Put Out Into the Deep: Christ Steps Into Our Boat

On the Sunday of the miraculous catch of fish, Fr. Geoff Harvey asks what a fishing boat, a temple and a human being have in common. Christ does not wait for our nets to be clean or our lives to be tidy — he climbs into the ordinary boat of our weary hearts, our homes and our work, and asks us to put out into the deep. Fr. Geoff draws out three things the Christian life asks of us: receive his presence, trust his word, and leave everything for his kingdom — closing with the urgency of the call to make the treasures of Orthodoxy available to Australians in English.

Transcript

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

I want to start today with a question. What is the common thing about a fishing boat, a temple and a human being? Today the epistle talks about all these different things, but the gospel proclaims one amazing truth: God does not call us just to believe in him. He calls us to let him live in our lives.

St. Paul says, "You are a temple of the living God." A building without God in it is not a temple. It's an empty building, or it has something else in it. St. Paul says our ordinary, everyday bodies are a temple — they have the potential to be a temple for the living God to live in. Does he live in our temple?

And in the gospel, Jesus steps into Simon Peter's ordinary fishing boat and performs an incredible ministry. The boat becomes a floating church from which Jesus preaches, and tired fishermen are called to become apostles. The Lord still does the same today. He steps into the ordinary boats of our lives — our homes, our work, our struggles — and he invites us to follow him, to perform a miracle in our lives and in the world.

Today I'd like to suggest three simple things we need to do in the Christian life. Receive his presence — that's presence, not presents; it's not Christmas yet. Trust his word. And leave everything for his kingdom.

So first of all, receive his presence. An astonishing thing happens in today's gospel. Just before the miracle, Jesus — the second person of the Holy Trinity, God in human form — gets into Peter's wooden boat on the Sea of Gennesaret.

Peter has caught nothing all night, and the others, they were all exhausted. They were washing their nets at the end of an unsuccessful night. The boat was probably still quite a mess and they were trying to tidy up. But Jesus chose that boat, with those people, and I find this very reassuring. He doesn't wait until he finds a successful boat, and he doesn't wait until the nets are all cleaned and neatly put away.

He comes into our weary hearts. He comes into our distracted minds, our anxious families, and imperfect people whose lives might even be a chaotic mess. But we have to allow him to come in. We need to say, "Yes, Master, come in."

The image of the temple in the epistle explains what he wants to do. He says, "I will live in them and move among them." He doesn't want to come for a flying visit. He wants to come in and live within us. St. John Chrysostom says he did not say merely "I will be near them," but "I will dwell in them," showing the greatness of his love towards mankind.

The key to the Christian life is not our success, or our achievements, or our tidy successful persons, but God's presence in our lives.

I'm going to go back in my history here to an Anglican, one of my heroes in my life, a man called John Wesley, that some of you have probably heard of. He attended a Christian meeting in London where a speaker read from the commentary on the Epistle to the Romans. And as the speaker described the change God works in the heart, John Wesley felt his heart strangely warmed. It was a turning point in his life, and it was a turning point in the history of England.

John Wesley preached up and down England, and the hearts of men and women all over England were changed. When the French Revolution came in France, England had already undergone a revolution of its own. Men and women's hearts had been changed — as a result of John Wesley's preaching, which started about fifty years before the French Revolution. So England never had to go through that revolution.

This is what we need in Australia today: changed hearts, mine and yours.

Have we invited Jesus into our hearts, into our boat? Have we said yes to him? Have we ever offered ourselves as a temple for his presence? Have we ever asked him to live in us? Have we ever asked him to change our hearts? In Psalm 50 in the Septuagint — or Psalm 51 in the Western Bible — King David says, "Create in me a clean heart, O God." King David prayed that prayer after he had completely messed up his life by committing adultery and then murder.

So the foundation course that many of you are coming to is not just to fill our heads with theology and give us an intellectual understanding of the Orthodox life and faith. The aim is for us to have Christ in our lives, in our boat, wherever we are — in our bodies, in our hearts — so that we are changed and transformed.

