Thank you. Well, good morning and welcome to Bethel, and a hearty welcome to Wayne, who's back. Hi, Wayne. Hi. Yay. We're so happy that you're back with us today.
So, we're going to begin this morning with our responsive call to worship. It's on the screen, and I'm so happy also that Donna's back with us—not to overlook something like that from her knee surgery.
And here, is it, is it, is it, it's not, is it turned on? What would we do without Donna? Boy.
All right. Now let's begin with our call to worship.
There is a good word for you if you are weary. It is the word of love, deeper than every despair.
There is a good word if you have ever felt unworthy: hope. Do not be afraid.
There is a good word that needs to be heard. It is the word of life that raises up abundant blessings.
And let us join together in prayer.
Loving God, gather us anew into your net of love. Interrupt whatever overwhelms us with the gift of your renewing grace. Plumb every death and reveal your holy abundance. Let it awaken us to what you make possible when we risk answering your invitation to begin again. Gift us with the courage to trust the command of Christ to put out into the deep, even when it doesn't seem to make sense. Answer our trust with your promised presence, which reveals an ever-new rising. Bless us with this view, as we gather in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Our first hymn this morning is "The Summons." Today's scripture reading is about Jesus' call to Peter and the fishermen to cast on the other side of the boat and dig deeper. And our kids' video today is about Jesus calling Peter to be a disciple and to follow him. And this song is about, "Will you come and follow me if I call your name?" So let's sing this together.
You, and you in me.
There, thanks for singing that with me. I know if you were trying to read the music, the fourth line is missing the last two verses. But all the words are in there anyway, so glad it worked out.
Okay, announcements. Well, let's see. As usual, worship here at 10, upstairs at 11:30. We have concerts coming up: Saturday, the Southland Jazz Orchestra at 4, and then Sunday the 23rd at 4, the Southland Symphony with their concerto concert.
Chorus rehearsals, Southland Chorus rehearsals begin Tuesday. We'll be in the parlor this week at 7:30. Cub Scouts continue at 6 p.m. on Wednesdays, Thursdays at 10 a.m. here in the Sanctuary. I think this week the wind ensemble is off, and then they start rehearsing again the following week.
So I think that's sort of the main announcements. I will give you a heads up, and of course, we'll be talking with Donna about the fact that we do need to schedule an annual meeting. But before we have the annual meeting, we need to have a council and trustee meeting and a finance group meeting. So it may be just a little while later than usual this year, and that's okay.
So just letting you know, I haven't forgotten, and I'm sure Donna has not, and I know that Virginia has not because she's been asking me questions. And so those of you who are responsible for reports, you can go ahead and work on those and get them to me. And then we will make sure we have a sufficient number of Sundays of notice before we have our meeting.
So that's just putting that out there that it's going to be coming up. Let's see. I think that's kind of it for main announcements. We have other things in prayers that I'll share with you. So did I miss any announcements?
Okay. Oh, I do have another announcement. This is a personal announcement. A few weeks ago, I cleared everything out of the sanctuary that was used for the sets for a mall. I took it all down myself, and I rolled things up, and I put them in the hallway. The only thing still in here is a couple of stands that the poles go on for the backdrop.
And over the last few weeks, a couple of times someone said, "Oh, I might be able to take something down," but it never happened. So if anybody—and you know right now, don't like, yes, you're kind of the only strong enough person here—I don't want to make you, you know, eight or nine trips up and down the stairs in order to do that.
And it doesn't need to be today, but I need that to happen before the 23rd. But I need all of those things that are in the hall put downstairs. They don't even have to be completely organized; they should be on the east side of the basement somewhere that makes sense. And there are places that they were before on the west side, sort of tucked in with all that stuff that you see that's kind of a Tetris puzzle.
Anyway, I'm just putting that out there in case someone feels real energetic and wants to start taking stuff down. The main thing is I want to get it out of the hallway. I want to get it out of the hallway so that the hallway is clear and better for people coming.
Yeah, what brought that to my mind was I looked around and I saw we do still have some wreaths and things, and so we need to take those down and have them ready to go upstairs, and the boxes are over there.
