What are some of the routines you can’t live without? I bet we all have more than a few firm habits in our lives that give us structure and comfort. For many people it’s the walk to the coffee machine first thing in the morning or maybe the ritual stroll with the dog at a certain time of day. Others have a favorite TV show and missing that show just isn’t an option. When I recently called my mother in-law, she politely declined conversation, saying, “You know what Andreas, I am just watching my favorite show… Can you call another time?” Even most school kids already have routines – and kids, I don’t mean the morning ritual that you all look forward to, when you’re woken up at an ungodly hour, still half asleep, “brutalized” into education… No, think of the more comforting routine when you come home from school, put your 200 pound school bag down and relax for a while, maybe with a little computer game or something like that! Those are the kinds of routines we treasure, right?
Certain habits form life as we know it. Could my kids survive without pizza on Friday night? From the sounds of it, I’m not sure. We all develop habits – around our home, our work places and the way we operate in general. Most of the time those routines are good and help us to be effective and at peace; sometimes they can block our development and prevent innovation and spiritual growth. Habits can become limitations. Ask Peter and John and his fellow workers, the first disciples that Jesus called to follow him into the ministry. These fishermen from Galilee, I am sure, had their routines down. They knew when to go out and fish and when to call it quits. They had a philosophy about when the fish bite and where schools of fish might roam. But obviously, their routine hadn’t worked on that particular evening we’re talking about. They didn’t catch anything, an experience that fishermen are all too familiar with but rarely talk about. And now this religious man, a carpenter by trade, from nearby Nazareth, a town without water access, comes along and proceeds to tell these professionals how to do their job, breaking their routine: “Go out into the deep again!”
Now, I am pretty sure the only reason why Peter and his companions even entertained such a thought was because this rabbi had been able to draw a crowd, he had used their boat to teach, he seemed to have something going, why not take a chance? Sometimes religious people have that strange sixth sense or maybe a special connection, not only to God but to the fish in the water, who the heck knows?
As we watch this story unfold, we recognize one of Jesus’ favorite habits. You know what it is? To tell us every once in a while to do things differently, pushing us gently, lovingly out of the comfort zone made of our beloved routines, daring us to encounter something new. That’s vintage Jesus. Go out into the deep now! In one of the blogs I read in preparation, the writer remembered leafing through a booklet that his late father had left him. His father had been the host of a daily radio show and apparently ended each show with an inspirational saying, which he recorded in that notebook. One of the endings was: “Success is failure that tried one more time.” And I would add, “Success is failure that tried one more time to solve the same problem in a different way.”
Now, let us be honest, overcoming the frustration that comes with futile efforts is incredibly taxing and challenging. Tell Maria Sharapova that she can beat Serena Williams. I’m, sure she’d like to believe that, and she is one of the best female tennis players in the world, but she has lost the last twelve or fifteen contests straight. How do you keep up faith? It becomes more and more difficult to believe in yourself when that happens. And you get tired, whatever it is you’re trying to achieve. Fatigue sets in if success doesn’t reward you.
The Galilean fishers are tired. They don’t really want to go out one more time. They just do it because this teacher seems to have some magic going. And maybe they sense that Jesus is talking about more than just fish and they don’t necessarily expect fish in their nets but some sort of spiritual lesson. And they go… and then their nets burst, full of wiggly, slippery sea creatures – a catch far beyond expectations! How many times have people found, both in worldly enterprises and in the work of the church that the line between failure and success is very thin? And the difference may just be: timing. At an odd time, against every habit these fishermen had developed, Jesus tells them, “Now go out into the deep and try again!” So when that inner voice that we perceive as God’s is asking us to do something at an odd time, let us pay attention!
As I mentioned, habits can become prisons, not only for OCD people. They can make us fearful of the unknown if we define ourselves entirely through the familiar. The unknown can be scary. Last week I had the strangest experience in Louisville. I was there for a gathering of pastoral study grant recipients. The Louisville Institute is located in a very nice part of town with a park and walking trails nearby. We were told that there was a loop around the park which would take an hour to hike. I went out at 7:00 a.m. on Wednesday morning to enjoy the outdoors. You must know, it is typically not very difficult for me to get lost anywhere and, don’t ask me how, I managed to end up in a place where I had no idea how to get back to campus from. It had already been a long walk, probably five miles. I found myself out in the deep, in a residential street. Looking around, there was nobody on the sidewalk, but I saw a house that was lit up with the TV running in the Living Room, so I decided to go and ask for directions.
A woman opened the door. I could tell immediately that she was nervous, scared by this stranger with a German accent asking for directions at 8:00 a.m. in the morning. So I kept it very short and to the point; she gave me directions and immediately shut the door. So much for Southern hospitality! I quickly found out that the directions she gave me were perfect for a car ride and I had to walk another five miles along big and busy roads in order to get back. On the last stretch up Lexington Ave, a car passed me, veered into a drive way and turned around. The window rolled down and a young woman asked me, “Hello! Are you trying to find the seminary?” “Yes I do!” “Did you by any chance talk to my mother this morning?” “I guess,” I said. The woman looked at me and said, “You scared her. I think she might have called the police.” And I said, “Oh I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to… I’m really pretty harmless…” It turned out that her daughter lived nearby and had been called by her frantic mom and said, “Let me go check this out and see whether there is a stranger walking around here…”
So, I’m not sure whether they will invite me to Louisville again… I don’t think I ever had an experience quite like it when someone was really scared of me. Usually I can put people at ease. And I thought: What if I had black color? Would she even have opened the door in the first place? Are people sometimes a little bit too scared of the unknown? Do we get too comfortable in our habits and our circles and perhaps overreact?
On maps that predated Columbus there was written on the area just west of Gibraltar or Spain, “Nothing beyond here,” or a sea monster was drawn in to show the fear of the unknown. Without Jesus many of our life maps end with fear. And without having to become heroes, Jesus invites us to be less set in our ways: “Go out into the deep!” … I’d like to conclude with a prayer from the British explorer Sir Francis Drake:
“Disturb us Lord when we are too well pleased with ourselves
When our dreams have come true, because we dreamed too little
When we arrived safely because we sailed too close to shore.” Amen.