The Dark Devotional: Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time: Deep Waters

I’m drifting in deep waters
Alone with my self doubting again
I try not to struggle this time
For I will weather the storm
I gotta remember
Don’t fight it
Even if I
Don’t like it
Somehow turn me around
No matter how far I drift
Deep waters won’t scare me tonight

~Portishead, Deep Water

A Reading from the Gospel According to Saint Luke

While the crowd was pressing in on Jesus and listening
to the word of God, he was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret.
He saw two boats there alongside the lake; the fishermen had disembarked and were washing their nets.
Getting into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, he asked him to put out a short distance from the shore.
Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. After he had finished speaking, he said to Simon,
“Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch.”
Simon said in reply, “Master, we have worked hard all night and have caught nothing, but at your command I will lower the nets.”
When they had done this, they caught a great number of fish and their nets were tearing.
They signaled to their partners in the other boat to come to help them.
They came and filled both boats so that the boats were in danger of sinking.
When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at the knees of Jesus and said,
“Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.”

What does it look like for us to listen to God? For people in ancient Israel it meant going down to the lake, surviving the swarms of mosquitoes in blistering heat while hemmed in behind and before by fishermen, carpenters, sellers of purple, the lame, the blind, and the halt. They were most likely suffocating from the amount of body heat mixing with the humid air passing over the lake mingled with the scent of the unwashed masses. People would do anything to hear Jesus speak. They had been known to let people down through ceilings and climb trees for a glimpse of him.

Me? I complain about the Sunday service starting too late or going too long. I get huffy when my favorite worship leaders aren’t on the stage. I wouldn’t stand for a sermon in air conditioning, let alone outside during a Chicago summer where people have died from heat exhaustion. I rarely see reading and studying scripture as a privilege. It’s just something else I’m failing at.

Jesus taught on hills and in gardens, upper rooms, tombs, even in the middle of a lake. He knew how to get people’s attention. Was it because water carries sound better than land? Or was it because he knew he was going to pull a fish out of a hat?

Simon and his crew had already been fishing for hours and had tried both sides of the boat when Jesus told him to put out into the deep water. I could drop the mic right here and it would be enough just reading that sentence. Lower your nets for a catch.

Deep water brings up images of turbulent seas, a dark abyss, a ferocious leviathan waiting to swallow you whole. It’s not all that inviting. But there’s so much zoetic presence—unseen life, vitality—in the deep. Even in the blackest shadows there’s a storehouse of possibility to be found. Even in the darkest depths of our hearts, Jesus is waiting to be caught in our nets.

But I am just like Simon.

God, I’ve done everything you have asked me to do. I’ve done all the right things, I’ve prayed all the right prayers. Why are you still not healing me?

I’ve obeyed you, honored you, served you; where is this abundant life you promised?

I’m here and I’m listening, I keep showing up. Why don’t you ever speak? Why can’t I feel you near me?

I am also not like Simon at all. I want to stay in the shallows where it’s safe. No riptide, no sharks, no unexpected drop off into oblivion.

“But at your command I will lower my nets.”

At your command I will get up off this filthy floor and look you in the eye.

At your command I will confess the secret I’ve been hiding.

At your command I will choose to believe that you love me.

At your command I will put out deeper, reach lower, and trust.