christian era. I can’t go along with that language because I believe that Christianity is alive and well and will be around as long as any other world religion. However, I do believe that we have entered already a new day and that the morning haze is also still around so that we can’t see clearly as to what it is all about yet.

The shapes of the new day are already emerging from the mist. The new day is rightfully called post Christiandom, but not post Christianity.

Christiandom got its start during the rule of (Constantine) Constantine in the fourth century. From your confirmation days you remember him as the emperor connected with the Council of Nicea and the Nicean Creed, which uniformed Christian belief as a religion which had now become a dom as in kingdom required. An ancient legend about Constantine’s mother, Helena bespeaks a wealth of thought about Christiandom. According to the legend, (Helena) Helena traveled to Jerusalem to find the cross on which Jesus died. The legend is filled with embellishment, but the core story is that she found the cross and sent some of the nails, the very nails that had been driven through Jesus’ hands and feet to her son the emperor. Constantine had the nails melted down and then poured the metal in with that which was used to make his helmet and his battle horse’s bridle. The nails of the cross, became instruments of war. The church became the servant of the state and throughout Christiandom has often been used by the state to justify and uphold its warring madness. (Knights) Militarism has a huge place in Christiandom. That spirit is reflected in hymns like “Onward Christian Soldiers”- Marching as to war, Christ the royal master leads against the foe – forward into battle see his banner go. Like a mighty army moves the church of God.”

The church militant has often served as an arm of the state in nationalistic exercises of advancement against other states and peoples.

People, we don’t sing that hymn today. It has disappeared from hymnbooks published during the last half century. When was the last time on Sunday morning that you jumped into your car and came to church singing “Onward Christian Soldiers?”

That hymn is an anthem of Christiandom. The palaces and castles of Christiandom are crumbling. Some of those castles are Protestant denominational structures. A new day is dawning.

This morning’s Scripture is a wonderful story for us to have in our ears in these times. (disciples and fish) The disciples were fishing in the morning. Unknown to them, a whole new age was dawning for them in the mist and haze of that sunrise. They were ‘tween the times. Such times are scary and disappointing. The disciples nets were coming up empty. The disciples were tired and ready to go home for a warm meal and rest. And what did Jesus say to them, “Put out into the deep.” Those words were more than a reference to a watery sounding.

This story has been reenacted several times among us and I suspect will be reenacted again and again. There were several night last year when your president, Andy Mosier, was getting home around 7pm after a long hard day at work. He hadn’t had supper yet and was looking forward to a few moments of family time and rest. When who should appear either in person at his doorstep or on the phone or through an email? His minister. I am sure that about the last thing that Andy wanted to hear was me, saying,, “Guess what, I’ve got another idea.” But one of the things that we have all learned this past year is that these changing times require that we put out into the deep. We go the second mile. We make the second effort or more. And most importantly we embrace the changes that we need to make, and there have been many.

During ‘tween times we want to cling to that which is secure and safe, near to the shore but God is calling us to put out into the deep in so many ways. This past week, I spent time on a clergy retreat in INDY. The President of our denomination was there, Rev. John Thomas. (John Thomas) He told us about a recent trip to China. There he visited a Christian site. In the 1800’s Congregational Missionaries from Boston had established a mission there, building a school, clinic and chapel. Obviously, it was now only a shadow of the thriving community that it had once been. The visitors had noticed that in the Christian Community in China one found either very old people or very young people. That is because for many years Christians had been persecuted, killed or driven off. Only the very old or very young are left.

They found an old Chinese minister who was tending the mission.

He himself had been among the doctors, teachers, professors, community and religious leaders who had been sent off to the rice paddies (rice paddy) for decades of re-education. He lost much and suffered greatly. Those years in the rice paddies had required him to put out into the deep in spirit and faith in ways unimaginable to most of us. He is now back at the mission laboring again in the work of pulling his Lord’s nets. He spoke to his visitors about what had kept him going and about his experience that redeemed and transformed all those years of being a slave in a rice paddy. He said, before the rice paddies this mission served only the rich and educated. Now, after all the suffering and change, this mission serves the poor and under privileged. Now we serve those same people that Jesus served. Now we are really his church.

(Turner again) The times they are a changing. But in them God is still calling us to serve and to push out into the deep. If our nets sometimes are empty, the call is not to pull them up, but to put them down in new and deeper waters. The waters around us are deep. Deep with need and people waiting to be served. In the words of Jesus long ago, lets go fishing without fear or hesitation to follow him.

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