Epiphany 5
February 6, 2022
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, “Master, 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 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.
Baptized in the river, tempted in the wilderness, and threatened after his sermon in Nazareth, Jesus now stands by the lake of Gennesaret (which is called the Sea of Galilee). It is here that he calls his first disciples. He tells them, “From now on you will be catching people.”
Ever since I first heard the story in childhood, this has always been a captivating scene for me. Jesus walks along the shoreline, sees some fishermen, and says, “Come, follow me.” Immediately they drop everything, and they follow. That’s how we normally hear the story. That’s how the Gospel of Mark tells it (1:16-20). Mark stresses the immediacy of the response. Jesus calls, and Simon and the others don’t even think about it. Off they go.
By contrast, Luke tells us more. Apparently, there was a backstory, specifically a fishing story. Simon spent a long night fishing without success. As he pulls ashore and cleans his nets, Jesus steps into his boat. The teacher asks to go out a little way from shore. He wants to utilize the water as a natural amplifier as he teaches. And when the lesson is over, he says, “Let’s go out a little further.” That’s when the real lesson begins.
Simon complains when the teacher tells him to drop the nets in the water. “Listen,” he says, “I’ve been out here all night. I’ve haven’t caught a thing. The fish are avoiding me.”
Jesus looks at him. Waits. Smiles. Doesn’t say a thing. “Let down your net for a catch.” Reluctantly, Simon agrees. He will do it for the teacher. The net drops into the lake water. Suddenly there are so many fish, the boat begins to tip. They holler for help, and James and John push offshore to join them. And there are even more fish, hundreds of fish, jumping into the net. With every possible muscle, the men pull up the nets and both boats are filled with fish. Both boats start to sink. It’s all they can do to get them ashore.
So there’s a miracle catch. The abundance is stunning. And this is the moment for us to lean forward and pay attention. Simon Peter cries out, “Lord, get away from me.” Don’t miss what happens next: Jesus stays right there.
Those who have tuned in for last week’s episode can guess how this is going to turn out. The synagogue folks in Nazareth grabbed Jesus and tried to propel him from a cliff, but he wouldn’t go. Then he goes to the Capernaum synagogue, literally a stone’s throw from Simon’s fishing boat, and a crazy man in the sanctuary cries out, “Why don’t you leave us alone?” And Jesus doesn’t go anywhere.
So for the third time in a row that we hear somebody say, “Get away from me” (in this case, Simon Peter), we can predict he’s not going to go anywhere. He’s going to stay right there. And this is the moment upon which all of Simon Peter’s life will turn.
Was it the miracle? Certainly, there was a miracle – an incredible catch of fish. It’s not easily explained. It stretches the imagination. Jesus or God or whoever sent all those fish has just made Simon a wealthy man. Take a catch like that to market, and it will erase his debts, pay his Roman taxes, feed his family, with a lot left over. But Simon is not interested in the money. Take note he doesn’t say, “Lord, can we go fishing again tomorrow?” He’s not interested in monetizing this moment.
So was it the miracle? Not necessarily. Simon has already experienced a miracle. It happened immediately before this story. His mother-in-law had a high fever. She was really sick. So the neighbors in that close-knit town asked the Teacher to stop by her home after the synagogue. Just as Jesus drove out the craziness in that man in the congregation, Jesus drove out the fever and made her well. Every healing is a miracle.
But something
happened in that moment on the lakeshore. Something equally profound and
subtle. What was it? And then I came across a brief poem based on this Bible
story, just two lines from the Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz. Listen to this poem,
called “Abundant Catch” –
High above, swallows. Wings of butterflies. Cathedrals.[1]
Up until the concluding word, it’s a fishing story. An observation of nature: fish, swallows, butterflies. But when the poet says, “Cathedrals,” suddenly we see something more than the routines of nature and a fishing excursion. We see holiness. A cathedral on a seashore. An epiphany in the everyday. “Holy, Holy, Holy” in a fishing boat.
That’s what sends Simon to his knees. He perceives Jesus as something more than a wise teacher or a gifted healer. He is the Holy One of God, and he climbed into Simon’s boat. “Get away from me,” he says. “Go away, for I am a sinner.”
