Luke 5:1-11
It feels like a lifetime ago now,
but when I was in college, I spent a couple of summers working as a summer
missionary at the Coffee Baptist Vineyard Christian Retreat Center (we just
called it The Vineyard). That place will always be special to me, because it’s
the place where I met and fell in love with Sallie, but it’s also a place where
I worked a lot of long, hot days for next to no pay, all under the guise of
“working for the Lord.”
I recall a particular day during
my second summer at The Vineyard, when I was mowing the grass on the ball
field. We didn’t have a fancy “Zero-turn” mower back then, just an old
“red-belly” Ford, propane-powered tractor, with a finish mower we could hook up
to the PTO. I always liked driving that old tractor, especially to cut the
grass on the ball field, because it’s always been a rather calming practice for
me to drive a tractor, and that old Ford was slow, and the ball field was long
and wide, so it made for a good way to spend a good part of the day. On this
particular day, I was about halfway done mowing, when I looked up and saw my
friend John, running towards me, arms waving, obviously trying to get my
attention. I kept mowing in his direction, beginning to feel the drops of rain
on my neck and arms as I throttled down the tractor and disengaged the mower.
When John made it to me, he was
catching his breath and I asked him, “What’s wrong?” He pointed up at the darkening
clouds and said, “I need your keys; you left the windows down in your truck and
it’s about start pouring rain.”
It was right then that I felt bad
for John. You see, many of you should be able to recall a time when cars and
trucks didn’t have power windows, when you didn’t need to turn the ignition
switch on to let your windows up or down, when all you had to do was turn the
crank on the door to “roll up” the window. Those were the types of windows I
had on my little, blue S-10. I looked at John, and without saying a word, I
just made the motion with my hand of “rolling up the window.” He had run across
a parking lot, down a hillside trail, over a creek, and through the woods
(literally) to come to the ball field for my keys, and now he was going to have
to turn around and run all the way back, realizing he had wasted the trip.
When he realized what I was
telling him, he sort of smacked himself in the head, and turned to head back
toward the main building. I engaged the mower, but before I could throttle the
tractor back up, I saw John wheel around towards me again. He shouted, “What if
the doors are locked?!”
As unfortunate as John’s momentary
lapse of logic may have been, we’ve all been in a similar situation I bet, a
time when we’ve put a great deal of effort into something only for someone to
show us, tell us, remind us that it’s not as hard as it seems. Like those times
when you’ve witnessed someone (because you’ve never done this yourself) pull
and pull on the door to get into the building, only to have someone walk right
in front of you to gently push it
open and stroll in. Or those times when you’ve tried to turn a nut or bolt, and
you’ve done everything but cut it off with a torch, only to have someone come
behind you and tell you that you’ve been turning it the wrong way the entire
time. Or how about when you’ve been wrestling with the lid to that jar of
tomatoes you canned last year, only to have your wife come in and effortlessly
twist the lid off after running it under some warm water? You can be more than
a little embarrassed in those situations I suppose, maybe even feel a bit
ashamed, weak, or foolish. I can’t help but think that’s how Peter (Luke calls
him Simon in our text this morning) must have felt after Jesus got in his boat.
Now, there’s a lot going on in
this passage of Scripture before us this morning: “the crowd was pressing in on [Jesus]
to hear the word of God [to tell the
truth, I can’t imagine what that’s like. My experience has been that most folks
will press in to hear their favorite band, see their favorite movie, but you’ve
got to just about pay folks to “press in to hear the word of God!”]. Jesus
has been teaching and healing around the region, and his reputation has caught
up with him. A crowd has gathered to hear what Jesus might have to say, and
they’ve encroached upon his person space, so “[Jesus] saw two boats there at
the shore of the lake… He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to
Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down
and taught the crowds from the boat.” It’s a nice little scene if you
think about it: Jesus, in a boat, a crowd gathered on the shore to hear him
teach…
But at the heart of this text is
Jesus’ exchange with Simon-Peter: “When he had finished speaking, he said to
Simon, ‘Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.’"
Now, as best I can tell, Luke doesn’t mention anything prior to this scene
about Jesus’ angling skills; there’s no mention of Jesus experience with
commercial fishing practices or net-casting techniques. So why does Jesus
believe it’s his place to tell Simon-Peter (the experienced, family-owned,
commercial fisherman) where to cast his nets? Does Jesus know something Peter
doesn’t know? Is Jesus curious to know what will happen; it could be his first
time out on a fishing boat? Was Jesus hoping to score some free seafood after
his pro-bono sermon to the crowd on the shore? Whatever it was, I’ve got to
think Simon was at least a little annoyed by the request.
“Simon answered, ‘Master, we have
worked all night long but have caught nothing…’” Simon and his crew—who
had no doubt fished that very lake for years, knowing all the “honey holes,”
all the secret spots, all the best tricks, right temperatures, depths, etc. at
which to catch the best yield of fish—they had fished all night long. They were
exhausted, frustrated, and likely filled with the sort of anxiety that comes
when you’ve got a hungry family at home waiting for you to put food on the
table, but the paycheck just isn’t coming until the fish are in the boat. Simon
could have looked Jesus square in the face and told him to stick with preaching
and healing lepers and to leave the fishing to the pros, but instead, Simon
says (likely out of exhaustion), “Yet if you say so, I will let down the
nets."
