We continue in Luke’s gospel this morning, where we find Jesus now in the thick of his public ministry. If you recall the readings we heard the past two weeks, we saw Jesus return to his hometown synagogue and read from the book of Isaiah, saying ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’ Everyone was amazed – until the rest of his sermon led them to run him out of town and try to throw him off a cliff. Jesus was able to hide himself and get out of there and continue his ministry of healing and teaching in Capernaum and other cities. That’s where we pick up the story.
Scripture: Luke 5:1-11
Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. 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. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, ‘Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.’ Simon answered, ‘Lord, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.’
When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. So they signaled to 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.’ When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.”
In eleven short verses, we have some tired fishermen, Jesus getting overwhelmed by crowds, a sermon given from the safety of a boat just offshore, a miracle, and a life-changing invitation.
Simon Peter, James, and John started their day the night before. In the ancient world, fishermen often fished at night or in the very early morning hours so they could sell their catch in the market in the morning, then do their clean-up work in the daylight. It also helps that nighttime is when certain types of fish come closer to the surface, while they dive deeper during the day for protection.
It had been a long night, and they hadn’t caught anything, so they were cleaning up and getting ready to head home. But this rabbi showed up, and asked for a favor, and Simon Peter obliged – taking him out in the boat so he could have a little room to breathe while he taught.
Once he was done, he told the exhausted fishermen to go back out into the middle of the lake and put their freshly cleaned and stored nets back out for a catch. This probably sounded insane, because it went against all prevailing wisdom. I imagine Simon Peter was tired and cranky, and no one would’ve faulted him if he were like “you stick to teaching, I’ll stick to fishing” – but they did it anyway. And they caught so many fish that the nets were full to bursting and they had to signal the second boat to come and help them, and both boats were full to sinking.
Simon Peter promptly has an epiphany, realizing: “oh, this guy is not just a clever teacher – this is WAY above my holiness pay grade. I should leave him alone and tell him to keep his distance, because I do not want to mess that up.”
But Jesus says “oh, don’t be afraid. You’re going to come with me, and instead of fish, you are going to learn to gather up people.”
They get to shore, and Simon Peter along with his partners, James and John, immediately leave behind everything they have ever known to follow Jesus.
These guys had no idea what they were getting themselves into. They were not academics or scholars or priests – and Jesus was not just any traveling rabbi. There was no schedule, no five-year plan. They would find themselves in the same kinds of impossible scenarios over and over and over again, with Jesus telling them to do the impossible, so they could watch as he made it possible.
There was no way they could’ve been prepared for any of this. There’s not even an invitation here. There is no opportunity for Simon to say ‘no thank you, I’m going to stay here with my fishing nets.’ Jesus simply tells him “from now on, you will fish for people.”
Nevertheless, they trusted Jesus and followed him anyway.
These three fishermen stand in a very long line of people who were called away from their very normal, quiet lives to follow God into an unknown future.
In her book How We Learn to Be Brave, Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde writes:
“Some of my favorite biblical characters politely point out to God why they are the wrong person for the job. Moses, for example, insists that he can’t possibly be the one to tell the ruler of Egypt to release the Israelites from slavery because he stutters. Jeremiah informs God that no one would listen to him because he is only a boy. When Isaiah hears God’s call, he collapses into shame. “Woe is me,” he laments, “I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips.” In each case, God’s response is, in effect, “I know who you are. I know your shortcomings. Step up anyway.”
There is a similar refrain among Jesus’ disciples, most notably Simon Peter, whose answer to Jesus’ call is, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.” But Jesus knows all about Simon Peter, and he is the one Jesus wants by his side.
The message throughout Scripture is that whenever God, or life itself, issues the summons, it’s normal to feel both unworthy and unprepared, but it doesn’t matter. We are to step into the gap between our current capacity and what’s needed anyway. When good things result, we know deep in our bones [what Paul writes to the Corinthians:] “that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.”[1]
One of the great joys of the Reformed theological tradition is the belief that God calls each and every one of us to something.
Call is not reserved only for those who devote every waking second of their lives to church ministry or nonprofit work. It is not reserved for a job title like ‘engineer’ or ‘teacher’ or even ‘pastor.’ It doesn’t even have to be a formal role or job title at all.
A call is simply the thing you can’t not do. It’s the thing you do even when you’re not getting money or praise or acknowledgment for it, because without it your soul is restless. Your call is the thing that worms its way into your life when you’re not looking, like that really cute cat that keeps showing up on your porch.
Frederick Buechner describes ‘call’ this way in his book Wishful Thinking:
“The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need most to do and (b) that the world most needs to have done. …The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”[2]
What we learn in this moment alongside Simon Peter, James and John, is that sometimes, the world’s deep hunger will cause the Holy Spirit call us out of our routines, away from our everyday, and into a new kind of faith and life.
When we follow Jesus into our hungry and hurting world, we will find ourselves in plenty of circumstances and situations that we would not have chosen for ourselves, that we are not prepared for. And we will be asked to do what seems impossible: to feed the hungry from our own loaves and fish, to love our enemies, to heal the wounded, to forgive a hundred times, and then forgive again.
On the night before he was assassinated, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. held a prayer service and rally in Memphis, TN. He was there to encourage and help organize a strike of sanitation workers, protesting deadly working conditions and starvation wages. He almost didn’t go – he was exhausted and feeling sick, so he tried to send a friend in his stead. But these folks were not having that. When he arrived, he offered a reflection on the Parable of the Good Samaritan, saying that two religious leaders saw a man mortally wounded and passed him by. But it was a member of a despised community, the Samaritans, who stopped to help. This is what Dr. King called “the unselfishness of love.”
When asked to explain why he was in Memphis, this is what he said:
“The first question the Levite and the priest asked when they saw the wounded man was ‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’ The Good Samaritan reversed the question. ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?’ . . . That is the question before you tonight. Not, ‘If I stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to me?’ But ‘If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?’ That’s the question.”[3]
Beloveds, here is the good news: no matter how difficult the journey, no matter how impossible the task, no matter how messy it gets, no matter how messy we get – we can trust that the grace of God, the love of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit goes before us, beside us, and behind us – to every time and place. And that fact makes anything possible.
Alleluia. Amen.
[1] Edgar Budde, Mariann. How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life and Faith (pp. 115-116). (Function). Kindle Edition.
[2] https://www.frederickbuechner.com/quote-of-the-day/2017/7/18/vocation
[3] King Jr., “I See the Promised Land,” included in James M. Washington, ed., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1986), 285.
