At Red River, on one of my very first ski runs ever, I happened to be skiing with another youth sponsor from our church when we came to this rather narrow path that made a sharp curve around the side of a slope, leading from one trail to another.  Off to the left side, the path ended with a sharp drop down the mountain.  As it turned out, it was a good thing I wasn’t alone.  As we rounded the curve, my skis got stuck in some icy ruts made by someone else who had blazed the trail before me - over the side of the mountain.  My control skills weren’t very much under control yet and I still remember the sick feeling in my stomach as I quickly realized that not only was I not going to be able to stop, but those ruts were leading me someplace I really didn’t want to go. 

After what must have been a ten-point double gainer over the side of the mountain, I fortunately landed face-first out in a deep snowdrift, my skis crisscrossed tips down and leg over leg behind me, pinning me down.  I guess I’d have been there until the spring thaw had Bruce not been able to release my skis for me and help me up.  Of course, all of this Olympic rut running was played out for those passing just overhead on the ski lift, including some folks from my church who would never again be able to think of their pastor in quite the same way. 

There’s nothing worse than getting stuck in a rut.  The ruts, leading out of St. Louis during the 19^th century westward expansion, had been cut so deeply into the clay by wagons gone before, that new pioneers were warned by a sign on the outskirts of town that read, “Choose your ruts well, you may be in them all the way to California.”  There’s just nothing worse than getting stuck in the wrong rut, the wrong marriage rut or financial rut or spiritual rut, especially if it’s a rut someone else cut for you and even more so if no one’s along with you when you get stuck to help you find another way.  As the scripture shows, Jesus has come alongside us to help us find another way.

People were pressing in on him “to hear the word of God.”  Luke didn’t record the actual sermon.  Instead, he recorded something that distracted Jesus during the middle of it, as it turns out, in a good way.  It so happens that it was more than just distraction, it was good preaching.  To Jesus, preaching was more than just dissecting ancient scriptures.  It was also paying attention to what was happening around him while he was preaching.  Good preachers do that.  They preach with one eye on God’s word, one eye on God’s world. 

For example, no matter what scripture any local preacher may have chosen this week for her or his text, it would be hard not to be aware of two brutal abduction-murders that have had nearly everyone’s attention this week.  A seventy-seven year old woman from Ft. Worth, her body dumped along an Oklahoma interstate after being brutalized for $635 in ATM cash and little eleven year-old Carlie in Florida, her body dumped in a church parking lot after a thirty-seven year old man brutalized her in ways we don’t want to know and for reasons no rational person could ever grasp.  Good preaching always keeps one eye on God’s ancient word and one eye on what’s happening at the moment so that it helps us discover just how relevant ancient truth always is to the moment we’re living in.

Jesus was preaching what Luke called “the word of God” when he noticed some fishermen washing their nets.  It presented the perfect opportunity for Jesus to do what he did best, to make the ancient relevant to the moment.  In particular, Jesus had a way of reframing the word of God so that what was ancient actually ended up calling his followers to something altogether new, in some cases out of a well-traveled rut into a whole other way of living.  If you read the gospels carefully, you’ll notice that Jesus often said something like, “You have heard that it was said, but I say to you.” 

Here’s a good example.  In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “‘You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy (Matthew 5:43).’”  Perhaps none of us have ever actually heard anyone say those exact words.  But, if nothing else, it’s what human nature screams at us and models for us.  It’s the well-worn payback-kind-for-kind rut whole generations of humanity cut deeply into the clay of human character long before we set out on our journey.  “Treat those who treat you kindly the same way, or at least be careful how you treat those you’re stuck living with or those you might need something from.  (You certainly don’t want to be rude to the waitress before she brings your breakfast, she might spit in your oatmeal.)  But, if anyone ever hurts you, or crosses you or takes advantage of you, nail them to the wall!”  Jesus said, “‘You have heard that it was said,’” ‘Turn about’s fair play.’  ‘An eye for an eye.’  “‘But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you that you may be sons of your Father in heaven (Matthew 5:44-45).’”

