Peter and Finding Nemo

Epiphany 5, Yr C, rcl

February 4, 2007

As I spoke to a few of my colleagues this week about the text for today, many of them said things like – oh yeah, the calling of the first disciple, or the fishers of people story. Many of us hear this gospel and think – oh yeah – I remember this one. And if you are at all like me, sometimes that makes you tune it out. If we’ve heard something before or if we are familiar with something, it makes it all the easier to tune it out, to let our minds go to something else, or to just sit back and not really take it in. This was my attitude as well as I started to work on the text this week, then, something happened. I watched Finding Nemo for the millionth time with my son, and something between the two very familiar things clicked. Something new happened in my head, heart and soul as I was thinking about this text and watching Finding Nemo.

Yes, Jesus does call Peter into discipleship. But what we cannot ignore is that Jesus comes to Peter where he is, in his everyday life. Jesus begins to teach the crowds near Peter’s boat. Then, Jesus hops into his boat and teaches from there. Jesus is teaching the multitudes from the shallow waters, he is teaching them new things, things that they may not have heard before, things that will begin to change their lives. Now, he turns to Peter and asks him to take is boat out further and fish in the deep waters. Peter, protests mildly, saying he has already been fishing all night, but in a moment of grace and faith, Peter does as the Lord asks and takes the boat out into deep waters.

The imagery of water, the use of water is all throughout the Bible, it is all throughout literature, and it is all throughout history. Water is a symbol of new life. Water teams with life with creatures, with new waters flowing in and waters flowing out all the time. Water is a life-giving, life-changing thing for all of us. Water gives us food, water allows things to grow, water is our life source.

When Jesus asks Peter to go out into the deep waters to fish, he is not merely asking him to fish, but asking him to go to the waters where you cannot see the bottom, go to the waters where you don’t know what you will get and cast your nets. I don’t know if you’ve ever been swimming in deep waters, but you never know what you will find, what you will discover.

Jesus is asking Peter to go where he has not gone before – to go into unchartered waters. This is where Finding Nemo comes in. If you haven’t seen the movie, it’s about a clown fish, Marlin, who is scared of the ocean because of an event in the past. Now, his son, Nemo, is swept off by a diver, and Marlin has to leave the safety of his home and what he knows and go into unchartered waters to find his son. Throughout the movie, Marlin is constantly being challenged pushed to a place he never thought he would go, both physically and emotionally. Jesus is taking Peter into unchartered waters, asking him to trust him and go places he never thought he would go.

A few years ago, one of my mentors, Ed Bacon gave me this image of going where we haven’t gone in order to find ourselves. He talked passionately about Dr. Mary Pipher who is a psychiatrist and psychotherapist in Nebraska who wrote the popular book Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls. A few years after, she came out with a new book entitled Letters to a Young Therapist. In this book, she writes about what she has learned as a therapist. In one of the chapters, called “Deepening Therapy,” she talks about connecting what are surface complaints to deeper issues. It is about challenging the denial with which most people live so that they can come to terms with the impact that it has on themselves and those around them. She says that good therapy moves people out of compartmentalizing their lives and helps them find a richer and greater self knowledge. For her, therapy is about inviting people into a deeper way of living so that the things that get in the way, the things that block us from living fully can be removed and each of us can find who we truly are created to be.

For Ed, and for me, this is a very engaging way to understand our journey with God. “God loves us so much that every day is about God’s love posing questions to us or placing you and me in circumstances where we can go deeper into the beautiful life that God has envisioned for each member of the human family and for the human family together.” (Ed Bacon, Sermon 2/8/04, All Saints Church, Pasadena, CA)

Today, we hear in the from Luke’s gospel that Jesus loves Peter so much that the way Jesus calls Peter is to send Peter into the deep waters of life. God loves us so much, that God calls us into the deep waters of life. In the movie, Finding Nemo, it is only by swimming through these deep waters that Marlin is able to find himself, his son and the world around him. It is only by swimming through these deep waters that he was able to find who he truly is meant to be.

As Jesus calls Peter, and thus you and I as well, into these deep waters, we are being called into the places in our lives where we are often in over our heads. It is in these places that we can be challenged and where we can begin to decompartmentalize our lives in order to find who we truly are and who God is calling us to be.

If you know anything about Peter, you know that he was far from being a perfect disciple, and Jesus knew that the day that he called him from the shores into deep waters. God does not call us because we are perfect, God calls us because are part of God’s creation for the world. That’s right, you and I, just like Peter are called by God to go into the deep waters.

When Jesus called Peter to “fish for people,” it was much more than evangelism. In the Old Testament, Amos and Jeremiah talk about “catching people,” but in this context it is more about getting people to amend their lives and turn toward God. Jesus is calling for Peter to turn his life toward God in order to find what and who God has made him to be.

I don’t know how God is calling you into deep waters in your life right now. I only know that God loves you so much that everyday God is calling you to a new place in your life, telling you that no matter where you are, if you follow God’s calling and delve into the deep waters, you will find yourself and you will find God. Jesus gets into the boat with us. We are not on this journey alone, but we have to take that first step and take the boat into those deep waters, into those unchartered waters so that we too can find new life with God, new life with each other and new life within ourselves. Go deep and see where it takes you, see where you find God in those new waters.