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February 4, 2007 |
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INTO THE DEEP WATER
Luke 5.1-11
February 4, 2007 – 5th Sunday After Epiphany
First Presbyterian Church ~ Owensboro, KY
Rev. Jonathan E. Carroll, Th.M.
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In the center of Florence, Italy, the skyline is distinguished from all other European cities by the Duomo, the dome of the cathedral. It is a gigantic, octagonal cupola, beneath which is the Baptistry, where the earliest Christian worship in Florence took place and where baptisms have occurred since the early middle ages.
People come from everywhere to see the Duomo with its famous dome; they come to climb the medieval bell tower, and they come to see a series of great doors to the Baptistry. The doors are bronze, probably 10-12 feet high and the individual panels contain relief sculptures that depict scenes from the Old Testament and the life of Jesus. They are astounding. Every detail is in place: each panel tells an entire story with warmth and passion and humanness and sometimes a sense of humor – all of it carved with love in bronze. These doors are of such unimaginable beauty, that Michelangelo named them the “Gates of Paradise.”
The doors are the work of a Florentine artist and sculptor, Lorenzo Ghiberti, who lived from 1378 until 1455. What kept me returning to Ghiberti's doors was the fact that he worked on them all his adult life. He received the commission when he was 25 and worked on the doors until he was 74, 49 years. Finally he stopped working on the doors and not long after, he died.
He did a lot of other things, too, in an award-winning way. But the doors were his focus, the common thread that ran through his whole life. Actually it was one of my college professors who is a good friend, who stood with me, quietly looking at the doors and said, "Wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to create something and at the end of the day be able to point to it and say, ‘there — that is my life's work?’"
I think sometimes that the one of the greatest gifts of all is knowing what is your life's work and then having the privilege of being able to do it.
The decision about what to do with your life is one of the (if not the) most important decision you and I ever make. I know that many people of all ages, are still trying to decide what to do, who to be, how to spend our life’s days. I know that the decision about what to do with your life isn't made only once, but that there is a sense in which we all make that decision again and again, over and over, no matter how young or old, no matter how many degrees we hold, how many jobs we have had, or how many times we’ve retired. I know also that people sometimes live lives of dull unhappiness because the decision about what to do with their lives turned out not to be a good one and they don't know how to unmake it, or for a variety of reasons, cannot unmake it. And l know, too, that the decision about what to do with your life is a theological decision, a spiritual decision, whether or not you think of yourself as a theological or religious person. Because the decision about your life's work is about your ultimate values, and your commitments, it’s about your worldview and your ultimate beliefs about who God is, and who you are, and what community is all about, and what the meaning is of this whole enterprise we call “life.”
And I know that it is never, never too late for any of us to decide – for the first time or the thousandth time – what all of that means and is about, and then to do it ... your life's work. Never too late.
One time, Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee talking with his friends and the crowd of people who were following him. And when the crowd became too large he stepped into the fishing boat of one of his closest friends, Peter, and proceeded to talk to the crowd from the boat. Later a peculiar thing happens. Jesus teaches his friends, all of whom are in the boat now, to go into the deep water, and let down their nets. "It's no use," Peter answers him. "We've fished all night – we have done what we do best as long as we’ve ever done it at once, and, still, we have caught nothing.” But they made the decision to do it anyway – to go into the deep water – and they caught so many fish their nets began to break and the boat began to sink. And Peter says, "Woe is me. Depart from me, Lord." Translate that: "Something funny is going on here—something more personal, more vulnerable, more risky than this big pile of fish." "Don't be afraid," Jesus said, "from now on your days with fish are on hold. Now you will catch people." Peter's life's work then began to emerge, and he and his friends “...left everything to follow him."
Deciding what your life's work is and deciding to do it is the most important decision you and I ever make.
You’ve read, I’m sure, something of the writings of Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist from Vienna who survived Auschwitz and who wrote about it later; the relevance of his observations continues to captivate me. Frankl observed that when men and women live without hope, when life has no meaning, no goal, no hope except its end, life itself begins to dissolve ... strength dissipates, along with the all-important will to live.
He wrote:
"Any attempt to restore a person's inner strength in the camp had first to succeed in showing him some future goal."
Frankl discovered that one source of the will to live – and not simply sitting around in despair, putting in time, waiting to die – was hope, hoping toward the next moment, another day: the goal of survival. The goal didn't need to be some lofty ambition - to write a symphony, or discover the cure for cancer, or establish freedom and justice for all. In that dreadful holocaust where mistreatment, malnutrition, and extermination were the norm, the life-saving hope was to do what needed to be done here and now: to help this man to get up, to share food with this woman, to hold and comfort this child. The ones who could rise above what was happening to them by forces beyond their control – the ones who did what they had to do – they not only seemed to live, they seemed to live more fully, they began to talk with one another again and to remember and to write poetry and gather to sing songs: the children drew pictures, the musicians formed string quartets, the writers put pen to paper again.
