If you have the fortune to go to Israel someday, be sure to visit to the Sea of Galilee. Just north of the western town of Tiberias you will find a lovely kibbutiz. Its principle business is tourism . On its property you'll find a very plain looking shed. The shed houses a remarkable archaeological find. It contains what has come to be called, “Peter’s Boat.” This boat is twenty-five feet long , eight feet wide and five ft. high. It was found along the western shore of the lake in 1986. It is a beautiful thing to behold with a rounded stern, and a raised bow. Carbon dating has placed it to between 140 BC and 40 AD.. The craft is kept in a tub of water so as not to dry out. One can easily imagine Peter and Andrew and their business partners, James and John, tossing their nets from such a craft. In fact, Luke tells us that the two sets of brothers owned two boats and worked together in a kind of business partnership; a sensible arrangement in any century. If on! e boat has a bad day perhaps the other will make up for the former boat’s losses.

Jesus said to Peter, “Push out into deep water and let down your nets.” Peter answered, “Master, we have toiled all night but we have taken nothing.” Translation: “I'm the fisherman. I have been fishing these waters all my life.
We caught nothing all night. How can you expect us to catch even the smallest herring now that it is day time? I've certainly live long enough to know what works and what doesn't.”

The deep. The unknown. I myself have little fear of heights, but I find I have a great fear of depths. From a high peak one can at least see where one is liable to fall. But swimming above murky depths; who knows what might lurk beneath. My imagination runs away with me. But Jesus offers Peter and the others a choice, just as life offers us the choice of whether to stay in the shallows of life or push out into deep water to make our own catch.

Brenda Ueland has been gone for 21 years now. She is remember most for a wonderful volume written for the beginning writer. It is called, If You Want To Write. It became a best seller when she was 70 and has been in print ever since. But my favorite of her works is an essay entitled, “On Making Choices.” She has this to say: “I feel that I am about 17 people. How to single out one’s true self? I seem to be sometimes my mother, sometimes my father, sometimes a whiner, a great queen, or a slob, a simpering lady, or an old rip, a minister, a lion, or a weasel. I have this concept: we are like onions, in layers. Many people live from the outer layer of the onion. They live in what other people think is the thing to do. They are merely imitative or conventional. Their conscience is that still small voice that tells them someone is looking.

But we must try to find our true conscience, our deeper self; the very center, for this is the only first-rate choice making center. Here lies all originality, talent, honor, truthfulness, courage, and cheerfulness. Here only lies the ability to choose the good and the grand, the true and the beautiful.”

“Our deeper selves.”

A recent poll by the Pew Research Center released last week reveals that "eighty-one percent of 18- to 25-year-olds said getting rich is their generation's most important life goal." The second most important, according to the survey: "being famous." Described as the "millennial" generation, fifty-one percent listed being famous as the second most important life goal.

A Gallup Panel survey of 18-to 29-year-olds released last month found that 55% agreed or strongly agreed with the statement "You dream about getting rich."

Most telling are the results of an annual survey of college freshmen by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA in which 2005 data show that "the percentage who say it is 'essential' or 'very important' to be 'very well off financially' grew from 41.9% in 1967 to 74.5% in 2005." Ironically, "developing a meaningful philosophy of life" dropped in importance from 85.8% in 1967 to 45% in 2005."

Maybe it’s a youth thing.

I have found that many people spend the first half of their life doing what their parents wanted to do but never accomplished. Somehow they picked up the signal to live out the will of the last generation. Now, if they're lucky they eventually realize that they are not truly living their own life. They come to hear a deeper voice; a truer voice. Something from their own heart beckons them to push out into deep waters and let down their own net.

I like Denise Levertov's wonderful poem, THE WELL. It is all about surface and depth:

At sixteen I believed the moonlight
could change me if it would .
I moved my head
on the pillow, even moved my bed
as the moon slowly
crossed the open lattice.

I wanted beauty, a dangerous
gleam of steel, my body thinner,
my pale face paler.
I moon-bathed
diligently, as others sunbathe.
But the moon's unsmiling stare
kept me awake. Mornings,
I was flushed and cross.

It was on dark nights of deep sleep
that I dreamed the most, sunk in the well,
and woke rested, and if not beautiful,
filled with some other power.

“Some other power.” I suppose most of us settle for living on the surfaces.

Here’s a story about one such person. A woman of 31 writes of her fiance,

He’s cute in a little boy sort of way; blond hair hanging over brilliant blue eyes; a round baby face made more mature by a scruffy blond beard. And he’s so much fun to be with.

It won’t matter that he’s younger than I am. He loves me, and he wants children right away. After all, I’m 31, and my clock is ticking. It’s time I settl;ed down and started a family.

I don’t think I really love him, but I like him. And did I mention he’s fun?

I love his parents. They treat me like a daughter already. And I’m finally going to have a great last name. My last husband’s was awful; what was I thinking?

I slide my hand down my ivory dress, grasp the nosegay of flowers more firmly, and start down the aisle. When the moment comes, I hesitate only a fraction of a second before I say. “I do.”