And the way we do this every morning is through our morning prayers. The morning prayer to the Holy Trinity starts off, "I am slothful and sinful" — it's being honest there with God — and then, "Do now enlighten the eyes of my understanding, open my ears to receive your words, and teach me your commandments. Help me to do your will." So we're asking God to come in and make a difference in our lives and through our lives. Holiness begins with hospitality to God.

Some of you have probably heard the verse Revelation 3:20: "Behold, I stand at the door and knock." A very famous verse. In the Western church we tended to use that as an evangelistic verse towards non-Christians, but actually it was addressed to the church in Laodicea, which was a Christian church. So it's actually a call to repentance. It's addressed to us as followers of Christ. It's a call to repentance from backsliding or half-heartedness in our Christian faith. Orthodox theologians teach that the door represents the heart of the believer, who must actively respond to Christ's ongoing presence. We can't just assume it. The primary emphasis remains on living a life of repentance and faithful witness.

So that's the first thing: the presence of Christ in our lives. The second one: trust his word.

Then comes Jesus' instruction that seems completely ludicrous to Peter: "Put out into the deep and let down your nets." Peter is an experienced fisherman. Jesus is a carpenter. So here we have a carpenter telling a fisherman what to do.

Faith is not believing because the circumstances always make sense. Peter was thinking, "This is not going to work." But his response is one of the greatest statements of faith in scripture: "At your word, I will let down the nets." Because you say so, I will do it. I don't understand it, I don't think it's going to work, but I'll do it because you've said so. So faith is obeying because Christ has spoken.

And these words, "because you say so," reveal the beginning of faith. Peter doesn't know what's going to happen, and his own experience tells him the situation is pretty hopeless. But he trusts the word of Christ enough to take the first step.

The miraculous catch that follows is not a reward for Peter's efforts. It's the work of Christ. Peter's trusting obedience becomes the occasion through which he encounters the power and the grace of God.

How often have we laboured all night and caught nothing? Parents praying for children. People searching for work. Marriages that seem difficult. Spiritual lives that feel dry. And we say with Simon Peter, "Lord, I've tried. I've tried. I've tried."

And Jesus says, "Go deeper."

The deep water is not merely geographical, it's spiritual. It's deeper prayer instead of hurried prayer. It's deeper forgiveness instead of resentment. It's deeper repentance instead of excuses.

If we find ourselves struggling with habitual sin, remember what St. Peter of Damascus says: "If you sin out of habit, even when you don't want to, show humility like the publican. This is enough to ensure your salvation."

St. Cyril of Alexandria writes that Peter's obedience teaches us that the grace of Christ accomplishes what our human efforts cannot. Our struggle is necessary, but it becomes fruitful only when joined to his will and work.

So let's ask ourselves: is Christ asking me to trust him in some area of my life, my own experience? Perhaps it's to forgive somebody. Perhaps it's returning faithfully to prayer. Perhaps it's serving when I feel absolutely exhausted or empty. Perhaps it's trying to tithe when my budget is so tight. Perhaps it's — fill in the blanks. Say with Peter, "At your word, I will. Because you said so, I will." Fill in the blanks.

That takes us to the third point: leave everything for his kingdom.

The miraculous catch leaves everyone astonished. But when Peter sees the miracle of the fish, he sees something even greater. He sees himself. He falls down before Jesus and says, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord."

And this is the paradox of holiness: the closer we come to Christ, the more clearly we see both his purity and our need for mercy. St. Isaac the Syrian says, "The one who has seen his own sins is greater than the one who raises the dead." Isn't that amazing? The one who has seen his own sins is greater than the one who raises the dead. Wow.

And Peter saw that. Peter's confession does not lead to despair. It leads to transformation. His trusting obedience becomes the occasion through which he encounters the power and the grace of God.

