Gloria Dei Lutheran Church

Luke 5: 1-11

Last Sunday, we were gathered in the vestry going over the game plan for worship. There were quite a few things extra things in the service and a flurry of instructions. We were doing a Candlemas service, blessing the candles for the year and that meant a festive processional in the middle of worship with torch bearers and ribbon twirlers and people carrying piles of candles, along with the bread and wine and offering. We were getting down to about 5 minutes until we started and Pastor Bradley glanced over to the corner of the vestry and saw the bell tree and said, “Maybe we should add the bell tree, too.” Deacon Ashley and I burst out laughing because there was already so many things but then I said, “Yes!! Please! Add the bell tree.” When I started here a year ago, I had yet to encounter what is now my favorite liturgical object. I love that thing. Just physically as an object it’s cute. But also, it sounds so good and fills my whole body with joy.

Just in case you need a refresher or you weren’t here last week, we are going to show a brief clip that Thor Carlson took. I want you to pay attention to Bradley’s demeanor. (Roll video)

Did you notice Pastor Bradley’s face as he rang the bells? Absolutely resolute, unwavering, defiant. I was over sitting in the chapel and when the processional got within eyesight and I saw his countenance, it moved me to tears. Because it’s a metaphor for everything we do and have to give and offer the world. One on hand, are you kidding me? Every day is a new layer of hellish headlines and our humanity getting steamrolled and we are ringing bells. Yes, exactly.

My friend Winnie is the rector at St Luke’s Episcopal church in Atlanta and while we were debriefing our experience of Sunday worship gatherings the last couple weeks, which felt extra sweet and downright joy filled, she said it’s been the same in Atlanta. Winnie said there is so much work to do. So much. But on Sundays, we get to dream.

So rings the bells and announce that mercy won’t be rationed here. Ring the bells and tell the world that Christ is risen, alleluia.

Clearly, it’s the bells I want to preach about. But instead, we have a story about fishing.

Fine. Let’s talk about that fishing story.

Jesus is preaching to another crowd along the shore of a lake but wow, they were a little too much so he crawled into a boat owned by a man named Simon. Jesus asked Simon push off a little ways from shore so he could teach from his seated position in the boat. With a bit of a buffer and perhaps, so that folks might hear him better. When he was finished speaking, he tells Simon to take them out to the deep water and drop the nets there.

It’s important to note here that Simon had fished the night shift on that lake. He and his crew had worked all night, through the small hours and had not caught a thing. The fish weren’t biting. I know very little about fishing, but a bit of study in my pastor nerd books tells us that these nets made of linen which fish could see in daylight. So, they fished in the night. These nets needed 2-4 men to deploy and they needed to be washed every morning.

So, you can understand then, why when Jesus tells Simon to take them to deep water, in the bright sun of morning and throw those nets that they had just cleaned into the water why Simon might hesitate. Which he does, but he also does what Jesus tells him to do. And lo and behold, they caught a whole lotta fish.

One of my favorite lines in this story from Luke is, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing.” I bet some of you can relate.

I can. I was a church planter in a mission church here in St Paul for a lot of years.

It was years of casting nets and mending nets and working all night and going home with shoulders hunched. Yes, it was a joy. And is was so very hard.
We were a church without a building. Which mean continually looking for spaces to meet. For this church to find a home to gather has meant relocating a tender, vulnerable flock eight different times. Finding a new space, figuring out how to be in it, where to store our worship bins, how to help people find us in another new location, remaining non anxious even though there is so much to freak out about.

The moving is only one part of the story. In the first years, it was also planning beautiful gorgeous things for 12 people and getting casual messages or texts from people that they had planned to come but went to Ikea instead. Or fell asleep. Or simply forgot.

Sometimes, life as a church planter has brought me to my knees and kept me up all night and made me weep from exhaustion.

So I could rewrite this Gospel as one from the life of a pastor. You could write it as the life of a student or an artist or a mechanic or a baker or a friend or a candlestick maker or an accountant or a teacher. Sometimes the daily grind of whatever it is you are working all night long at feels like the whole story of your life.

Jesus sits down in our boats or our hair salons or our classrooms or on our couches and says, “Do not fear. I am with you. Relax into this love. Even if you let go of the nets completely, it’s going to be okay. The love won’t change.”

Letting go of the net doesn’t come easily. I hang onto those things and my control of outcomes until I have deep red lines in my hands from the nets. Like the kind you get from carrying too many heavy plastic shopping bags of groceries. Jesus meets me once again in my grumpy need or my low days or when I’ve been completely humbled by the impossible work before me. Jesus comes toward me and I get nervous because the water is very deep out here. And he says, yes, beloved, I’m here. In the deep. With you. God is at work, hidden among all of this.

I suspect Jesus is still calling us to do things we can’t imagine. For now, it might be to simply hang onto your humanity. But likely, harder invites will come. The invitation is ongoing. When we remember that we are all caught up in the grace and mercy and love of Jesus—-caught in a net that will sustain us and humble us—we will witness such abundance that the goodness will threatened to swamp our boats or any other object we use to try and contain the uncontainable. It doesn’t mean that it isn’t going to be hard. But the goodness will surround and overwhelm us. And we will find ourselves shaking a bell tree with joy and defiance.

I love that there were other fishing boats on the water around the one featured in this story. I love that they called one over to help them drag all the fish in and there was so much it almost swamped both boats. As soon as those boatloads of fish reached the shores, the fisherman whose whole lives were wrapped up in those boats and nets and the nightly catch left the boats on shore and went with Jesus. Feels like a waste of a miracle, doesn’t it? What’s the point of catching all those fish if you are just going to walk away?

It takes only a small amount of imagination to consider what likely happened. The crowds that were pressing in on Jesus on the shore at the beginning of the story likely builds a big fire and sat down and feasted together from this abundance. Not unlike we are going to do at noon today. The leftovers were brought home and given to neighbors as they told them the story. We think: Jesus your timing is wrong and these tools are wrong and we have tried it that way already and we are in water over our heads and there are terrifying wiggly things under the surface that we cannot see. And Jesus says no matter.

I love that it was so much mercy and goodness that Simon Peter fell to his knees. It overwhelmed him and surely affected all the days of his life. Have you had a moment like that? I do every single time we gather to break bread. It was true all those years at my former church and it is true every Sunday here at Gloria Dei. So, we call to the other boats around us to come on in for shore lunch. We feed the crowd with what Jesus has provided us in spades. Ollie ollie in come free.

Maybe this story actually is about the bell tree. Because I think sometimes we are going to feel like we are coming up short.

Does it feel like you are coming up short? The boatloads of mercy and love we have to offer are so full they are nearly swamping us but maybe you can’t see it. Or remember it. Then you are going to have to watch this processional line again, ring the bells and remember all that we have here. Maybe we have the wrong nets or the wrong timing and the wrong tools and it’s okay because Jesus works with what we have and brings an absurd abundance.

So we are going to ring all the bells. There is no lack here. There is no need to dole things out judiciously. There is no need to ration fish.

Boatloads of fish will not be rationed here. Ring the bells.

Mercy will not be rationed here. Ring the bells.

Love will not be rationed here. Ring the bells.

Our humanity will not be rationed here. Ring the bells.

Forgiveness will not be rationed here. Ring the bells.

Second chances will not be rationed here. Ring the bells.

Joyful resistance will not be rationed here. Ring the bells.

Care for our neighbors will not be rationed here. Ring the bells.

Alleluias will not be rationed here. Ring the bells.