If we are going to take a walk with Jesus, we are going to discover over and over again that he is going to ask us to stop and think about what we’re doing with our lives.  He’s going to ask us to no longer presume that, just because others prescribed or modeled one way of living or thinking as correct, even if those people were very important to us, that what they told us and what God calls us to are one and the same.  The spiritual transformation that Jesus seeks for us rarely happens without his truth and his Spirit first confronting our deeply imbedded ways of thinking and living, about virtually everything, but especially about our relationships with other people, those we know well and those we’ve yet to meet.  “‘You have heard that it was said . . . but I tell you.’” 

My mother’s mother is dead now.  With deepest respect for her and for the fact that, until Someone calls and empowers us to think and live differently, all of us tend to walk in the ruts others cut for us long before we arrived to start our journey, I tell you a story about a very formative experience in my life.  Uncensored, it would be rated “R” today.  My grandmother lived in deep southeast Texas where she had been born and raised.  A century before, Lincoln’s emancipation of the slaves had changed the legal status of African-Americans.  By the mid-1960’s, when this story happened, it had not yet (and in many places still has not yet) changed the deep ruts of racial prejudice some folks walked in, cut by the blind ignorance of others hundreds of years before. 

My grandmother lived in High Island, a small community of about four hundred on Texas’ Gulf coast, midway on the path between Galveston and Louisiana.  After bringing new slaves into the country had been made illegal but before the civil war, High Island was part of the back door that slave runners used after smuggling slaves in through Galveston harbor and walking them barefooted through east Texas swamps hundreds of miles to backwoods Louisiana slave auctions.  The ruts of racial prejudice were cut deep in High Island’s oyster-shell soil.

My grandmother traveled by train to see us once in the mid-60’s.  She and my parents were sitting at the dining table; I was in another room and overheard her telling my parents about what, to her, had been a frightening experience.  There was an empty seat beside her on the train and a black man got on at one stop.  For a moment, she said, she was horrified that he might sit by her.  I still remember her words verbatim.  Censored, they were something like, “I wasn’t about to let that black man sit by me.” 

You’d have to know my father well to know that the amount of restraint he exhibited was nothing less than phenomenal.  But, he knew that I had overheard, that this was a teachable moment.  He told my grandmother, “We’re not teaching our children to think that way about others.”  With those simple words he served notice that, in our home, we chose not to walk in the racial ruts others had cut, that Someone had called us to a different way.  If my dad had not been there in that moment, I might have presumed that someone who was very important to me had laid out the proper path for me to travel and I might still be stuck in that horrible rut to this day.

Don’t you wonder if things might have turned out differently for a seventy-seven year-old Ft. Worth woman and an eleven-year-old Florida girl this week had someone been back up the road in the lives of those who murdered them?  Someone who might have helped them find another way before they got stuck in a murderous rut that allowed them to think of others as nothing more than someone to use for their own pleasure and then just throw away like a dirty rag.

While Jesus was preaching, he was distracted by some fishermen washing their nets at the end of a fruitless day of fishing.  It set the perfect stage for him to make the ancient very relevant.  Jesus stopped preaching long enough to climb into Simon’s boat.  Jesus has a way of doing that, climbing into our boat with us.  Then, he demonstrated his divine power by instructing Simon to cast the nets one more time, “‘out into the deep water.’”  The catch was so great Simon had to call on other fishermen to help pull in the haul before it broke their nets.  Then, with everyone overhearing, Jesus married God’s ancient plan of redemption to the very relevant experience of catching fish by announcing, “‘from now on you will be catching people.’” 

This story isn’t in Luke’s gospel just to show us how great a preacher Jesus was.  It’s there because it is Luke’s way of telling us that this is what he understood Jesus to be saying to all of his followers.  That we are not here in this life simply to use or relate to other people as a means of getting from one end of this life to the next.  We’re here in this life for the purpose of helping to bring other people into the kingdom of God that Christ has made so available to us.

