by Rev Douglas Brauner

Learning to swim with the fish.

You can listen to today’s blog by clicking on this SoundCloud link.

I would be surprised if you are a person who has never felt like a fish out of water. At some point, in some setting, we’ve all felt out of our element, as if we don’t belong.

These fish are literally out of water. Okay, so they’re not real fish and the rock bed is meant to picture a stream in which they are swimming, but when I look at this picture it depicts how I feel when I’m in a setting that’s not the norm for my life.

Maybe that’s the way people who don’t know Christ feel when they come to worship. They feel like fish out of water, and it’s not about the message we proclaim there.

Many of us grew up in the church and the language of the church is something we speak fluently.

We know the liturgy.

We know what it means to sit in a pew. We even know what a pew is.

We know the “secret handshakes.”

Inviting someone to worship who has no background in our church language is inviting them to be fish out of water…and we wonder why they don’t come back. Maybe the best way to reach people who don’t know Christ is to swim with them in their water first. This can be scary. I’m a person who believes that, if God had intended for humanity to dive to the depths of the oceans, he would have given us gills.

“And as they were going along the road they came to some water, and the eunuch said [to Philip], ‘See, here is water! What prevents me from being baptized?'”
Act 8:36 English Standard Version

This blog is difficult for me to write because I struggle to swim with the fish. I struggle to be with people who don’t know Christ and to bring Christ to them in their world. However, Philip got into the chariot with the eunuch who was floundering like a fish out of water in the scroll of Isaiah. He entered his world. As he entered his world, Philip was then privileged to baptize him into Christ.

“See, here is water.” The eunuch was no longer a fish out of water.

Copyright Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Colorado Springs, Colorado