There is something about knowing what you need to do—knowing what your work is—that adds a richness, a kind of spiritual depth to life, regardless of the circumstances in which it is being lived. Vocation – the call of God in our lives to do God’s work in the world – is not dependent on our circumstances – be they happy or in despair or in-between somewhere. God calls us to that intersection where, as Frederick Buechner has it, our deep gladness meets the deep hunger of those around us. Knowing your life’s work – then choosing to see it in whatever it is you are doing – is a gift from God that extracts from our silent mouths a beautiful acclamation of faith, a sign gratitude, and the sound of praise: hallelujah!
Of course, our culture - with its values, its conflicting claims, its counter-narrative – no, our culture does not help ... either in the discovery or the doing of our life's work. For instance, Duke University's Fuqua School of Business published the results of a poll a few years ago in which the vast majority of the students polled responded to the question: “What do you want out of this school?” by declaring: “Money, power, and things.”
Simply put, that’s just not going to do it – it doesn’t work now or for the long run. And to the degree that this culture of ours cannot come up with something better, something more life-giving, life enhancing, deeper, or fuller, it is a culture that is, while beautiful in so many ways, sick at its stomach.
How about instead of "money, power and things," “faith, hope, and love,’ or, at the least, "peace, joy and justice?" How about "to learn how to live, to learn how to love, to learn the joy of responsible participation in a community?" How about “the development of a lifestyle that can be sustained” or “the opportunity to make a difference in the life of a child," or “the enhancement of the life of our own beloved family and friends?"
This issue of vocation, discernment, and decision-making is at its heart a theological issues, a religious issue, and a biblical issue. But, not everyone can or should drop their nets to follow a poor, unproven, itinerant preacher; not every one can or should attend seminary and become Ministers of Word and Sacrament. (In fact, some would argue that we have enough ministers already.) Not everyone can or should do anything different than what they are doing right now, whatever that may be. What we need is not for a bunch of people to quit their day-jobs, or go to seminary, or seek out a career-counselor – though, to be sure, some are called to do precisely those things. No, What we really need are lots of people who see God's hand and hear God’s voice in what they are already doing, or in what they are clearly gifted to do and haven’t yet begun to do. What we really need are people who are willing to listen to God’s voice, and go into the deep water, to go deeper than they have before, to let go of their emptiness there, and to find that in the searching, they have been filled and have been found.
Author Dan Wakefield offers his own experience. In mid-career, Wakefield seemed to be sinking into depression, anger, disillusionment. And then he met Dorothy Day—founder of the Catholic Worker Movement and a halfway house in the Bowery. Wakefield volunteered to help in the kitchen and wrote later about "a real mystique that called to young people, offering in the midst of the grim poverty of the Bowery something that all the glittering affluence around us lacked—a sense of purpose, a way of transcending self through service." Wakefield didn't become a social worker, but he did become an intentional Christian and returned to writing, his life's work, now with a sense that it was what God wanted him to do, had gifted him to, had given him to do. He realized that real spiritual faith requires that we be explorers, open to the possibility that our wrong turns and mishaps might lead to the richest territory of all, and that listening and then deciding takes us where we’re going.
Some need to drop everything and follow. But not all can; not all should. In fact, it is for those who cannot and should not that this word is important. You may not be able to leave your job, you may not be up to following a dream. You have responsibilities and people depend on you and it may be that what you are doing that enables you to fulfill your responsibility and care for those who depend on you is, now—in this moment—your life's work. You may not be able to leave a relationship for a variety of reasons—even though leaving presents itself as a daily option and it may be that staying and doing what you have to do now—in this moment—is your life's work. And, of course, it may be that your life's work is to do just that, to leave everything to follow him.
It is the most important decision you and I can make. It is a decision that you and I make every day. It is a decision that can make us desperately unhappy or deeply and profoundly grateful. It is a theological decision, a spiritual decision, and a biblical one. It’s about discernment. It’s about prayer. It’s about listening among the cacophony of conflicting voices for the one that whispers of grace; the one that calls from the shore: Let it go…into the deep…now, follow me.
It happened when the prophet Isaiah saw that vision and heard God’s question, “Whom shall I send?” It happened when Jesus Christ walked among us and called his friends, some of whom changed jobs and roles and most of whom did not. Regardless, he called every one of them to live more deeply, more radically, more lovingly than ever they had before, and to do so in his name. Whether they got up to go or stayed put – each found a way to let go, to leave it behind, and to follow him. Each went into the deep of things and found there a call to do with their lives what brings gladness amidst the worlds desperate need.
May something very much like it happen to you. Amen.
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