Much snow. The wind had piled up drifts that closed roads and caused many to be stuck at home behind spotless snowfields that erase all evidence of driveways. The church parking lot was a sea of snow capped with frozen waves. On Saturday I waded through thigh high snow to walk the building checking for leaks, making sure the boilers were running so that pipes would not freeze.

I did not expect many on Sunday. We had 2 of us at 8 am and 15 at 10:15. When the numbers are so small we can fit in the chancel so I have everyone process and we gather around the altar for the liturgy. Parts are assigned, readings read, prayers said, the bread broken and communion happens in a much more intimate way that when the church is full. I had prepared some notes but knew we should have something more like Holy conversation rather than a formal sermon…and we did. Here are the notes and three questions. If you were one of the showed in and absent ones, join us after the fact. Read the Gospel, Luke 5: 1-1. Read through the text below. Then ponder the questions.

Here is a moment set apart. The language Luke uses is floating in a focused timelessness. "Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret," contains no reference to the day of the week or a even a month in the year. We cannot even be sure that the stories that precede and follow this lakeside call are sequential.

But within this reading from Luke is a current that moves all the participants, including the reader, from the safety of the shore into deeper water. Jesus is driven to move first. The deeds he has already done have drawn crowds - the news of healings and other wonders has washed across the countryside. Once in his presence Jesus' words draw people nearer like the gravity of the moon making the tide rise.

As the people press closer and closer Jesus gets in Simon's boat and the two of them slip out, it's just a little bit, but now they are floating, liminal, separated from the crowd that stands on solid ground by a small stretch of moving water- and Jesus is standing in the boat. You can see him rocking slightly but somehow it feels like he is on very solid ground as he speaks.

You can feel the crowd pushing to the edge of the land, leaning forward to hear each word as Jesus sits down. In the synagogue the Rabbi sits when it is time to teach, the crowd knows this, and indeed Jesus has turned the seaside into a place of not just teaching but of revelation.

It begins with a trickle of words lapping at the feet of those who stand at the edge of the sea but it becomes a wave of expression full of straining muscles and flashing fins that propels Simon, James and John back to the shore with enough momentum that they are all but ejected from their boats. They leave their nets as though they were wrenched from their hands and they move from their life in the sea to a calling on dry land.

In between the beginning and the end is the deep. Simon starts with a willingness to obey - he calls Jesus "master"- but ends with the recognition of the divine power that resides in Jesus. Simon not only calls Jesus "Lord," but he follows him.

Sometimes we stand on the shore. Sometimes we push out in boats. Sometimes we are the ones wandering in the wilderness waiting for a word from Holy fishermen who have been commissioned to come with words that will save us from drowning in the dust. And sometimes we are the ones with our hands on straining nets pulling to expose more of the abundant grace with which God has filled our nets.

Stories strengthen our convictions, encourage us to keep trying and propel us into new ways of seeing and being. Some of the powerful stories are the ones in the Bible, other Gospel accounts - tales of the Good News of God in Christ- come from our neighbors, our fellow laborers, or even our own mouths. Her are three questions to help us share some stories:

Have you ever found yourself struck by a call to move into deeper water? What was that like?

Can you remember a time when you recognized the presence of the divine?

By our baptism we are sent from that water to the shore, out to proclaim Jesus by word and deed. How might we do that? How might we fish for people?

This is what everything we do here at St. James is about- hearing the call, moving into deeper water, being changed into ones who can be sent out in Christ's name, then gathering those willing to come to the water's edge and welcoming them while we wait together for Jesus to teach us. AMEN