Now is the Time for Deeper Christianity

This sermon explores Jesus call to the first disciples and addresses our calling as Christians in these times today

The text is Luke 5: 1-11

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Transcript

Sermons from 

Mission Hills UCC

San Diego, California

Rev. Dr. David Bahr

david.bahr@missionhillsucc.org

February 9, 2025

“Deeper Christianity”

Luke 5: 1-11 – Common English Bible

One day Jesus was standing beside Lake Gennesaret when the crowd pressed in around him to hear God’s word. 2 Jesus saw two boats sitting by the lake. The fishermen had gone ashore and were washing their nets. 3 Jesus boarded one of the boats, the one that belonged to Simon, then asked him to row out a little distance from the shore. Jesus sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. 4 When he finished speaking to the crowds, he said to Simon, “Row out farther, into the deep water, and drop your nets for a catch.”

5 Simon replied, “Master, we’ve worked hard all night and caught nothing. But because you say so, I’ll drop the nets.”

6 So they dropped the nets and their catch was so huge that their nets were splitting. 7 They signaled for their partners in the other boat to come and help them. They filled both boats so full that they were about to sink. 8 When Simon Peter saw the catch, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “Leave me, Lord, for I’m a sinner!” 9 Peter and those with him were overcome with amazement because of the number of fish they caught. 10 James and John, Zebedee’s sons, were Simon’s partners and they were amazed too.

Jesus said to Simon, “Don’t be afraid. From now on, you will be fishing for people.” 11 As soon as they brought the boats to the shore, they left everything and followed Jesus.

Even though I had been baptized, confirmed, and raised in the church, I became a Christian in 1987.  Even though at 7 years old, I felt my heart strangely warmed and gave my life to Jesus as my Lord and Savior and at age 16 accepted God’s call upon my life to become a pastor…  In fact, in 1987, I was already a pastor, 21-years old, for two congregations in rural South Dakota, which sounds odd, right, to say that I became a Christian while serving as a pastor and preparing to attend seminary that fall?  Obviously, there’s a story behind it. 

In 1987, I went with a group of United Methodist college students from across South Dakota on a mission trip to Haiti.  We piled in the back of a brightly painted pickup truck that hugged precipitous cliffs as we climbed steep mountainsides, passing women and children carrying huge baskets on their heads.  We passed through rivers without bridges.  Hours later, we drove on a foot path that ended at a clearing in the woods where there was a small cinder block Methodist church surrounded by huts made of clay and covered with palm branch roofs.  The only other permanent building was a new cinder block school that a previous Methodist mission team had built.  We were there to add a kitchen.  

Unfortunately, it didn’t get built.  The building supplies, ordered well in advance, didn’t arrive until the day before we left.  For nearly two weeks we asked anxiously, when will the supplies arrive?  They always laughed and said, “When God provides.”  We were there to do God’s work, to be God’s hands.  Didn’t God want us to get our work done?  

It was hard to “waste” our time, which of course was not wasted.  Instead we spent our time playing with kids, learning their games, teaching them our games like Red Rover.  The kids were fascinated by my increasingly sunburned skin.  They discovered that if you pressed hard enough on my pink skin, it momentarily turned white.  And eventually black and blue.  

Thanks to an interpreter, during the day we spent a lot of time listening to people tell their stories and at night we joined them at the church full of people singing joyously, praising God completely out of proportion to the evidence of blessing we saw with American eyes.

But first, today’s gospel lesson is very familiar – the calling of Jesus’ first disciples.  You may not realize that Luke’s version of this familiar story is actually quite different from Matthew and Mark.  There, Jesus simply walked by Peter and Andrew, and then James and John, and said, “Come follow me.”  And they did.  Only Luke adds the drama of fishing all night with nothing to show for it and then a miraculous catch, after which, Luke explained, then they dropped everything to follow Jesus.  Oddly, John tells the same story of a miraculous catch – but it happens after his resurrection, not as the calling of his first disciples.  

Anyway, there’s one particular line only in Luke’s story that caught my attention.  Jesus said to Simon, “Row out farther, into the deep water, and then drop your nets for a catch.”  They did and the catch was overwhelming.  But not until after they rowed out, into the deep water.  Something about that line spoke to me.

And so, my conversion to Christianity.  It didn’t happen in a flash of guilt or grief.  There was no crying at an altar at which I stood convicted of my sin.  No date and time at which the heavens opened and I finally saw the light.  Rather, I was slowly, gradually, converted to Christianity by the stories that the adults told us of their lives, many stories in which they insisted that when we returned to the United States, we should tell people in our government to help make their lives better.  You see, one story after another involved the effects of mangled US foreign policy and how they wanted justice from our government.  

I listened, I sympathized, but I was just there to do good, my duty, my Christian duty.  What they were asking for was political and politics wasn’t my duty.  Helping them was – the way I thought they should be helped.  I hate to admit that, in my early 20s, I agreed with the critics of Martin Luther King.  Stick to the proper concerns of a Christian minister.  Take care of souls.  Although I did agree, Jesus commanded us to also feed people’s bodies.

But in the same vein of criticism, Brazilian archbishop Dom Helder Camera is famously quoted:  When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist. 

Why indeed are Haitians so poor?  Here’s a little Black History Month lesson.  Haiti was the first independent Black republic in the Western Hemisphere– a remarkable achievement in 1804 less than 20 years after the end of the American Revolutionary War.  Haitian independence started with a slave rebellion that lasted 12 years until they defeated the forces of none other than Napoleon.

France had reaped enormous wealth by “importing” unprecedented numbers of Africans to grow sugar and coffee.  Incredible wealth poured out from the island.  Upon Napoleon’s defeat, France had the nerve to demand reparations.  Imagine the audacity, the absurdity of a country that had grown rich off enslaving people demanding those people pay for their freedom.  And such an enormous amount of money, it took 143 years to pay it off.  The debt was crushing.  

