Grace Cathedral

“Put out into the deep water and let down your nets… do not be afraid (Lk. 5).”

This week with great emotion my friend Erin said to a group of us, “What do I do?” I take this to mean, “In the midst of unprecedented political turmoil (for instance, when USAID has ceased to exist), how do we respond to the fear surrounding us?”

The mother of my friend Margaret Miles used to tell her that it was important to have a spiritual life so that she would not just be at the mercy of “whatever happens” but live in a way that is, “examined, cultivated and intentional.”¹ Faith is how we shape our inner landscape and direct our action, especially in the face of fear.²

Two weeks before Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) became chancellor of Germany, the pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) preached at a vesper service in Berlin. The power of extremist groups was increasing. Ordinary people were in danger from thugs fighting in the streets. The government and their world were being shattered. This is what Bonhoeffer preached.

“The overcoming of fear – that is what we are proclaiming here. The Bible, the gospel, Christ, the church, the faith – all are one great battle cry against fear in the lives of human beings. Fear is… the archenemy itself. It crouches in people’s hearts. It hollows out their insides, until their resistance and strength are spent and they suddenly break down. Fear secretly gnaws and eats away at all the ties that bind a person to God and to others, and when in a time of need that person reaches for those ties and clings to them, they break and the individual sinks back into himself or herself, helpless and despairing, while hell rejoices.” Bonhoeffer goes on. Fear says, “Here we are all by ourselves, you and I, now I’m showing you my true face. And anyone who has seen naked fear revealed, who has been its victim in terrifying loneliness – fear of an important decision; fear of a heavy stroke of fate, losing one’s job, an illness; fear of disgrace; fear of another person; fear of dying – that person knows that fear is… one of the faces of evil itself… Nothing can make a human being so conscious of the reality of powers opposed to God in our lives as this

loneliness, this helplessness, this fog spreading over everything, this sense that there is no way out… of this hell of hopelessness.”³

1. Today let us consider what fear means in an examined life first from the Gospel of Luke and then from the social scientist Brené Brown.⁴ In the Gospel of Luke Jesus has been preaching in the synagogue and healing people including Simon Peter’s mother-in-law. Jesus tries to find time alone to pray but the crowds inevitably find him. At the lake of Genessaret the people thirst so much for the word of God that he has to get into Peter’s boat in order to teach them. After this Jesus says, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch” (Lk. 5).

Peter tells him, “Boss we toiled (kopiaō) all night and caught nothing.” But they did what Jesus said and the nets were breaking because of the abundance of fish. Peter is not just amazed, the Greek word thambos means fear too. “Go away from me, for I am a sinful man.” And Jesus replies, “from now on you will be catching people.”

I have two major problems with this translation. First, Jesus does not say “deep water” just depth. The word is bathos and related to our word bathysphere, or small submarine. William James in his Varieties of Religious Experience includes the account of a woman who recovered from a “nervous breakdown” which took her to “the verge of insanity.”

What saved her was, “learning the fact that we must be in absolutely constant relation or mental touch… with that essence of life which permeates all and which we call God. This is almost unrecognizable unless we live it into ourselves actually, that is, by constant turning to the very innermost, deepest consciousness of our real selves or of God in us, for illumination from within, just as we turn to the sun for light, warmth, and invigoration from without.”⁵ At the center of our being we meet God. But we will never have this experience if we are not people of depth, prayer and reflection.

My second problem with this translation is the word zōgreō. This is not just about “catching people.” It means to bring someone back alive (like the old western “wanted dead or alive” posters). It is linguistically related to zoē which means life and is related to our word zoology.

This is a subtle point. Peter recoils because of a visceral sense of shame and inadequacy. Jesus does not punish him. Jesus also does not forgive him. Instead Jesus shows him his real purpose in life. His purpose, like ours, is to help others find their way. We are here to let down our nets to be connected to others so that they can really live.

As a child I attended my grandfather’s church. Not long after he retired he had a terrible stroke. We moved to California not long after that and I never saw him alive again. All I have from him is his Bible, a Greek dictionary and seven of his sermons. In one he quotes Phillips Brooks who says the reason we are here is, “that something more of God may become evident and effective in the world. Not what you can do but what God can do in you. Not what you are, but how you can help [people] see what [God] is.”⁶

2. As a faithful Episcopalian Brené Brown does extraordinary ministry. She serves as a research scientist developing a vocabulary for people’s feelings and inner states. She believes that understanding human emotions, and precisely defining them, is the beginning of abundant life, how through grace we share with others.

Brown writes that many researchers have compiled lists of fears. These range from rodents and snakes, to the inability to see our surroundings, to seeing our children in danger. But no matter how much the lists vary there is one thing they share in common, that is, fear of social rejection. We experience social pain and physical pain in the same part of our brain. Exposure to pain drives fear.⁷

Brown observes that, “People will do almost anything to not feel pain, including causing pain and abusing power.” What we have been broadly calling fear can be more precisely defined by words like anxiety, worry, and dread. Worry for instance is the chain of negative thoughts about bad things that might happen to us in the future. She points out that it is wrong to think that worry can be helpful for coping with the future. She also believes that worry is something that we have some control over and that it should not be suppressed entirely.

