“Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch.”(Luke 5:4)

My tale begins during my first summer at the US Naval Academy. There are two kinds of people who come to plebe summer – them’s that can swim and them’s that can’t.  I was one of the former. I had swum competitively since I was 12 years old, surfed since about the same age, and so swimming and water was as natural to me as breathing.  I had two classmates in my group. Jack was from Chicago’s south side and had never been in a pool, much less Lake Michigan nor the ocean.  Joe was from the Great Plains of the Midwest – and he had at least seen the ocean once.  Jack and Joe had two months to learn how to swim.  They were assigned to the group known as the “sub squad” [sub = substandard] which given their propensity to sink and sink quite suddenly, was a group aptly named. Over the next four years at the Naval Academy I was often asked to mentor folks on the swimming “sub squad” and it seems to me that there were four stages of progression:

• Stage 1 – the on-shore talk where our erstwhile swimmers could hear the word, some basic do’s and don’ts.  Then moved by inspiring and spiriting words we moved (hopefully) to… 
• Stage 2 – clinging to the side of the pool where there was some measure of safety, where one could get one’s feet wet – so to speak.  Maybe put a face in the water, practice blowing bubbles, kicking, and all sorts of preliminary things. Eventually came…
• Stage 3 – Those tentative movements of arms and limbs resembling the near occasion of swimming, the gasping for air, stopping to put one’s feet on the sure ground of the shallow end, and then repeating it all again – encouraged by empathetic and compassionate instruction.

Some never left Stage 1 and soon enough they concluded that a naval career was not for them, forever staying on the shore.  Chicago Jack was one of those folks.  Some never graduated from Stage 2.  There was never enough trust to let go and believe in the word.  Stage 2 folks left within a year.  Most people made it to stage three – the near occasion of swimming – and were destined to complete the training marked by a 40 minute swim in uniform.  But none more interesting than Jack from the Great Plains.

Jack seemed to linger in the shallow end.  Plebe Summer was coming to an end.  Our upperclass squad leader was threatening him with unnamed and unspoken dire consequences – and berating me for some perceived lack of swimming acumen. Well it was a desperate time. Empathy and compassion were out. It was time for questioning his fortitude and courage. Yes… time for nautical trash talk.

In Naval Academy slang, a Puddle Pirate is a dismissive term for wanna-be sailors who spend their days on closed waters within sight of land, and their nights in bars telling sea stories of their exploits on Lake Right-Outside-of-Town.  The shallow end of the Naval Academy swimming pool was pure Puddle Pirate territory.  Destiny, courage, fortitude – all these things lay in the deep end where one was transformed from mere mortal to Blue Water Sailor.  Those mythic iron men in wooden ships who plowed the uncharted water far and wide.  Who ventured out where the navigation charts stopped and were simply marked “beyond here be sea dragons, denizens of the deep, and all kinds of creatures fearsome and deadly.”  Jack, invited into the deep waters, was transformed. He learned to swim and even joined the Academy sailing squadron, crewing the large yawls that ventured out to open water.  From Puddle Pirate to Blue Water Sailor.

There are two kinds of people in today’s Gospel – the crowd, who at the beginning of the Gospel press in upon Jesus, eager to hear the Word – but they never leave the shore. They never leave the known for the unknown.  They never trust.  The moment passes.  And then there is Peter, Andrew, James and John – who heard the challenge to “Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch.”  No passive hearers of the Word, they put out into the deep – and lives were changed.

Each one of us has our own moment when the Call comes. When we are called to put out into the deep.   Growing up in Florida led me to the water and the ocean. The Naval Academy led to the submarine service, into the uncharted blue waters of the world’s oceans. But it was always known territory.  But the call comes – it is different for everyone, but as we have heard in the last two weeks of readings, we have all been gifted by God. And God comes a calling, calling us to “Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch.”

For me it was into the blue waters called mission and the slums of Kenya where water was scarce and anything but blue.  And all my tentative movements of what I thought was faith and Christian life, was cast away as so much flotsam and jetsam.  I had to unlearn what I knew and trust in God – trust in a people whose language I did not yet speak. I was in over my head. But time and the tides have their own way of sweeping one into the rhythms of God.  My life changed. Now I see what plan God had for my gifts – but I never would have seen them from the shore or the shallows. Only in the deep water does it become clear.

I can’t tell your story. But I can shed the light of the Gospel upon it. And let you hear what so many before you have heard “Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch.”  Be seized by grace and dive into the unknown. Like Isaiah in the first reading, like Paul the second, and like the Apostles in the Gospel – do not be afraid, leave everything and follow Jesus.  Puddle Pirate or Blue Water Sailor.  The hearer of the Word who never leaves shore or the one who casts off for the deep at the command of Jesus. Your call will come. Venture beyond the charts and be transformed. It is the adventure of one’s life.