"An Amazing Catch"
Luke 5:1-11
The call of the first disciples comes early in Luke’s
gospel. After his baptism, Jesus was driven by the Spirit out into the
wilderness to be tested for forty days. After that, he preached his inaugural
sermon at his hometown synagogue in Nazareth, and was rejected and almost
thrown off the cliff.
Then he traveled to Capernaum, where he was
in the synagogue, and encountered conflict. He healed the sick and cast out demons.
When today’s gospel lesson opens, Jesus is standing
beside Lake Genneseret, which is another name for the Sea of Galilee. The people are crowding around him and
listening to the word of God. He saw two boats at the water’s edge, left there
by the fishermen, who were washing their fishing nets. Jesus got into one of the boats, the one that
belonged to Simon, and asked him to put out a little from shore.
Now, Simon must have been exhausted after fishing all
night with no success, and then working on his nets. I imagine he would have
been looking forward to going home and getting some sleep. Maybe Simon was remembering how Jesus came to
his home in Capernaum and healed his mother-in-law. Maybe that explains Simon’s
willingness to take Jesus out in the boat, so Jesus can use it as a floating
pulpit.
Out
in the lake, Jesus sat and taught the people from the boat.
Luke doesn’t tell us what
Jesus taught the crowds that morning. The focus is on what happens afterward.
When he had finished speaking, Jesus said to Simon, “Put
out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.”
Now, I imagine Simon believes this will be a futile
exercise. They’d fished all night and caught nothing, so why should they expect
anything different? Why should
these professional fishermen take fishing advice from a carpenter? We can
almost hear the exasperation in his voice when he responds, “Master, we have
worked all night but have caught nothing. But because you say so, I will let down
the nets.”
So, they go out into deep water. There’s a subtle
allusion here in the Greek word, bathos,
that’s used in the Septuagint—the
Greek translation of the Torah, Prophets and Writings—in connection with the primordial
sea. This was a powerful Jewish
symbol of chaos. Luke perceives the world as chaotic. There’s hostility between
traditional Judaism and the followers of Jesus, the oppressive system of the
Empire, and conflict within the early church.[1]
“Go
out into the deep water.” They go out
into the deep water, and Simon lets down the nets, and they catch so many fish
that the nets began to break. They signaled their partners in the other boat to
come and help, and they filled both boats so full that they began to sink.
When
he sees what is happening, Simon Peter is overwhelmed with fear and wonder,
sensing that he is in the presence of divine power. He’s caught by surprise. In the midst of his ordinary daily life, after
a particularly unsuccessful night at work, he is encountered by one who changes
everything. Simon sees the overwhelming
disparity between God’s power manifest in Jesus and his own mortal, compromised
life.
He responds by falling down at Jesus’ feet and
begs him, “Go away from me, Lord. I am a sinful man!”
Then Jesus said to Simon, “Don’t be afraid. From now on you will be catching people.”
The Greek word, zogron,
translated here as “catching” is rare in the New Testament, but it means “to
catch alive.”
In the Hebrew Scriptures and the Dead Sea Scrolls,
fishing is used metaphorically for gathering people for judgment.[2]
The call to judgment was a theme in the
preaching of John the Baptist.[3]
But, as New Testament scholar John Drury reminds us, the
verb is also used in the Septuagint to denote “rescue,” from peril of death,
not the capture of animals….” As Drury puts it, “The kingdom requires not dead fish, but human beings fully alive…people living the life of the good
news in all its fullness.”[4]
But in the Gospels, the call to become fishers of people
becomes a call to gather men and women for the kingdom. The Word has come to dwell in the midst of
everyday lives and everyday fishermen.
In today’s
gospel story, Luke tells how Jesus calls Simon and his partners to a new
vocation of catching people so that they might live, a life-giving vocation of being caught up in God’s mission of
salvation for all. The good news falls on the ears of Simon and
James and John.
So, they pulled their boats up on shore. They had no idea
what lay ahead on that open and uncharted journey from their familiar fishing
boats. But they left everything, and they followed
Jesus.
Do
you wonder? Why did Jesus choose Simon Peter and his
fishing partners as his first disciples? They’re simple fishermen—middle class
business owners of their time. They were
typical representatives of the broken old age, living under Roman oppression, burdened
by high taxes, and beset by other forms of social conflict and economic stress.
They didn’t have any particular religious credentials to commend them. They’re
simply doing what they do every day.
They’re minding their own business, tending their nets, when Jesus comes
along, enters into their normal, ordinary lives and changes everything.
Throughout the scriptures, we see that human sinfulness
and failure and inadequacy are no obstacles to God’s call. God calls ordinary,
imperfect people to do God’s work.[5] God doesn’t wait for us to shape up. God
calls us as we are and then works on shaping us into faithful servants.
How
often do we resist Jesus’ claim on our lives because what he’s calling us to do
seems to impractical or impossible? How often do we avoid putting out into the
deep waters of following and bearing witness to Jesus because we’re convinced
that we won’t see any results? What
might it mean for us to go deep-seeing fishing with Jesus—to trust and follow
him outside our comfort zones…to let go of our certainties…to have our lives
radically reoriented?
In our baptism we are called to be a part of God’s
mission to the world in Jesus Christ. We are called to re-orient our priorities
to align with God’s priorities, to use the gifts God has given us in the service
to others, to share the good news of God’s love in our words and deeds.[6]
Jesus’ mission doesn’t wait until we think we’re ready.
It doesn’t wait for us to feel comfortable or certain about how everything will
turn out. We live in a broken and hurting world, and the need for the gospel is
too urgent.
In the midst of our ordinary, busy lives, in spite of our
failures, or our doubts or frailty, we are called to embody God’s love and
justice and peace in our lives, in our communities, in our world. Jesus’ word
to Simon Peter is also a word to us: “Don’t be afraid.”
We can trust that Jesus will be working with us and
through us, “catching” others as he has caught us—in the deep, wide net of
God’s mercy and love. We can trust that the mission is in God’s hands, and that
God’s desire is for the nets to be bursting and the boats full.
Thanks
be to God!
Rev. Fran Hayes, Pastor
Littlefield Presbyterian
Church
Dearborn, Michigan
February 10, 2019
[1]
Ronald Allen, “Commentary on Luke 5:1-11,” at Working Preacher. http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3958
[2]
Amos 4:2; Hab. 1:14-15; Jer. 16:16; 1 QH 5:7-9.
[3]
Luke 3:7-9
[4]
John Drury, Tradition and Design in Luke’s Gospel (London: Darton, Longman
& Todd, 1976), p. 67, cited by Peter Eaton in Feasting on the Word: Year C, Volume 1: Advent Through
Transfiguration, 2009.
[5]
Some examples: Exodus 3:10-12; Isaiah 6:1-6; Jeremiah 1:6-8.
[6] I
am indebted to Dr. Elizabeth Johnson for some of the ideas here, which she
contributed in a commentary in 2013 at Working Preacher. https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1560
