Sermon: Vocation

Put out into the deep water, and let down your nets for a catch.

Luke 5 (v 4)

Have you got a vocation? I ask, because there seems to be a widespread assumption that a 'vocation' is what clergy have, or monks or nuns - or perhaps, at a push, Readers and eucharistic ministers. And we sometimes hear people talking about 'praying for vocations' and even 'preaching vocations', when what they mean is trying to do something about the perceived need for more clergy.

Simon Peter clearly had a vocation; he experienced a call - which is what a 'vocation' is - and one or two interesting questions arise with regard to it.

First, Does this story of the call of Peter and the other first disciples really belong at beginning of the ministry of Jesus? Or is it taken from a tradition about an appearance of Jesus after his resurrection - the end of the Gospel story?

There is a story in Mark 1 of Jesus finding Simon and his brother Andrew, and James and his brother John, fishing in the lake and calling them to follow him along the road. But if you look closely at the words, there are few parallels between that passage in Mark and this story in Luke.

And there is also a story in John 21 in which, after his resurrection, Jesus enables the disciples to make a miracle catch of fish. The disciples have decided to go fishing - to return to their trade after the experience of walking with Jesus - and that is about a miracle catch of fish and the rehabilitation of Peter.

Commentators on Luke have noticed that there is no reason why the miracle catch of fish should provoke the response from Peter, Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!. But that would have been an appropriate cry after the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, for, when pressed by some bystanders at Jesus's trial, Peter had denied that he was a disciple.

My second question is, What precisely is the vocation? There is no command here to follow me, as there is in Mark 1. What Jesus says is, Put out into the deep water, and let down your nets for a catch. And the catch was so great that they needed help to land it.
It is idle to speculate on any 'rational' explanation of this miracle. Some have suggested that Jesus - a more kindly, less manic, first-century Peter Grimes - could see a shoal which was just ripe for catching, and so directed the fishermen to what he only could see. But all that is to miss the point; for in stories, in texts, miracles happen; and the point is to ask what they mean.

Here the point would seem to be that the perspective of Jesus is different: Put out into deep water, and let down your nets for a catch is the suggestion of one who sees from a different angle, who knows the end from the beginning, who wants people to do well, who urges you to enact what you have within you to achieve and to become what you have it within you to be.

So when Peter start's whingeing, 'Go, Lord, leave me, sinner that I am!', his response is not wrong, but irrelevant. 'Never mind what you have done, and the state of your soul', says Jesus, 'Get on and prepare for the dawning of the reign of God! The guilt of your past is managed by the eternal and all-forgiving grace of God. Those scandalous last words of Heinrich Heine, God will forgive me; it's his business, are entirely right. The question is not, What have you done? and Why did you do it? and How could you, possibly? The question is, What is the future that we are going to build, and how, between us, are we going to do that? Put out into the deep water, and let down your nets for a catch!

What is this deep water? Of course, it is part of the story; the miraculous catch of fish requires that the nets be let down where there is going to be more fish. But water figures in Jewish imagination and mythology as chaotic, as threatening; and the problem with chaos and threat is that they mediate death. So we can read it as a metaphor

And then the business about this being a resurrection appearance is not so far-fetched. It is almost as though the call of Peter and the others is first of all to plumb the depths of their working life, to court danger, death and the grave, to take the mammoth risk of faith. But what kind of faith? It is almost as if the calling, the vocation, is to take more seriously - indeed, to take with utmost seriousness - what they are already doing - only, they have to do that with a new perspective. And that perspective is of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. If Peter and the other disciples will do that, then they will see a miracle: such a blessing of God on their daily profession that they will hardly be able to contain it.

Paul talks about the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15; and what the resurrection signifies for him is at least three things: passion, appearance and product. First, there is the passion of Jesus - what Jesus suffered, what he 'underwent': that is, the cross, the deep water that he plumbed. Then there is the appearance of Jesus to his disciples and to the crowds after his resurrection, including, finally, to Paul himself. And hence, finally, the product, which is Paul's passionate response to his call, his complete involvement in it, in God's plan for the salvation of Gentiles along with his people, Israel.

Have you got a vocation? I want to suggest to you that we all have a vocation; that it is rooted in the resurrection, and that it is a vocation, a calling, to know the risen and transforming presence of Jesus first of all in the stuff of our day-to-day life - and those are all words of one syllable! First of all in the stuff of our day-to-day life

Are you a teacher? Are you a waiter? Are you a check-out assistant? Are you a cleaner? Are you a joiner? Are you a dentist? Are you a student? Whatever you are! Martin Luther: Be the monks and priests never so holy and arduous, they have not one whit more of a calling than the rustic in the field, or the housewife going about her household tasks in the home (Luther, Babylonian Captivity 3:42).

What is the meaning of what you do? How is God there? What does the incarnation of the Son of God mean in the office and on the banking floor? Where, in whatever you do, is the Spirit of God creating reconciliation, peace and prosperity?

And what about other people? Put out into deep water, and let down your nets for a catch. Look at the passage again and note that it is not just to Peter that the call comes; it is to Peter and all who are with him. The call of God in Jesus Christ comes to each of us, certainly; but it comes to us with our neighbours and colleagues.

So what about our relationships? And what about a concern for justice, which is love in action within society? The resurrection of Jesus Christ means that we seek the best interests of all people, and that includes acknowledging that only they themselves know what is in their best interests.

Now, of course, we have all heard that the Lake of Galilee can be choppy; and sometimes the vocation is chaotic and threatening. You wonder what on earth life has let you in for. You find yourself saying, with the Psalmist, Vindicate me, O Lord, for I have walked in my integrity, and I have trusted in the Lord without wavering. ... Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud, be gracious to me and answer me! ... Your face, Lord, do I seek. Do not hide your face from me (Psalms 26, 27).

Those are the depths, this is the deep! Of creation and pain, of achievement and failure, of ecstasy and agony, upon which the frail vessels of our lives bob about, eking out a living, struggling for a meaning, hoping for some vindication. And it never stops.

So the saying, Do not be afraid, from now on you will be catching people is not primarily about getting people to join us; it is about exploring what it means to pull a new humanity - our own and our neighbours - up from the grave. Have seen that amazing fresco of the resurrection in the Church of St Saviour in Chora in Istanbul? You can see the power with which the hands of Jesus pull Adam and Eve out of their stone coffins.

One of our own community, Ruth Etchells, has written this:

To be called to lay service is to be called to live fully in the secular world, to be at ease in it, to know its idioms and assumptions, to engage in its arguments and affairs, because its real centre is there. It is not to sally out from one's 'real' centre, the parish church and its affairs, or the diocesan structures, for sorties into industry and trade or education or politics or whatever. It is to live in industry or trade or education or politics, to earn one's income from them (or be unemployed by them); to be committed to them; and there, in that place where one's energies are committed, to engage quite consciously in mission and ministry.

I agree that we are 'short of clergy' - if we are to go on understanding and performing that role in ways that we always have done. But I bet that the 'shortage of clergy', crucial problem though it is, is nowhere near as crucial as that of the nature of Christian vocation. Indeed, it might even be that we need to get this right in order to be able to address the other.

Have you got a vocation? We all have. It may be a hazardous undertaking; it may present us with difficult theological - as well as practical - questions (and the fact that they are theological neither rules out nor excuses lay people from addressing them); it may require of us new commitments; it may threaten our security and our existence. But to respond to it is the only way to be and to make sense of our life together:

Put out into deep water, and let down your nets for a catch.