Do Not be Afraid

Fifth Sunday after Epiphany

February 9, 2025

Woodland Park Presbyterian Church

Readings: Isaiah 6:1-8; Luke 5:1-11

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.  (Ps 19:14)

Good morning. It is good to be with you today, in this moment of calm before the cultural spectacle that is Superbowl Sunday. Hopefully it is a moment of calm for you, an hour of grounding and connection, to be followed by food and fellowship.

When I was a senior in high school, it was my and my classmate’s turn to share a message with the congregation on Senior Sunday at Rolling Bay Presbyterian Church. Now, I would not be able to tell you what I talked about (it was more than a few years ago, believe it or not), but I do remember feeling an inexplicable thrill at the prospect of crafting and sharing such a message. Of course, it would take many, many years before I acted upon that feeling, but it was there nonetheless. Looking back, I can see how that was a moment of self-revelation; a vocational marker that would stay with me.

I grew up in that church and was theologically formed by teachers and mentors who held the authority of Scripture with reverence, while also valuing reason, critical thinking, and spirituality. Our youth group leader happened to be rather smitten with music that had come out of the charismatic movement. One song we frequently sang, appropriate for today’s lessons, was “Here I am, Lord” (is it I, Lord? I have heard you calling in the night. . .) In fact, the folks at St. Luke’s Episcopal in Ballard — where I serve as office admin and occasional preacher — will sing that as their closing hymn this morning. Given these conditions, I probably should have known I would end up a theology nerd.

Our readings this morning encourage us to pause, to reflect upon callings and sendings; on how we dedicate ourselves and our energies, and to remember Who it is who calls us to the work.

Word

In chapter five of Luke’s gospel, Jesus is just beginning his itinerant ministry after having been baptized by John in the Jordan river, and after proclaiming the year of Jubilee in his home synagogue with the reading from Isaiah 61. That message didn’t go over so well, so he’s moving on to other towns and villages within the region of Galilee. In ancient Palestine, this is an area that experiences the Roman occupation in very tangible ways.

Religious scholar Douglas Oakman notes that political dimensions appeared in the Galilee of Jesus’ day in four ways: a) social stratification with elites residing mostly in urban environments, b) monopolization of the means of violence, c) control of patronage and patron networks, and d) control of economic resources from the top. In other words, distinctive ethnic and cultural groups were kept separated and subdued, with those in the “peasant” class dominated by aristocratic go-betweens and tax collectors. Any surplus of production was directed away from the local communities, while things like roads and aqueducts were tightly controlled for the benefit of empire and the ruling classes.

And here comes Jesus, walking alongside the freshwater Sea of Galilee, gathering attention and followers and folks who are especially in need of good news and Jubilee. On this particular day the crowd becomes so great, Jesus decides to use the water as an amplifier and the shore as an amphitheater. He asks Simon Peter to take him out just far enough so that the water can carry his words to shore.

I love this image: of Jesus teaching from a boat. Word upon the water. It draws me back to the creation narrative where, in the beginning “a wind from God swept over the face of the waters,” and God spoke into the deep. Wherever there is Word and water, there is creation, new life, a font. In Scripture, any time we encounter Jesus on or near water, we must pay attention. Water often accompanies divine actions and events. Was it the voice of Jesus that brought forth the fish? I would imagine that creation knows the One who is firstborn of creation, the One from whom creation emerged. (But I digress)

After Jesus teaches to the crowd, he instructs the fishermen to go out and drop their nets. Weary, Simon Peter agrees to do so and the results defy understanding. Ched Myers, who coined the term Watershed Discipleship, describes this passage as a “Sabbath Economics tale, in which nature provides mutual aid to peasants in crisis.” And yet, there is good reason for the men to feel fear at such a large haul.

Myers describes the context of this story in a way that is strikingly similar to modern day commercial enterprises. The fishermen of Galilee were witnessing the devastation of the ecosystem by overfishing, which was due to the empire’s demand for exports of salted fish and fish sauces. Simon Peter and the Zebedee brothers likely fished for subsistence while selling the majority of their catch to local authorities who then funneled the resources—and the profits—to the elites.

Myers also notes that the size of the haul as described in Luke’s gospel would no doubt catch the attention of local authorities making it difficult for Simon Peter and his partners to go unnoticed. Enter Jesus. His invitation to follow him is likely a very real act of grace.

“Don’t be afraid.” Did you notice the difference between the Isaiah passage and Luke? Isaiah and Simon Peter respond in similar ways to their divine encounters: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips.” “Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man.” There is the shock of a kind of self-revelation in the face of the Holy One, Creator of heaven and earth. Or perhaps we could call it humility—the kind of humility that plants our faces near the dirt, the humus, from which we come, as we realize just how enmeshed our existence is in earthiness contrasted with the divine realm. That is a very human response.

For Isaiah, the encounter pivots on forgiveness at the touch of a live coal upon the lips. The seraph purged or cleansed him with fire as preparation to go and share God’s message.

