Fabled ship on a cyber ocean
11 May 2004 – Richard Chartres, Bishop of London, was kind (and let's face it, crazy) enough to preach at our opening service. "Cast out your nets into the deep," he told us.
Jesus said to Simon, "Put out into the deep and let down the nets for a catch." Simon said, "Master we toiled all night and took nothing, but at your word I will let down the nets." This done, they enclosed such a multitude of fish that their nets were close to breaking.
Put out into the deep. It is the command of Jesus Christ that we set out into the cyber ocean aware that the Spirit of God is already brooding over the face of the deep.
To our generation has been entrusted a new sphere of communication. Just as the oceans girdle the world, we have been given the potential to engage with all human kind in a common conversation.
But how will the gift be used? Already there are signs that it will be misused. The web connects extreme individuals with previously inaccessible lethal information. The net catches and confirms thousands in addiction to pornographic and violent images.
The gift of communication is held out to us. How will we use it in a world that stands at a point of decision? How will we use it in a world that must make a choice between the ways marked by two symbols, which have been given to our generation?
The two symbols are the cloud and the globe. The mushroom cloud, which rises from human knowledge divorced from divine wisdom, knowledge which has turned into destruction. The globe, sapphire blue, a vision of one whole, beautiful planet granted to those who have cast out into the deeps of space. Which way will we choose?
The answer does not lie in outer space but in casting out into the deeps of inner space, responding to the divine word, which has been spoken. The word of God is always invitation to find in his infinite deeps the healing and the meaning of our wounds and fear. This is a voyage in which we encounter what is strange so that we may come to ourselves.
We toil in the night of unawareness until we can hear within ourselves the call to cast out into the deep. We begin this venture in the faith that we are called to be participants in a dense web of compassion and meaning that binds together a divine creation.
We shall encounter forces of destruction and negativity but the Spirit has been brooding over the ocean since before the beginning and we shall discover that love is Almighty.
So let us take the wings of the morning and fly to the uttermost parts of the sea to discover ourselves in the light of the Spirit. Let us use this gift which has been given to our generation to heal and not to hurt; to open spiritual ears and eyes and not to add to the noise of self-justification and the rhetoric of hate.
We do this in the name of Jesus Christ who commanded us to "put out into the deep and let down our nets for a catch."
Richard Chartres is the Bishop of London, England.
