There are two kinds of people: those who know how to catch fish and those who don’t. It seems fishing knowledge is usually passed through families—going out in the boat with a parent or grandparent is a rite of passage. I did not grow up in a fishing family. I remember the time my dad took my brother and me to the river with fishing poles. We were standing next to each other at a boat landing. My brother cast with fierce determination and . . . the next thing I knew his line was looped around my neck several times, the hook dangling about an inch from my exposed skin.    

Unlike my family, the fishermen in today’s story from Luke clearly knew their craft. They owned their own boats and equipment—a sign they ran a successful business despite crushing taxes and controlling regulations.Still, as our story opens, their night of fishing had been fruitless. Simon and his colleagues had quit work and started mending their nets while listening to Jesus teach from one of their boats. So Simon must have been surprised and maybe annoyed when Jesus began to give him unsolicited fishing advice. “Put out into deep water and let your nets down for a catch.” With this line, the story takes a mythical turn, signaling that things have entered the realm of metaphor. “Deep water” or bathos, in Greek, is a richly symbolic word. This same word is used in the Greek version of the Hebrew Bible, in the creation story: “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” Bathos in ancient Hebrew cosmology is the great deep, the primordial sea. It is the home of chaos monsters that fight with God and threaten to undo creation.  

We aren’t told what Jesus taught from the boat. It makes sense, though, that he would continue to sing the Magnificat, the revolutionary song of his mother Mary. And that he would keep on proclaiming the prophetic message he declared in the synagogue—the one that almost got him killed. I’m guessing he taught the crowd about God’s advocacy for the poor and downtrodden and God’s humbling of the rich and powerful; about economic justice and mutual aid; redistribution of wealth and return of land; liberation of body and spirit—for the oppressed and oppressor alike. And I’m sure this was the divine platform around which the disciples were to gather people, organize community, and build relational power.  

Jesus prompted the fishermen to cast their net into the deep waters of chaos and fear, disconnection and inhumanity, that was life under empire. “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing.” The futile night fishing underscores the difficulty of the task. “Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.” The combination of Jesus’ call and Simon’s response makes the impossible possible. The ridiculous, boat-sinking abundance of fish is a sure sign that God is at work in the fishermen, right where they are. And that freaks Simon out. “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” Simon is deeply aware of his flaws and weaknesses. He knows he will inevitably screw up. And yet Jesus insists that an ordinary guy is who he is looking for. “Do not be afraid,” Jesus assures Simon, “from now on you will be catching people.”

Have you seen the popular poster, the one that says “Keep calm and carry on?” It’s red with white lettering. At the top is the British crown. There are endless entertaining spinoffs. “Keep calm and drink beer.” “Keep calm and paint your nails.” “Keep calm and love dogs.” The history of this slogan and poster is fascinating. “Keep Calm and Carry On” was one of three key messages created during WWII by Britain’s wartime propaganda department,the Ministry of Information. Millions of the posters were printed but they were never actually distributed. Instead they were shredded and recycled to address a severe shortage of paper. In the year 2000, one surviving copy was discovered in a bookshop. Soon reproductions began to be sold and the image went viral on social media. The British ministry of information was made famous as the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell describes the four ministries in the government of Oceana this way:

The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from ordinary hypocrisy: they are deliberate exercises in doublethink. (Part II, Chapter IX)

“Put out into deep water and let your nets down for a catch.” In our own time, we find ourselves engaged in a chaotic struggle for the soul of our country. Is fascism going to take hold or are these the birth pangs of a multi-racial democracy that has never yet existed? In these times, doublethink—or as we say now, gaslighting—is rampant. The architects of Project 2025 seek limitless wealth and absolute power. Issuing illegal executive orders, dismissing federal employees, ending DEI work, cutting the social safety net, destroying USAID—these strategies are propaganda, designed to convince us that community is an illusion. They want us to believe that nothing connects us across our diverse experiences and cultures. They want to rob the people of our collective power by provoking us to be at war with each other.

Friends, Jesus calls us to cast our nets into deep waters teeming with chaos monsters that threaten to undo creation. Let us start by getting our news and information from reliable sources. Like indigenous communities who remind us that we are all related, and that our work as humans is to become good relatives to each other. Like the African American poet, Elizabeth Alexander, who compares the power of love to growing pains that keep her awake at night. That draws us into the largeness of a love that encompasses her family’s intimate care for each other, as well as the Black nation she encounters in Jet magazine and the rumbling of a subway train carrying strangers.

And then, grounded in the truth of our interconnection, let us join ourselves to the apostolic succession, to the long line of ancestors who have carried on Jesus’ ministry of divine hospitality. Ordinary flawed people like Simon teach us to resist tyranny by daring to convene spaces of community and connection—organizing people, building relational power. This is exactly what we are doing in so many ways. The election support group. The Survivorsplay. The Vinery Team reaching out to campus neighbors. The Flourish Task Force provoking us to prepare for new building users. The several members of First Church who joined more than 1,000 people this past week for a training about how to protect our immigrant neighbors. The congregational care team mobilizing to support a member who had surgery. One-to-one and small group conversations the board is conducting to better understand our community’s needs and gifts and hopes.

Friends, when you have worked all night and caught nothing, Keep Calm and Fish On. When you feel unworthy, insignificant, and hopeless, Keep Calm and Fish On. As chaos monsters threaten to destroy all you hold sacred, Keep Calm and Fish On. For it is in conditions such as these that God does God’s best work—creating order out of chaos, opening up spaces of hospitality and grace, enlarging love, making relatives, gathering us into a diverse and powerful community of net-straining abundance and boat-sinking joy. Amen.