So anyway, Sandy's surgery is Wednesday, so she vows to have that done before.
Okay, right, that's it for our fantastic announcement section.
All right, so now we're going to see a cartoon: Jesus calls Peter. Absolutely passing the peace.
All right, now we can watch.
Good story. We'll talk about it more in a little while.
Let's sing together our glory as we prepare to hear the gospel. Glory to the...
Our gospel reading today, and it's going to be our only reading, as my main focus today is from Luke chapter 5, verses 1 through 11. It's the same thing that we just heard our animated version of Jesus.
Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing on him to hear the word of God, he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake. The fishermen had gotten out of them and were washing their nets.
He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat.
When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, "Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch."
Simon answered, "Master, we’ve worked all night long, but have caught nothing. Yet, if you say so, I will let down the nets."
When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to burst. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink.
But when Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, "Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man." For he and all who were with him were astounded at the catch of fish they had taken. And so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon.
Then Jesus said to Simon, "Do not be afraid. From now on, you will be catching people." When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.
May we hear and understand what the scriptures are teaching us today.
I could give the short version that says, "Follow Jesus' instructions. Go on out to the deep water. Catch what you can." This is typically used for a missionary call, this story.
And I could also say, and see, pay attention to the fact that Peter called other people to help him. That's important. That you don't have to do it all by yourself. Bethel doesn't have to do it all by itself. I don't have to do it all by myself. We bring other disciples to help us.
That's the short version and the concise thing. And that going in the deep water could be scary, maybe. So, you can keep that in mind, but I have a little more to say about this whole thing.
Some of you might know, and some of you might not know, that in addition to the lectionary that we follow—and by now most people who listen to me more than a few times know that we have this lectionary, this list of readings, where each particular Sunday of the church year, it says, "Okay, pick from these," you know, and I pick from those, and we have our service focused on the lessons from those readings.
But what you might not know is that there is also a Jewish lectionary. It makes sense, but why would you know that or look into that, right? So, well, there is. I look at it often.
And not surprisingly, the readings are different than ours. Surprise, right? This Sabbath, our Jewish friends are reading two stories. One is from Exodus about Moses parting the waters and Pharaoh's army drowning in the Red Sea. And the other is from Judges, and it's about Deborah—notice it's a woman—Deborah's military route of wicked King Jabin's troops at Mount Tabor.
Both of those stories refer to the overthrow of authoritarian dictators who enslaved the people. So, I read those. Now it's an open secret that I look at that lectionary along with ours.
So I read those, and I could not help but feel a little bit jealous, because here they had these powerful stories of overthrowing unjust rulers and all this stuff, and we have a fishing story. And I was like, I'm more in the mood for a Pharaoh being swallowed up than going fishing. But, okay, all right, I'll work with it, right?
The reading about the fishing trip shows up in Mark and Matthew and Luke, and the details are similar in all three of those synoptic Gospels. In Mark and Matthew, it's very short and to the point. But Luke—and that's the gospel that we will spend most of our time in this church year—Luke is sort of a Simon Peter fanboy. He loves Simon Peter. He tells us lots of stories about his favorite disciple.
According to this story, Simon Peter only sort of reluctantly follows those directions, kind of whining that, "I just worked all night. There's nothing out there. I'm like, oh, whatever, fine, I'll do it." You know, so he does it. And then, of course, the huge catch came in, and he's ashamed of himself for questioning Jesus. And he says, he might as well just go away from me. Don't pay any attention to me. I'm just saying, well, okay. He felt ashamed of himself.
And he said that. And I have a theory that the Episcopal Prayer of the Day from the Book of Common Prayer for today comes out of Peter's action because the prayer says, "Set us free, O God, from the bondage of our sins."
Okay. So whoever put that in, centuries ago, decided that this part of this story was all about personal sin. But, you know, I think there's a lot more to it than that. It is about that, yes. It's about our own doubts of what we can do. It's our own doubts of whether we can do what Jesus asks us to do.
But there's more to it. Peter made it all about himself, didn't he? Yeah. And to be sure, more people than Peter—meaning everybody—are loved and called by Jesus, including those other fishermen and the partners that helped him with all of this. So everybody was kind of involved.