Apparently Simon Peter has not read the first couple of chapters of this Gospel of Luke where his story appears. In the second chapter of the book, God sends his angel to announce the coming of Jesus to a flock of shepherds, widely perceived as sinners because they allowed their flocks to graze on other people’s lands. The angel sings, “Unto you is born this day a Savior who is Christ the Lord.”
The shepherds weren’t asking for a Savior. The angel didn’t require the shepherds to clean up their act before announcing the news. No, holiness comes from God into the everyday. It is pure gift, an unexpected revelation. It comes regardless of how pure we are, or how pure somebody tells us we ought to be. Because the Gospel is not about our purity; it’s about God’s goodness, God’s holiness, God’s abundance regardless of our purity. And that is the essence of grace.
As Presbyterian Christians, we believe God has a good heart, which is what we mean by “grace.” Yet sometimes our wires have been tangled. Years ago, our spiritual ancestors kept the number of communion Sundays to a minimum. They didn’t want to merely give away the sacrament to anybody. They expected people to come only if they were penitent and in a temporary state of sinlessness. To dramatize it, they would require attendance to something called a Preparatory Service. The faithful would cower in the pews while the preacher reminded them at length of how bad they are. If they could endure this, they would be given a small token, a communion token, which would grant them admission to the quarterly or biannual service of communion. You could only come to the Table if you scrubbed up your soul.
And then somebody decided to read the Bible. Who sat at the Table when Jesus instituted the sacrament? Judas Iscariot, who sold him out. Simon Peter, who swung a sword to cut off a servant’s ear. The other ten disciples, all of whom ran away when he was arrested. Not a pure one in the bunch. Exactly!
As our church’s Directory for Worship teaches, “The opportunity to eat and drink with Christ is not a right bestowed upon the worthy, but a privilege given to the undeserving who come in faith, repentance, and love.” (W-3.0409). So, if like Simon Peter, if any of us cry out, “Get away from me, Lord; I’m not worthy,” we are missing the point. None of us are “worthy” of the grace of God, but all of us receive it. None of us are worthy, but all of us are wanted.
And this is the miracle far greater than a huge catch of fish.
It’s the miracle that we dramatize at the beginning of our Sunday worship services. We sing a big, fat, glorious opening hymn, like “Holy, Holy, Holy.” Reminded of the splendor of God, we recognize the shortness of our own stature. We see God’s light, and know it reveals our shadows. And that’s precisely why we confess our sins: because we have sung of the holy grace of God, because we have seen the Light that calls us out of our shadows. Every part of our spiritual life is a response to the love of God. God comes first.
Still feeling inadequate? Let me tell you a parable, as told by a surgeon. In his book Mortal Lessons, Dr. Richard Selzer tells about standing beside the bed of one of his patients. She is a young woman, somebody’s wife, and he has removed a cancerous tumor from her cheek. As it happened, some of the nerves in her face had to be severed to save her life. She will be OK, but her smile will be permanently twisted.
Dr. Selzer stands by as her husband comes to visit. They embrace, speak quietly, and then she asks her surgeon, “Will my mouth always be like this?”
“Yes,” he replies, “it will. It is because the nerve was cut.” She nods and is silent. But the young man smiles. Then he says, “I like it. It is kind of cute.” Selzer says,
All at once I know who he is. I understand and I lower my gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with a god. Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth and I am so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate hers, to show her that their kiss still works.[2]
If we are inclined to believe that we are not worthy to receive the holy love of God, know this: that in Jesus of Nazareth, God accommodates our weakness and offers to meet us where we are. This is the essence of grace. Not because we are worthy, but because we are wanted.
And if we welcome
that grace, there are a lot of other people who need to be loved in the name of
Jesus.
[1] Czeslaw Milosz, “Abundant Catch
(Luke 5:4-10),” in The Gospels in Our Own Image: An Anthology of Twentieth
Century Poetry Based on Biblical Texts, ed. David Curzon (New York:
Harcourt, 1995) 73-4.
[2] Richard Selzer, M.D., Mortal
Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1978),
pp. 45-46.
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