In 1900, 80% of Haiti’s national budget was spent still paying those reparations.[1]  Which meant, they had virtually no money to spend on infrastructure such as roads and schools or any other human development.  In 1915, the US used dubious rationale to begin an occupation of Haiti that lasted 20 years.  Then in the 1950s, concerned that communism might come to the island, the US began propping up corrupt leaders including the infamous Duvalier’s – Papa Doc and Baby Doc.[2]  Our team of Methodist college students arrived in 1987, the year after Baby Doc was overthrown – and took nearly all the country’s wealth with him.  But it started with being “the only country in which ex-slaves themselves were expected to pay a foreign government for their own liberty.”  

After all that these villagers had been through, they were right to expect more of us.  When else would they have an opportunity to speak to Americans who have direct connections to their government in Washington, DC?  Of course, we all thought, we don’t have that kind of access!  But then realized, oh my goodness, we do.  With elections and representative democracy.  But I went to Haiti to do good.  That’s enough, isn’t it?  And then, darn it, Jesus said, now “row out farther, into deeper water.”  

Today, the time to choose whether to stay in the shallows or go toward the deeper waters has now come for all of us.  Time that the Christian faith is either relevant to the world or not.

Some Christian groups have been granted extraordinary access to the new administration while others have been on the receiving end of increasing and unprecedented attacks.  For all the talk of religious liberty, Diana Butler Bass describes watching “selective religious freedom” play out. [3]

For example, with absolutely no evidence or merit, Elon Musk has accused Lutherans of fraud (Lutherans, of all people), “money-laundering” to be exact, and said he will “shut down illegal payments” for their work running nursing homes, foster care, food programs and more.[4]  “Examine them all and shut them down,” labeling Lutherans of running a “snake oil organization.”  Whether or not he actually does, creating the fear of it has worked.  

Episcopal Migration Ministry, among others, has let go of all their employees.  Priests racially profiled.  Bishops denounced by members of Congress.  Quakers suing, citing hindrances to their religious liberty.[5]  The evangelical organization World Vision carries out a significant number of projects for USAID, all at risk.  Haitian food programs among those eliminated, or maybe they won’t be.  

Last week, the Vice President insulted the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops: “look in the mirror a little bit and recognize that when [you] receive over $100 million to help resettle illegal immigrants (his words, not the truth), are [you] worried about humanitarian concerns? Or are [you] actually worried about your] bottom line?”[6]

Mormons issued a rare public statement about the mass deportations underway, remembering the last time children were separated from their families, saying, “We are especially concerned about keeping families together.”[7]

In response to all these increasing and unprecedented attacks, the head of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the ELCA, Bishop Elizabeth Eaton recounted the story of Saint Lawrence, a deacon in Ancient Rome.  The Roman emperor demanded the Christian church turn over its riches, but instead, Lawrence sold all the church’s possessions and gave the money to the poor. When the emperor confronted him and demanded his money, Lawrence pointed to the “hungry, the poor, the naked, the stranger in the land, the most vulnerable” and declared: “These are the treasures of the Church.”  For that, Saint Lawrence was executed.  Bishop Eaton concluded, “Be of good courage, Church, and let us persevere.”  

That’s deep.  I wish we weren’t here.  I wish this was all hyperbole.  I wish I wasn’t talking about this again, but Christian friends, in response, Jesus is calling to us:  Row out a little farther, into the deep water, and recognize:

·         Loving our trans children and grandchildren is now political.

·         Preaching about mercy is now political.

·         Displaying a sign or a flag that explicitly welcomes everyone is now political.

·         Hosting a Spanish-speaking church is now political.

·         Hiring a pastor of color is now political.

·         Having a woman preach from the pulpit is now political.

·         Believing in empathy is now political.

·         Loving your neighbor as yourself?  Political.[8]

And when I give food to the poor, they’ll call me a saint.  When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist. 

·         Because yes, now feeding hungry people around the world is political too.
 
 

It’s time, friends, to row out a little farther, into the deeper water.  Beyond our comfort.  You see, surface Christianity, shallow Christianity isn’t enough in these times.  I sympathize.  You may not want to hear this difficult news in church.  Of course, we’d also have to stop reading the Bible too.  I truly sympathize, but you see, I converted to Christianity in 1987 and can’t help myself.  Jesus is calling.  Please, won’t you also give your life to Christ?  Because now is the time.  

As the hymn says, now is the time for wisdom and courage for the facing of this hour:

God of grace and God of glory, from the evils that surround us and assail the Savior’s ways, from the fears that long have bound us, free our hearts for faith and praise.  

God of grace and God of glory, save us weak resignation to the evils we deplore; let the search for your salvation be our glory forevermore.  Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, for the facing of this hour.

[1] “Haiti: The Land Where Children Eat Mud,” The Sunday Times of London, May 17, 2009
[2] https://www.pope.af.mil/News/Pope-News/Article/242223/a-brief-history-of-us-involvement-in-haiti/
[3] https://interfaithalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Memo_-Trump-Admin-Attacks-on-Faith-Communities.pdf?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
[4] https://religionnews.com/2025/02/03/musk-spotlights-federal-funds-for-lutheran-social-services-calls-them-illegal-payments/
[5] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/quaker-groups-file-suit-end-policy-restricting-ice-arrests-houses-wors-rcna189471
[6] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jd-vance-interview-face-the-nation-catholic-bishops-ice-order/
[7] https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/church-reaffirms-immigration-principles-love-law-family-unity
[8] Adapted from email by Diana Butler Bass, February 6, 2025