“Spiritually disconnected” is the expression Brown uses that describes so much of what we have been experiencing lately. This is what happens when people are bonded together by shared fears and disdain for others. It is the “us versus them” culture. In contrast, being spiritually connected means respecting our common humanity. It is a way of reaching out to others in trust, respect and love.

As social beings, fear of social rejection will always be part of our struggle. But at the same time Brown argues that we need to learn a kind of vulnerability. I see her love of Jesus in this. Vulnerability is the emotion we experience during times of uncertainty, risk and exposure. She writes, “In a world where perfectionism, pleasing and proving are used as armor to protect our ego and feelings, it takes a lot of courage to show up and be all in when we can’t control the outcome. It also takes discipline and self-awareness to know what to share and with whom. Vulnerability is not oversharing, it’s sharing with people who have earned the right to hear our stories…”

We also need to learn a kind of courage expressed by Elie Wiesel’s admonition, “Never allow anyone to be humiliated in your presence.”

In one of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s last letters before his execution he writes, “I have come to know and understand more and more the this-worldliness of Christianity… I remember a conversation I had thirteen years ago with a young French pastor. We had simply asked ourselves what we really wanted to do with our lives. And he said: I want to be a saint… [and I said] something like I want to learn to have faith…”⁸ “One only learns to have faith by living completely in this world. One must completely renounce any attempt to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint or a converted sinner… then one throws oneself completely into the arms of God, and this is what I call this-worldliness: living fully in the midst of life’s tasks, questions, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities – then one takes seriously no longer one’s own sufferings but rather the suffering of God in the world. Then one stays awake with Christ in Gethsemane. And I think this is faith; this is metanoia. And this is how one becomes a human being, a Christian. How should one become arrogant over successes or shaken by one’s failures when one shares in God’s suffering in the life of this world?”

“You understand what I mean even when I put it so briefly. I am grateful that I have been allowed this insight, and I know that it is only on the path that I have finally taken that I was able to learn this. So I am thinking gratefully and with peace of mind about past as well as present things… May God lead us kindly through these times, but above all, may God lead us to himself… Yours, Dietrich.”

Earlier this week my friend Erin asked what do I do? Dorothy Day writes, “We cannot live alone. We cannot go to Heaven alone. Otherwise… God will say to us, ‘Where are the others?’”⁹

Put out into the deep: be a person of thought and prayer, “in absolutely constant relation to God.” Let down your nets, always seeking connection to others even when it requires vulnerability. Do not be afraid; “the overcoming of fear – that is what we are proclaiming here!”

¹ Margaret Ruth Miles, Recollections and Reconsiderations (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2018) 144.

² 5 Epiphany (2-10-19) C.

³ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Overcoming Fear,” Preached in Berlin on the Second Sunday after Epiphany, 15 January 1933 in The Collected Sermons of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Tr. Douglas W. Stott, Anne Schmidt-Lange, Isabel Best, Scott A. Moore, Claudia Bergmann (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2012

⁴ It may be hard for us to really take in this morning’s readings or for them to work on us if we cannot call to mind the experience of really being afraid. Maybe this week’s fear has been enough to prepare us. In our first reading the Prophet Isaiah describes a kind of mystical vision or dream in which he finds himself at the throne of God with angels singing, “Holy, Holy, Holy Lord…” Isaiah breaks down in fear and exclaims, “I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen… the Lord of Hosts!” Then the angel touches Isaiah’s mouth with a coal. God asks, “Who shall I send…” And Isaiah who has been transformed says, “Here I am; send me (Isa. 6)!” We read this passage at my ordination. It evoked both my trepidation and enthusiasm to serve God, to be helpful in some way. Paul alludes to the fear he must have felt when God overwhelmed all of his senses and struck him blind on the road to Damascus. He reminds his friends at Corinth that Jesus appeared to him, “[l]ast of all… For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am…” (1 Cor. 15). Paul points out that experiencing God often makes us profoundly aware of our shortcomings but also powerful in new ways.

⁵ William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience in William James Writings 1902-1920 (NY: The Library of America, 1987) 99.

⁶ Elmore Clemens Young, “Epiphany: Light of the World,” Sermon preached 8 January 1956.

⁷ Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience (NY: Random House, 2021) 9-13.

⁸ Letter to Eberhard Bethge, July 21, 1944. I have made some slight changes based on my older version of Letters and Papers, page 369. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison: Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 8 Ed. Christian Gremmels, Eberhard Bethge and Renate Bethge with Ilse Tödt Tr. Isabel Best, Lisa E. Dahill, Reinhard Krauss, and Nancy Lukens (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1998)

⁹ “We cannot live alone,” she remarked. “We cannot go to Heaven alone. Otherwise, as Péguy said, God will say to us, ‘Where are the others?” Paul Elie, The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage (NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003) 115.