So I think that that focus, that single focus on Peter's admission of personal sin isn't enough. It's there and it's true and we learn from it. But it's not big enough for the story. It lacks this larger sense of mystery.
And after reading the Jewish lectionaries for the Sabbath this week, I was kind of unsettled and was thinking, we need those for our lectionary this week. Well, I just couldn't stop thinking about those stories that dealt with following in faith and overthrowing authoritarian repression.
So what if the Jesus fishing story isn't merely about personal sin in Peter? What if, like the Exodus, it's more like drowning Caesar in the lake? I don't know. Jesus is teaching more.
Instead of looking at only Peter and his sin, let's take a look at fishing and at the fish. Bear with me, I have a reason for that.
Here's some background. It's important when we read the scriptures and when we learn from these stories that we understand what was going on at the time, in the place, with the people. What was going on in their culture? What was going on in their lives? Why would this story be important to them then? And then how can we make it important to us now?
So that's why I'm going to tell you these next things. During the first century, the Roman Empire, fishing was not the best job in the world. It was pretty miserable. Cicero—anybody else take Latin and translate Cicero? Yeah. Cicero once referred to fishing as one of the most shameful occupations.
It was a list that included not one but two fishery-related jobs. The list was fish sellers, butchers, cooks, poultry raisers, and fishermen. That was what Cicero said were the most shameful jobs. So much for celebrity chefs.
Anyway, fish were, of course, a valuable and important part of the economy. They were a necessary commodity for feeding millions of people across a massive empire. I guess they didn't have cattle ranches. Sorry, those who don't like fish.
But there was no such thing as a free enterprise fishing business, and there were no fishing entrepreneurs. Fishing was controlled by the Roman state, and it only profited the elite. Because for the fishermen themselves, it was essentially sort of a subsistence enterprise.
Local families would form fishing cooperatives, which that kind of seems to be the case here with Peter and the Zebedee sons and John and James and those. But their work was not their own. You can kind of think of it like sharecroppers, I guess.
But the best and biggest fish that they catch would be shipped off to Rome, or to the local Roman governor, for the tables of the wealthy. The fisherfolk wouldn't get any profit from it, since Caesar functionally owned the lake and all the creatures in it. The best of the catch literally belonged to Caesar.
After Rome took its portion, some middling fish might be sold at regional or local markets. But those would be heavily taxed in a system of tariffs, duties, and tributes. And those who caught the fish, they saw very little from their sale. The leftover small fish, if there were any, fed the fishermen and their families.
See, in the ancient Roman Empire, you didn't work for yourself. You didn't choose a job or career. You worked for Caesar. Your entire family worked for Caesar. You, your parents, your children, your neighbors, your friends—all part of a massive political and economic hierarchy, which took nearly all the work of your hands and gave it to the wealthiest people in the empire. And from which you, your relations, and your community received almost no benefit.
I hate to say that sounds familiar. Amen?
Anyway, Simon and Andrew weren't middle class. They didn't run a successful business. They might have owned their own boat instead of renting it, but most likely not. They weren't even what we think of as working class. They were peasants on the bottom rungs of an extractive and abusive system.
And those peasants were often in conflict with the politicians and tax collectors who stole from them. They resented imperial control of their homeland and its lakes and waters. They literally swam in the sea of injustice.
In Luke's version of the fishing story, Peter and his coworkers are in big trouble. No fish. That's not just a bad day. It's a terrible problem. They would still owe taxes on the boat. And they needed to pay a fee just to have their nets in Caesar's water. It didn't matter if they failed to catch any fish. They had to pay. If there were no fish, it meant they were behind on their obligations. No fish, tough luck, more debt.
And you didn't want to renege on the debt. There were dire consequences for that. So here comes Jesus. And he teaches and goes out in the boat. Well, Peter was tired. They were all tired. They were tired of working to the bone. They were tired of little reward, of excessive abuse.
They were exhausted by being occupied by Rome, of owing everything to their distant, uncaring, imperial, greedy overlord who demanded their money, insisted on adulation, and gave nothing in return, of mounting debt, of being functionally enslaved.