Many people make plans of their own but never get to them, daily life being so tyrannical. They find that their life is not really their own because of past choices, old alliances, or past giving-over. And so they go about each day driven by something beyond them while always planning to recover something of themselves in a tomorrow that never quite arrives. It’s a common story.

Perhaps you know the parable of the two teenage boys who went fishing and, as in today's text, they find themselves fishing for men. On the river’s shore just as they were arranging their tackle they noticed someone floating downstream. They both jumped in, pulled the person out of the water, gave him mouth to mouth resuscitation, and saved his life. The next day they came to this same spot, opened their tackle boxes and noticed yet another person floating downstream, head below the water. Again they jump in and save this man's life.

The same thing happens day after day. But many people died en route to the hospital. So the city council decides to build a hospital on the very spot so they won’t have to transport the nearly drowned patients to a hospital many miles away. The hospital becomes very busy. It grows and expands. In fact, it becomes very famous across the country. Many interns come there to serve their residencies. One day one of these doctors approaches his administrator and thanks him for the opportunity to serve in this wonderful hospital. “There is one thing that bothers me, though,” he says. “Has anyone ever gone up stream to see why people are jumping into the river?” “No” answers the administrator, “we don't have time. We are just too busy treating the victims.”

Just too busy. Brenda Ueland suggests that all of us need daily solitude to reconnect with our deeper selves. She says, "It is very difficult in our cacophonous times; fractured with the yelling, activity, feeding, drinking, galloping, of frantic uncertainties that lead to psychiatry and booze. But you must try to find it. It is the old stuff- Know thyself. But it takes solitude.”

Solitude. What a luxury. Who has time for it. But, finding one’s essential self requires something like a daily walk, intentionally straying away from phones, and those other things that constantly demand our attention.

We just finished up our study of the world’s enduring religions. We began with Hinduism, which is 5000 years old. In Hinduism, solitude is built right in. As a youngster you are expected to play and explore life from knee height. At 15 or 20 you are expected to marry and pursue wealth and worldly pleasures. But by the time of the birth of your first grandchild it is expected that you will give all that up and retire to a life set apart. You leave your city of town or village and become a “forest dweller.” There, unencumbered by work or even by friendship, you go deeper – you may paint, play music, write poetry, you turn inward and explore the depths of your own soul.

The passage from this week's Hebrew Testament tells us of the call of Isaiah.
He was a priest in the temple at Jerusalem. His position was a prestigious one. Its perks and benefits must have been remarkable for any day. But as one looks carefully at the passage one can see, reading between the lines, that Isaiah grows restless performing rituals week in and week out. There seems to be something hollow for him in his holy work. But then great King Uzziah dies, and Isaiah feels himself thrust into deep water. With the Syrians threatening the city, and no one available in the wings of power of the stature of the dead Uzziah what is to become of the nation of Judah? At this moment of grave crisis the prophet Isaiah is, in effect, re-born. Isaiah finds the call within the call that many of us long for

I preached a whole sermon about that just two weeks ago.

Isaiah is not called upon to change jobs. Instead he finds himself called to go deeper just where he is. Sometimes going deeper means taking seriously what you are already doing. It means taking seriously what you have been tempted to dismiss as either beneath you or of obsolete value.

Isaiah found that crisis and his own restlessness were part of the still small voice that God used to turn him from being the mouthpiece of power, to speaking truth to power. That is not a simple change ! Thomas Becket did the same thing and his King, Henry II, formerly his best friend, had him murdered in Canterbury Cathedral for it. The same thing happened to Sir Thomas More. He stood up to Henry VIII and paid for it with his head. Life as a prophet of Israel would not be easy for Isaiah, but he would find fulfillment that had previously been unavailable to him.

I imagine that often, going into deeper water may mean hardly any change at all. But sometimes . . . sometimes the change required is radical.

Steven Mengleberg was a professor of philosophy, a tremendous logician. For years he taught philosophy and logic but one day, he felt the call to a new profession. Stephen had great musical gifts. His new path led him, eventually, to become assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra under conductor Leonard Bernstein; a remarkable thing in itself. But I tell his story because in his fifties Dr. Mengleberg grew restless once again. He heard more murmurings from within. In fact, he left the Philharmonic and went to law school.

He became the oldest person to pass the New York State Bar examination, and, at the age of 59 he began practicing law, a profession he followed until the end of his life.

Now, if I had told you that he had left the practice of law and taken up conducting you would not have been surprised in the least. But for someone to leave the side of Leonard Bernstein for life in a courtroom . . . who would believe it? But such was Stephen Mengleberg's call: from philosophy to music to advocacy. This was one man's response to its own depth, to his own evolving, essential-self.

Jesus did not ask Peter to leave his profession. Instead, he said to Peter, “Peter, now you can catch people. For Peter it was like finding the call within a call, a new vision, a new kind of fishing .

To use Denise Levertov's words, Peter received a “new kind of power.” He was challenged to push out into deep water and let down a new net. And Peter replied, “No matter what I know; no matter what my frame of reference, I will move into the deep with you.”

May we find the courage and the grace to do the same. Amen.