Up until now, in the rut we’ve been traveling, we may have thought of other people as only business associates or fellow commuters or neighbors or fellow consumers.  We may have always been stuck in that rut.  Jesus wants us to look at others differently now, as sisters and brothers for whom Christ also died, who are in need of experiencing his life in theirs, forgiveness for sins, hope for eternity and courage and power to live now without being totally conquered by sin and despair.

Jesus is inviting us to follow him, to participate with him in facilitating spiritual transformation in the lives of others.  We are here for more than just to go to high school so we can go to college so we can get a job good enough to allow us to make house and car payments and go skiing at Breckenridge over Spring Break, send our kids to college and save for retirement all at the same time so that, someday, you guessed it, we can retire in the lap of luxury just before we die so that someone else can come along and pick up what we left behind and start the process all over of making certain that we’ve all done our part in eating our fair share of meat and potatoes so that, whatever else happens, God forbid, nothing prevents the American economy from marching on ad infinitum. 

We are here to walk with Jesus so that, whatever road we’re on, we’re always involved in one way or another in casting our nets out in the deep water of human need and pulling them in close to God’s Kingdom.  We are here to serve as agents of spiritual change and transformation in God’s good world.

We are certainly here to help people.  But, as Christians, as people walking with Jesus, we are here for more than just to help them.  Specifically, we are here to help people discover what a personal relationship with Christ could mean to them.  If we only help people then we are only casting our nets into shallow waters where others have fished them dry already by filling the limit of human possibilities alone.  If, however, we help people discover what a personal relationship with Christ can mean to them, then we are casting our nets out into the deep waters where the power of God knows no limit.

So, how do we do that?  For one thing, and it took me a very long time to learn this, I’m still learning this, everyone has a different net.  I can’t give you my net and you can’t give me yours.  We can watch each other cast and learn from each other.  In the end, we can only cast the net that is uniquely ours, in personality, skill, temperament, intelligence, wit, the net that is God’s personalized gift to us.

Toward the end of his too-short life, Chad Sneed, Jr.’s faith had begun to blossom anew.  He had suffered for years from diabetes and all the resulting illnesses.  After his kidney transplant nine years ago, he made regular trips to the dialysis unit to encourage others and to sing the praises of kidney transplantation and to share his new found hope.  (Have you signed a donor card yet?).  That was Chad’s net.  What’s yours?

You don’t know where to begin this net-working?  How about making a prayer list with one name on it?  How about asking God to help you, before this year is out, to tell just one specific person just one specific thing about what your personal experience with Christ has meant to you?

How about taking someone to a movie?  We’ve bought 300 tickets for a private showing of Mel Gibson’s Passion at Lowe’s City Place on March 6.  After the movie, we’re coming back here for lunch and Dr. Larry Williams, one of our own, will lead us in a discussion about what the movie meant to each of us.  Buy a ticket, then buy one more, and invite a friend to watch the last twelve hours of Jesus’ life dramatized like no human has ever seen it since the crucifixion itself.  If you don’t know how to share the gospel, introduce your friends to someone who does, even if it’s Mel Gibson. 

If you’re at work this week and someone compliments you for your patience or your joy or your sense of hope or your overcoming spirit in all circumstances, consider saying more than just “thank you.”  Consider the possibility of saying, “Thank you.  But, it might surprise you to learn why I am so full of patience and joy and hope,” and seeing where the conversation leads from there.  One of the first people who ever walked with Jesus later wrote, “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.  But do this with gentleness and respect (1 Peter 3:15).”  If we are sensitive to the questions people are asking and answer them with gentleness and respect, we may find some people literally ready to jump into our nets without us having to troll for them.

Whether we start with a simple, one name prayer list or we invite someone to a movie or we find some way of slipping the name of Jesus into our answers to people’s questions, I wonder, don’t you, I wonder if we’ll have the same experience the disciples did – when we start casting our nets out into the deep water.