Following Jesus – Isaiah 6:1-8 and Luke 5:1-11
Just outside Geelong, in rural Teesdale, is a monastery, a Baptist monastery of single and married people following a monastic rule, called the Community of the Transfiguration. Some of you will remember their visit to us in 2019 and some of you might have visited them! One of the things that struck me on my visit is that just inside the doorway of the church is a baptistry. You can step down into it and step back out of it to enter the worship space. You can also walk around it, but it is there, immediately and centrally as you come to worship, to remind you that the life of discipleship involves going into deep water.
It is an old architectural idea. In the early centuries of the church baptism usually involved adults and was done by full immersion or affusion (pouring water over candidates standing in water). While Christians experienced persecution this was done privately, outdoors or in people’s homes, but when churches began to be built, baptisteries were built in the porch or just inside the church to remind believers of the significance of baptism. Sometimes there were two baptisteries, one for men and one for women, because candidates were baptised naked! Later grand baptisteries were built near the entrance of cathedrals because baptism was the task of the bishop, and it is still common, in many denominations, to locate the baptismal font at the entrance of the church.
Baptists are not famous for our architecture (our buildings are usually more simple, deliberately so, more stripped back) but at the front of Baptist churches there is always an architectural tussle taking place! How do we place centrally all three symbols of our faith: the baptistry representing discipleship, the communion table representing community, and the pulpit, representin mission, the preaching of the word? At one time, this church, I believe, did have all three placed centrally, but over time, for good, practical reasons, some compromises have been made.
The baptistry does deserve to be front and centre for Baptists. After all, it’s in our name! It is because John Smyth and Thomas Helwys, in 1609, as I mentioned in Sunday to Sunday, became convinced that a church that followed scripture could only consist of regenerate (or living) believers, of those baptised after a profession of faith, that we are known as Baptists. However, our defining characteristic is that conviction – that the church is a company of committed disciples. Baptism is simply the visible sign of that commitment, that we are joining ourselves to Christ and to his Church, that we are embarking on a life of discipleship.
A life of discipleship superbly illustrated in Luke as Simon and friends actually embark on the disciple ship!
Jesus was teaching, we are told, “and the crowd were pressing in on him to hear the word of God.” So, he steps into Simon’s boat and asks him to pull out a little way from shore, as a kind of floating pulpit, and continues to teach. Baptists, as the Australian Baptist Ministries video reminded us, place a high authority on Scripture. We believe in the inspiration, rather than the literal interpretation of Scripture, that through reading Scripture and listening to the Holy Spirit, by ourselves and as a company of believers, our lives will be oriented in the direction Jesus is going, that God will speak to us.
This is what happens to Simon. He is listening to Jesus’ teaching, hearing the word of God, and then he hears Jesus say, “Push the boat out further. Go out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.”
I am struck by the significance of the phrase, the ‘deep water’, and what this means for baptism and for discipleship. Baptists practice, on the whole, full immersion. We put our full bodies into deep water, as a symbol of a full commitment! But going fully under the water is also a symbol of death, of identifying with Christ’s death and Christ’s resurrection, of the death of our old way of living and being and the embrace of a new way of living and being. As Paul says, Romans 6:3,4: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.”
First century readers had other associations with ‘deep water’. ‘Deep water’ was a reminder of the primordial sea, a powerful Jewish symbol of chaos. Being called then to go out further into the ‘deep water’ is a call to a deeper life of discipleship, a commissioning to go deliberately, to remain deliberately, in places of evil and chaos for others.
This helps me immensely with the ambiguous image of ‘catching people’ rather than ‘catching fish’! Perhaps I am taking the analogy too far, but fish, I imagine, would rather not be caught! But people who are out of their depth, who are battered by uncertainty, who are floundering, and flailing in a sea of troubles are very thankful to be caught, very thankful to be rescued. Very thankful!
We had a lovely time at Malua Bay in January, and I was – just a little – thinking about this upcoming series and about baptism as I waded through the beautiful, cool, clear water, thinking about how baptism is a sign of washing and cleansing, but a few moments later, as I was lying in the sun on the beach, I saw Grace out in the water wave her arms in what was clearly a distress symbol. All three of them, plus Dan, Miriam’s partner, had been catching the rather wild waves (they were a bit too far out, Aron and I had just commented) and we realised they were caught in a rip. Dan is a strong swimmer – thank goodness – and was close to Mizzy and Zach and pushed them towards shore, and then went back for Grace, who had been swept much further away, while Aron ran for the lifebuoy, and I kept my eyes fixed on her head. With Dan’s help, she made it to shore, white as a sheet under the red of her exertion. It was scary and we were so thankful someone went into deep water for them.
In both of today’s readings, Simon Peter and Isaiah speak of their overwhelming sense of sinfulness as they encounter the divine call. It is a need for cleansing, but even more than that it is a recognition that they are drowning – not waving – in a sea of sinfulness, of a failure to love as we should love, to live as we should live, but the wonderful message of these stories is that God rescues us – that our God has gone out into the deep water for us – and that God commissions us – despite our sinfulness – to go out into deep water for others. What is powerfully highlighted by our Baptist tradition is that God calls every single one of us to be part of God’s work, that we are a company of committed disciples, that we are a priesthood of believers.
There is another reading of ‘going deeper’ that has resonance for us as contemporary readers of this story and that is to go deeper into the relationship with God, the life that God has called us to. As we sang this morning, “Comes the time to stop and find the deeper river running strong, to drink refreshing waters, and hear the spirit’s song.” Baptism is also a rising to new life, to Christ’s life, and embracing a new way of living and being.
Fishing, as I said, is an ambiguous image, but what we are meant to grasp, in this story in Luke, is something of the abundance, the overwhelming abundance, of life on board this disciple ship. As Jesus is recorded saying, in Matthew and in Mark, “Everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters of father or mother or children or fields, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life.” There is an abundance, a richness and a sweetness, in the life that we live with God in community.
Many years ago, when we were living in Japan, I was very struck by my ikebana teacher, who was a good friend, saying to me, “This is the wonderful thing about you Christians; wherever you go in the world you will find a family.” I have been spending time with someone who is not part of a church this week, who feels extremely alone, that there is no one there for her, and I have been reflecting on the incredible abundance that I have as part of a church family. There are times when our brothers and sisters, our fathers and mothers, in the faith behave badly, when they are bad siblings and bad parents. That needs to be acknowledged, but also, that in the depth of God’s mercy, there is forgiveness, there is reconciliation and restoration, there are abundant blessings that we should embrace and live into in this new life we live together in Christ.
There is also a deepening of our relationship with God.
In verse 5 of our Luke passage, when Simon remonstrates with Jesus about the need to go out again into the deep water, he calls Jesus, “Master”. It is not the ‘master’ of a master and slave relationship, but a term of respect in Greek for tutors or teachers. But after Simon has obeyed, after he has gone out into the deep water, and has discovered there such great abundance that the nets were beginning to break and the boats were beginning to sink, he calls Jesus by a different name. He call him, “Lord”.
What is your name for God? Where are you on this journey of discipleship? Are you still deciding whether you will get on the boat, whether you will step down into the water? Are you finding yourself in deep water, needing to know that God is there will you, that you need to keep on going? Are you there in the deep water because God has called you there – to be there for others? And, are you finding, that although the waves are wild and sky is dark and the water is deep that there is an abundance, a sweetness and a richness, in God’s presence, in the company of committed disciples and in the company of our God?
Let’s close by singing together the baptismal song of my youth, and decision to be baptised, joined to this company of disciples, “I have decided to follow Jesus.”