"Master, we've worked all night and have caught nothing. Nothing. No fish. No freedom. No hope. Nothing will ever change. It doesn't matter anymore. I can't go on." You can see Peter thinking this. So he sighs.
"Whatever." I can see him rolling his eyes. "If you want us to try over there, we'll give it a last shot. But I don't think it's going to work." Can you hear that? He's about to give up, give in. He's tired of working, worn out from wrestling against this stacked system of oppression from which there would seem to be no escape.
Perhaps Jesus offered a knowing glance. "I get it. I get it, Peter. Move the boat. Lower the nets one last time. Go further out in the water. Go where it's deeper."
It's deeper. It's more dangerous when it's deeper, isn't it? That's when it happened. Fish. Lots of them. Jesus was right. Huge catch. Two boats straining to bring it all in. Those boats weren't small. They were 25, 26 feet long. Probably about five feet deep of holding passengers. All those fish. All those fish.
Those could pay off their debts to Caesar. And for a change, they might even have something left over to feed their own families. The day that they thought was keeping them beholden to the dictator, the day of burdens had morphed into a fish feast.
Go deeper. Cast your nets in the places that are uncomfortable, that are scary. Try again. Even when you're too tired to even think, Peter did that, and look at what happened. It gave Simon Peter and his friends courage—the courage to lay down the nets, the courage to walk away from servitude to Caesar and instead to follow Jesus, a wandering prophet, mystic rabbi who understood the waters and the right waves.
The sin here wasn't personal; it wasn't just about Peter. It was the sin of surrender to an unjust ruler. It was the temptation to throw in the towel.
What if Moses had looked at the sea and said, "I'm sorry, I have to put some of the Jewish lectionary"? What if Moses had looked at the sea and said, "It's too much. We've been walking all night. Maybe Pharaoh will give us a break if we just call it a day."
What if Deborah had believed, "Oh, I'm just a woman. They've got an army. If we surrender, maybe they'll treat us better than before." Moses knew that freedom beckoned. Deborah knew that peace was possible. And Jesus knew and proclaimed that the kingdom of God was at hand.
No Pharaoh. No judgment. No more Caesar. Pull in the nets. Stop laboring for Caesar. Your debts are now canceled. Jesus says to Simon, "Don't be afraid. From now on, you will be catching people."
When they brought in their boats to the shore, they left everything and followed him because they weren't afraid to cast into the deep.
What is deep means different things to different people. Depth can be measured. Think about how old the Grand Canyon is—pretty deep. Think about a stadium, a Super Bowl stadium, from the top of it down to the field—that's pretty deep. I think it's not as deep as the Grand Canyon, and a swimming pool hardly deep at all compared to those other two.
And it's all relative, isn't it? It's about the perspective. Perspective brings entirely different ways of measuring what seems deep to us. To a person terrified of water, the football field is better than the pool, right? To a person who's afraid of heights, "I'll take the pool and not go into this football stadium or the Grand Canyon."
This whole story was sort of a shift in Jesus' ministry from private to public. This was one of the first activities, and I want to share with you a proverb that sort of tells us a way to think about things.
It tells us, "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." Luke's framing tells us, "If you want to go through the motions, go shallow. If you want to fill your nets, go into the deep."
It's not just about numbers, although the size of the catch helps with thinking about that. But Jesus demonstrates his own teaching as they cast their nets, not just for the fish, but they call out for their partners to help them bring in the fish.
So they're fishing for fishers as well. Well, in this story, this is the beginning of his public ministry when he gathers his disciples to follow him. In this story, Jesus nets the initial commitment of Peter and James and John to follow him.
The times then were perilous and frightening. Perilous times, like troubled waters, require much more than shallow responses. We're in some perilous times.
When the tax status of institutions providing for the common good are threatened, stewardship practices and appeals and commitments need to go deeper. When houses of worship receive warnings that the sanctuary provided to the immigrant will not be honored and may be targeted, our commitment to embody justice in the name of Jesus gets called into deep waters.