What happens next is
Vacation Bible School history: “When they had done this, they caught so many
fish that their nets were beginning to break. So they signaled their partners
in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats,
so that they began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus'
knees, saying, ‘Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!’ For he and all
who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; and so
also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Then Jesus
said to Simon, ‘Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.’"
(And all of God’s people said, “Amen!”) Simon Peter lets his nets down into the
deep water, just as Jesus had told him, and despite the fact that they had
fished all night long and hadn’t caught a thing, now their nets were breaking
because there were so many fish! Maybe Simon was embarrassed or even a bit
frustrated, but that all seemed to evaporate when he realized just what had
taken place: Jesus had just provided this miraculous catch of fish—enough to
feed his family, enough for his fishing business, enough for his partners and
their families. SO. MANY. FISH!
This was an answer to the
countless, little prayers these fishermen had no doubt prayed during the long,
fruitless night. This was an answer to the prayers of wives and children at
home who had been hoping for a fishing boom so they could finally move out of
that apartment, get the car fixed, or go back to school. This was the kind of
blessing that you hear about from those preachers on television selling prayer
clothes and miracle spring water…and Simon is in awe of Jesus and what has just
happened. He falls down and begs Jesus to leave him alone, because he is a
sinful man and unworthy of such a blessing. Everyone around him is amazed,
maybe even frightened. That’s why Jesus responds to Simon, "Do not be
afraid; from now on you will be catching people."
If the story ends there, it’s a
great story about calling, conversion, blessing, and discipleship: Jesus shows
who he is to Simon, Simon responds in humility, Jesus accepts him and calls him
to a new vocation of “catching people.” If the story ends there, it’s a
wonderful miracle story of how Jesus produced this great catch of fish where
there was once nothing, how Jesus provided for Simon, for James and John. One
would even carry on assuming that this great catch of fish would spark hope in
the lives of those in that village who depended on the fishermen to come into
shore with enough fish to keep the local economy afloat, to keep the Romans
happy and satisfied with their taxed portions. You could even go so far as to
imagine the faces of those mothers and children, bright eyed and grinning as
those loaded boats lumbered on the sandy shores with their promising payloads.
If the story ends there, Jesus is the great provider, the one to whom we turn
when the cupboards are bare, when the accounts are overdrawn, when we’ve fished
all night and haven’t caught a thing…but the story doesn’t end there. Because verse elven tells us, “When
they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.”
Hang on. Jesus gives them this
miraculous catch of fish—not just a lot of fish, but enough to break their nets
and overload two boats—and they just leave them flopping on the shore? They
have just caught all these fish, enough to provide for their needs, and they
just leave them there, with their boats and all? There are families at home
depending on those boats and that fish, markets waiting for the boats to come in
so they can do their business. There’s no welfare system, no social security,
no business insurance. What are they doing?!
I mean, we’d be foolish to do
anything like that right? We’d be foolish to take for granted the things God
gives us, to just leave them and follow after Jesus, right? I mean, if God gave
us everything we have, we’d be foolish to give it all up, right? If God blesses
me, who am I to not take full advantage of that blessing for myself and my
family, right? I mean, it’s not like we can confuse the blessing with the One
who gives it, can we? Surely, we’d never fall into the trap of believing that
this whole thing called faith is about what we receive, that a life of faith is
about some…I don’t know…reward that we get for following the rules, staying out
of trouble, and claiming we’re doing what Jesus says by doing what we believe
is right, would we? I mean, that’d be like fishing all night long, knowing we
were doing the right thing, only to have some novice, some traveling preacher
come along and tell us we didn’t know what we were doing, that we should try
fishing in a different spot.
Surely we would never value the gifts, opportunities, and blessings we
receive more than the One who gives them to us…right? I mean, if that’s the
case, we may as well say that the only reason we’re following Jesus in the
first place is to get something out of it, that the only reason we’re following
Jesus is so we can have a better social circle, a more comfortable life, that
the only reason we’re following Jesus is so we can avoid pain and suffering. If
we value the gifts more than the one who gives them, then does that mean we’re
only following Jesus for the fish? That we’re only following Jesus to avoid our
own fear of hell or to embrace our own hope of heaven? I mean, if it isn’t
about following Jesus, about loving Jesus, about seeking to love the God we know
in Christ with all of who we are, if it isn’t about loving all of those who
Jesus loves, “catching” all of God’s people with the same love with which
Christ has caught us, if it isn’t about that, then we may as well just sit in
the boat with our fish and continue to believe it’s all about us and what Jesus
can do for us.
But if you desire a faith that is about more than just what you can get
out of it, if you long to be a part of who God is and what God is doing, if you
truly desire to follow Jesus, then head the example of Simon and those
fishermen, and do what Jesus says, go where Jesus calls you to go, be the one
Christ is calling you to be, and leave all that other stuff behind, never
forgetting that the pursuit of the One who gives the gift, is always greater than the gift itself.
Amen.
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