To Simon Peter, Jesus responds “Don’t be afraid.” Now, this could be a particularity of Luke’s gospel. In the first two chapters encounters with angels also include the refrain, “do not be afraid.” We can see a literary continuity. But I would argue that Jesus’ response differs from Isaiah’s encounter because of the incarnation. His response more closely aligns with the very real possibility that God’s reign on earth – the presence of God’s kingdom – was initiated with Jesus’ earthly ministry. In other words, Jesus was calling those first disciples into the “mystical-yet-material” [Myers] work of healing, repair, restoration, and preaching good news.

By following Jesus they entered into a realm of new creation inaugurated by the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. So, what’s there to be afraid of? Probably everything. Simon Peter, James and John left livelihoods and households to follow a man who told them to drop their nets where they had already fished, a man who could, quite possibly, get them into a lot of trouble. It is a long march they’re embarking upon toward Golgotha, and a tomb. (But we’ll read about that later)

Vocation

When I was in seminary, we talked a lot about vocation. (A lot being a nice way of saying, ad nauseam.) Not only did we have our own individual calling to consider, but then there were the very bureaucratic processes of being called to a particular community, confirmed by committees, etc. Or perhaps — for the more entrepreneurial (and antiestablishment) types —  there was the possibility of being called to create something new, something fresh and distinctive. This calling and sending language was, in the context of my training, often informed by modern business practices, even when my instructors were attempting to move away from the ‘pastor-as-CEO’ model.

Then there’s the layer of organizational vocation, or mission. If you have ever participated in the process of coming up with a mission statement, you are likely painfully familiar with the problem of language. Mission statements need to be clear and concise, while also communicating a boatload of subtext. Suddenly syntax takes the spotlight, wrenching the mic away from poetic phrases and heartfelt values.  

With that in mind, I’d like you to think back to the last time you had a conversation with yourself (or others) about your calling, your purpose, your vocation. The start of a new year certainly tends to invite this kind of reflection. How did that conversation go? What resources have you turned to recently or in the past? How did you think about it? Did you, as the popular title suggests, “Start with Why” . . ?

I have to confess, I struggle with this conversation. Do you? It just feels so big and sometimes ominous. (What if I get it wrong? Is it even possible to just live without having a personalized tagline?) We’re surrounded by so many stories about the Lone Genius, or the Rags to Riches, or the Local Hero; I find it debilitating at times to try and articulate the purpose of my existence — and I say this after completing a PhD, a degree which is defined by making a meaningful contribution to a given field or area(s) of research.

(So) Challenge number one: hearing and discerning the call. Challenge number two: responding with “here I am, send me” (even without hot coals and overabundant harvests). . . . And then another question popped up in my theology nerd-brain: where is Here?

When I first spoke with Pastor Joe about joining you all this morning, he mentioned that some folks here have been doing a little reading together, and it sounds like you’ve reached an essay by the late theologian Sallie McFague. Full disclosure: she is one of my favorites. When she died in 2019, she was living in Vancouver BC and had taught for some years in her “retirement” at the Vancouver School of Theology. It’s from her that I began to gain a clearer picture of ways that we can play with language in order to stretch our conceptions of the world’s relationship with God and God’s relationship with the whole cosmos. As a result, it’s her work that has helped me to re-articulate theology and faith and practice in terms of place, of geographies and topographies. 

I mention that because, in the spirit of Sallie McFague, I started to wonder, what might happen when we pivot from thinking about vocation in terms of what we’re called to do and how we’re called to do it, to considering the implications of where, or even when (place and context)? I don’t mean necessarily the experience of uprooting oneself to go to the jungles — there’s a long history of Christian missions that can offer heroic stories and cautionary tales. But rather, as we pause and reflect on our own vocational narratives, consider the story of Jesus calling Simon Peter and the Zebedee brothers to follow him; I’d like us to recognize how place and temporal context are essential aspects of that story.

As fishermen, the disciples were intimately related to an ecosystem and the waters that provided their livelihood. No doubt they could read water for currents and changes in weather. They likely knew every common species and some uncommon ones as well. Following Jesus, they carried the knowledge and familiarity with that place with them along the way. (Remember, at the end, Peter was identified as a Galilean.)

The where of their calling is co-constitutive with the what and why. As witnesses to a manifestation of Sabbath Economics, where the abundance of creation nearly overwhelmed them, they could preach good news and provide testimony to how word and water accompanied divine events.

You and I are twenty-first century creatures living in the Pacific NW. We are witness to economics these days that are very different from Sabbath Economics. We may hear a call to follow Jesus down some very rough roads, pass through some turbulent waters. In those moments, I invite us all to be clear about what God is calling us to and why, and to keep our senses attuned to the earth, the soil, the dirt from which we come in order to inform what is the next faithful step toward that calling.

. . . . Do not be afraid.