When programs designed to celebrate our distinctiveness through recognition of diversity and equity and inclusion are eliminated in favor of protecting and preserving the privileged, mediocre, and unqualified, our public witness and ministry compels us to go into the depths of human solidarity and belonging.
Shallow ministry allows and even facilitates the spread of a gospel unconcerned with the conditions of people living on the earth as well as the state of the earth itself. It enables false prophets to reject the communal commitments of following Jesus and it promises the illusion of individual self-satisfaction with self-centered, self-directed, and selfish pursuit of overabundance for a few and scarcity for most.
We can embody that love. It came down from heaven. We can embody and enter the depths of human suffering by going deep. Shallow ministry fails to find anybody. Deep ministry reminds us that the needs are great and perhaps overwhelming, but we still have our gifts.
We still have our knowledge. We still have our skills. We still have the ability simply to say, "Welcome. We love you. Come experience the grace of God." We have knowledge and training and experience, and we don't give up when the surface seems empty. We keep fishing and searching and trusting.
And we continue to have the conversation with the climate denier. We continue to contact our legislatures to object to the assault on the rights of trans folk and on the rights of people of color and on the rights of the LGBTQ community and on the rights of the elderly and the rights of the poor and the needy.
We interrogate the news we receive. We have to because it's hard to know who to trust. I have a few places I look. We have to use caution and discernment with the news we share.
The deep—going into the deep may seem scary, and sometimes it yields scary results. But like the mountaintop, we're not meant to stay there. Jesus calls us to cast our nets into the deep in order to capture what needs to be brought to the surface.
It's hard work, but it is how we fill our community, and it is how we care for one another.
Into the deep, let's join together now in our prayer for transformation and new life. Let us pray.
Holy One, it is easy to succumb to weariness when our work has seemed to yield little goodness. Hope-crushing night can seem so long, yet you call us to keep putting out into the deep, facing the reality of our emptiness. Sometimes it is of our own making; at other times, pressures beyond have submerged us to the point of losing our breath.
So we release everything to you. We pray that your promised forgiveness will continue to be trustworthy and turn for it. Let it raise us up for some work of abundance possible by your grace. We pray this in the name of the one you raised to life, Jesus the Christ. Amen.
And today our words of assurance are unison and on the screen for you. Let us begin.
Through your spirit, we offer ourselves in discipleship. We come together as your disciples. We seek renewed and renewing faith. Touch us now with your spirit. Touch us now with your spirit. Amen.
All right, joys and concerns. Joy: Donna's back! Yay! And making recovery progress. Well, I see Wayne is back! Yay!
On Wednesday, I will at least try to put something on our prayer thing. Wednesday we need prayers for Sandy as she undergoes cornea surgery. It's called a DSEK is the name of the particular procedure. I think it's an initial stand for something; I don't know exactly what the DSEK is.
Right, yeah. So that is Wednesday. Also on Wednesday, one of our musicians—and I'm not going to share their name because I don't know that they would want that—but one of our musicians will be undergoing a cardiac procedure. It's not a bypass; it's something else, but it's supposed to help clear out some space or something.
Anyway, they're hoping that that will go uneventfully. They said they won't be playing or driving for something like five days, and then after that, they'll be back. So they're only going to miss one rehearsal for this next concert if all goes as expected.
Another musician was scheduled to have a shoulder replacement on Wednesday. Wednesday seems to be a popular day for this. But instead, they had some sort of a clip put in—a cardiac thing in an artery or something—a few days ago. They went to a rehearsal that night. It was some sort of minor thing, you know, ambulatory, walk in and get this done, walk out.
And I was like, really? I don't think I'd want to do that, you know? So, but the good news is now their shoulder thing has been rescheduled for June, so they'll be able to play the rest of our concerts with us.
So it's just sort of an interesting thing, but there's a lot of health stuff going on here and in the music world, so we hope that all of that goes well. We keep all of those in our prayers.
Yeah, okay. I think that's the main ones I have. The earthquake in the Caymans, of course, and for the continued cleanup and recovery of these fires, and of course for everyone that's just scared to death about anything else that's happening in our country.
Do we have any other ones we want to share?
Yes, Terry.