But Jesus does not depart from St. Peter as requested. He says, "Do not be afraid." Peter, do not be afraid. Those may be the most beautiful words in today's gospel. Our Lord Jesus Christ never reveals our sin in order to crush us. Never. He reveals it so that he may heal us. That's what the sacrament of confession is all about: healing.

Then comes the invitation, the calling: "Henceforth you will be catching men." Peter does not first become worthy and then receive Christ's calling. Christ approaches him, calls him, and gives him his grace — in the midst of his weakness and unworthiness. The fishermen leave their boats, their nets, and even the miraculous catch itself. It seems they discovered that the greatest miracle was never the fish; it was the call.

St. Paul echoes this in the epistle: "Let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, making holiness perfect in the fear of God." Holiness is not withdrawing from the world in fear. It is belonging so completely to Christ that the world no longer controls our hearts.

Is there anything we need to leave behind? Perhaps a bad habit, perhaps a grudge, perhaps endless distraction, perhaps a hidden sin. God's grace calls us to cut away these things that defile and distort us — the sins, the passions, the attachments that prevent us from becoming the people God created us to be.

Sin does not constitute our true humanity. You know, a lot of people say, "Oh, I'm just being human." But sin does not constitute our true humanity — it distorts it. Holiness is the restoration of the human person through communion with God, through the presence of God in our lives.

We'll finish with this. Just imagine the scene on the lake of Gennesaret for a moment. As the sun rises up over that lake, two overflowing boats rock upon the water. Nets strain and break under impossible loads of fish. The disciples stand speechless. Yet the creator of the oceans is not interested in the fish. He's looking at Peter. He's looking at James and John. And he's looking at us. Do not be afraid.

The greatest miracle is that the eternal Son of God wants to live within us. He wants us to be available as his temple. He wants to climb into our boats. He wants to be able to send us into the world as carriers of his precious life, and to become fishers of men.

That same Christ stands beside the shoreline of our lives today. He asks to climb into our boat. He asks us to go deeper. He calls us to follow him.

There's an urgency to this task of fishing for men — not just because Australia is in an unholy mess at the moment in many ways, but because the destiny of souls is in the balance, as more and more un-Christian religions flood into Australia, including just the secularism of our nation, and paganism.

Unfortunately, there is another fisher of men at work in our culture today. He's always been at work in the world, but he's becoming more and more active in our culture. Satan is also a fisherman, and his disciples are fishing for men too. St. Paul tells us in 2 Timothy 2:26 that they may come to their senses and escape the snare — the trap, the hook — of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will.

Satan has his hook out in the water too. God is fishing to save precious souls, and Satan is also fishing for precious souls, with a hook baited with the things of this world — but not to save them, to capture and destroy them. God's hook is the cross, which is appropriate to think about as we have only just completed the after-feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. The Son of God, the second person of the Holy Trinity, died on that cross for us, for all precious souls in the world.

People are either on God's hook or Satan's hook. Either the devil has them or God has them. There's no third fisherman. I think some people think, "Oh, I'm secular, I'm not on God's side or anything, I'm just secular." But there's no third fisherman. You're either on God's hook or the devil's hook. And he's calling us to be fishers of men for him, so that people may be rescued from the devil and from eternal separation from God.

So it's quite a calling. God is calling us to this ministry. More specifically for us, it is to make the treasures of Orthodoxy available to Australians in the English language. Very few Orthodox churches are doing this at the moment in Australia, and we want to change that. God has called us to do this. It's a huge calling.

And we need to think of that miracle of the fish. We need to think of other miracles in our lives, to give us the courage not to be afraid to go forward and to do this, despite all the obstacles. Orthodoxy has been in Australia for 200 years now, and you can count the number of English-speaking parishes on two hands, probably, in the whole of Australia. After 200 years, what are we doing — or what are we not doing, shall I say?

So this is our calling, and we must never lose sight of it. Let us accept his presence, trust his word, and leave everything that gets in the way of our holiness and his kingdom.

Now to God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit be ascribed almighty majesty, dominion and praise, now and forever, unto the ages of ages. Amen.