The whole lot of people. Yes, indeed. For those who don't know, of course, Emma Lazarus is referring to the Statue of Liberty in that reading, and I have often read that final portion of that. There are all sorts of pieces of music that have set those words, so I think that that is an appropriate prayer for not only our nation but the world.
And thank you, Terry.
All right, let's take a few moments in silent prayer, and then we'll join together in the Lord's Prayer.
Let us pray.
Our Father, let us pray our Lord's Prayer.
Let us pray our Lord's Prayer.
Thank you.
Who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.
Amen.
It is very convenient through your bank website. Our identifying email for that is info at Bethel UCC Ontario dot org. Or, of course, you can just bring your offering up if you're here in person. We have an offering plate. We have a bandana bucket for mission offerings for spare change, and there are envelopes to designate anything you want to go to anything special.
So, let's consider our offerings and support our ministries as we hear some music.
Let's pray together our prayer of dedication and thanksgiving.
God of the bursting nets, we thank you for your abundant blessings, rising up at every turn. Multiply these gifts and our faith that your good news of life-giving love may stretch wider still. Yes, form us deep in your heart for this good and gracious work. Amen.
Before we sing our last song, I want to just let you know about a resource that is present for us. You may not have noticed it, and that is—and I'm starting to work on catching up with it—but I've started to put on a page called "Sermons" on the website.
So if you look across the top bar, you see something that says "Sermons." Click on it, scroll down just a little bit, and I've been selecting certain weeks. I just this last week put the one up that was from two weeks ago, I think from the 26th. I've just about got the one from the second ready, and I'll work on today's over the next couple of days.
What these have is, well, there's basically a transcript of the service, but beyond that, there's a study guide, there's a devotional—like a five-day devotional that gives you sort of a question to look at what we've been talking about during the service.
There are some clips that if you want to share a little 30-second clip or something like that, it usually takes a little while for everything, once I get it done, to populate the page. But if you look on that page, "Sermons," and you go exploring, you'll see, I think at the top left is the one from the 26th, and you can take a look at that. A lot of people asked for that.
And in addition, there is a podcast. If you scroll down to the bottom of the homepage, you'll see a link to a podcast on something called Podbean. Also on the homepage, around the middle, you'll see that you can go to the Apple podcast if you like those better. It's the same podcast; it goes there.
And it just recently got added to iHeartRadio as well. That surprised me, but I was happy about that. So those things are there, and what those are, basically, I extract the sermon from each week, and I convert it to an audio file, and I send it up to Podbean, who then distributes it to the various things.
The Podbean, it shows up there first because that's in the platform, and then a little bit later, it shows up at Apple, and I'm not sure what the timeline is on iHeart, and there's some other one that's getting in the act too, but I don't remember what it is.
But anyway, so if you want to revisit any of this stuff, there are a few easy ways to do it. You can sign up for the podcast, or you can click on that "Sermons" page, and I'm going to try to keep it up more regularly. I did a few, and then I got tired, you know?
So now I've started to be more intentional about that because I think it's helpful if you want to reflect back during the week on what we talked about. And if you have questions, or if there was a particular thing you wanted to revisit, it will be there for you.
So just wanted to let you know, so just go to our website and click on "Sermons," and you'll find the sermon studies, and it's actually a study for the whole service. It includes things about what we talked about in readings and stuff, and click on the podcast if all you want to do is hear the sermon again.
So, all right, and that made it possible for Sandy to take the basket of fun instruments out. I hope everybody who wants to bang and clap or something got something because our last song is energetic: "I Have Decided to Follow Jesus."
So since that's what Peter and John and James did at his invitation, they decided to put down their nets of fishing line and follow him around. So let's sing our song and have some fun while we do it.
Yeah.
And now, please join me in this benediction as we bless one another as we go our way.
And afterwards, please join us in the parlor for some fellowship.
May the blessing of the Holy One who has plumbed every depth continually raise you up. May God's ridiculous abundance stretch wide your heart.
And may God gift you with a boldness to bless others, awakening them to their beloved identity. Amen and Amen.
Amen.
on Feb 25, 2025
