5th Sunday After Epiphany/Year C
Isaiah 6:1-8, [9-13]
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Luke 5:1-11
Fish are a prominent feature in the Gospel stories about Jesus and his disciples. And I just kept thinking about all the fish stories people make up when bragging about their catch, and all the jokes grandpas and kids tell each other like, What do you call a fish with no I? a FSH…
My dad loved to fish. He would sometimes plan weeklong trips with friends and willing family members, camping beside the banks of a mountain river, hoping to bring home a cooler full of trout. His luck, however, was more like that of Peter, James, and John in our Gospel today.
There is just so much packed into this Gospel story which I think most of us can relate to, whether we go fishing or not. Firstly, Jesus can be really exasperating. God’s timing is clearly not ours, and we would often prefer to do things more immediately and more efficiently. Nor are God’s ways like our ways. These seasoned career fishermen had been fishing all night long and had caught nothing. Jesus sees this and he sees them washing their nets afterwards, yet Jesus doesn’t say anything about going back out to fish some more when it would have been a lot more convenient for them, like before they clean everything up and put it away. No, Jesus instead asks to use one of their boats so he can continue teaching to a crowd that keeps getting bigger. That may seem a strange request, but the curved shore provided a kind of natural, curved amphitheater which would have allowed Jesus’ voice to carry a great distance.
Now Jesus had already gained a great deal of popularity in his ministry and Simon (whom we later know as Peter), and James, and John seem to be already familiar with him. In fact, I’d say they were friends because just before this in Chapter 4, Jesus has been to Simon’s house and healed his mother-in-law. When Jesus finishes teaching this crowd that had gathered, then he turns around and now says to his friends, “why don’t you go back out in the deep water and put your nets in again? Yes, the ones you just washed and put away while I was teaching.” This would have likely irritated me, too, and can’t you relate to Simon’s frustration? He has been a fisherman all his life. Jesus was not. I can hear it in his voice when he says –Master, we’ve worked all night and not caught a thing. (The unspoken part is–and I’m tired and I need to go home and rest and figure out how I’m going to feed my family.)
It is apparent, though, that what little time Simon has spent with Jesus, has been significant enough for him to know that Jesus was a leader he respected. He called him Master. And because of that, even in spite of his exasperation with Jesus’ request and being tired and frustrated, he does it. He gets the nets back out and out they go again in the water. At a time of day every person who fishes knows is the worst time to catch fish. He does it out of obedience even though, practically speaking, Simon knew more about fishing than did Jesus. His obedience despite the odds paid off.
And not just by a little bit. By a lot! Their equipment they use to do their jobs starts to break–the nets coming apart and the boats sinking. Simon Peter knows enough about fishing to know he wasn’t wrong about there being no fish out there to catch, so he knows this catch, this abundance is otherworldly. It is inexplicable and he is overcome with the knowledge that he is in the presence of a greater power and a holy being. He has come in contact with God’s plenty, with God’s generosity.
The amount of fish these men caught was so great that selling those fish in the market would have provided for their families for some time. And perhaps it did because if Jesus was going to bother healing Simon Peter’s mother-in-law then it was going to also matter that the families these guys left behind be cared for. It is a trust we all tend to doubt, but stand to learn, when we decide to follow Jesus. Because when Jesus calls you, he means now. He means all of you. He means everything. And they brought their boats to the shore and they left everything. That’s what it is to fully trust in Christ. The abundance of fish was a temptation to greater wealth and security, but it was fleeting. Jesus is the Son of the God of plenty and they were going to learn that to trust in God more than money and power, was where they would truly learn about God’s abundance. Those disciples walked away from everything, yet they never lacked for food or a place to sleep although it seemed they had nothing, and instead they inherited the Kingdom of God.
But let’s also take a closer look at these fishermen who God called. They’re not exactly the most highly trained and qualified guys for a start up ministry with plans to change the world. But who the world values and who Jesus chooses are not always in alignment. Jesus sees the true person within. It’s as if the Holy One knows us better than we know ourselves. Jesus saw the cornerstone of his movement in Simon, changing his name to Peter, meaning rock. Peter knew himself as an uneducated laborer, one who missed the mark. A lot. One who was hot tempered, impulsive, and at times unreliable. Jesus saw beyond the flaws to the person God created, the person who could rise to the occasion, and knew Simon Peter to be the right guy. Simon Peter felt unqualified, but trusted Jesus, that was what made him qualified. I will, with God’s help, was the only way it was going to work.
Isaiah also saw a vision of the Lord and the temple of the heavens–a vast cosmos of God’s holiness and power and immediately thought that he was not the right guy for the job either. “How can I proclaim the message of the Holy of Holies as a sinful person? I see the whole earth full of God’s glory, but nothing coming out of my mouth can equal the sacred voices of the Seraph calling from the temple!” So God touched his lips with a burning coal and burned out the sin and guilt and doubt, and purified those lips, taking away his excuse. God did not discard Isaiah because of his sin, he saw the human being beyond all that, one whom God created to be worthy and strong enough to carry a hard message to the people, to prophesy. It just took Isaiah’s trust and willingness to say, “Here am I . Send me,” to qualify for the job.
And Paul in his letter to the Corinthians admits, “ I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.” What God would take someone like that? A God that sees to the core of a person. Paul was a broken man and there were a lot of years of repentance for what he had done to the church before he was ready to be sent out again. But he was able then to say finally, “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain.”
And the women who followed Jesus, too. Mary Magdalene, who had carried seven demons in her, was freed of them by Jesus, and her shame and scars were not what Jesus saw. He saw a disciple who was faithful and truly loved and she became the apostle to the apostles, the first one to carry the message of the risen Christ.
What I hope you all can see, my brothers and sister and siblings in Christ, in this story of the calling of these ragamuffin fishermen, is that you are also good enough for God. Do not doubt your worth in the eyes of God, your ability to fulfill the call that God may have on your life. Do not doubt that you have a ministry of your own. God sees you in ways you may have not learned to see about yourself. We all must repent and atone for how we have failed ourselves and our neighbors, but that is not all there is to our story. Listen to those deep yearnings of your heart and believe that God sees the good in you. We have seen over the course of Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, and we will hear more stories in Lent and Easter of young and old, who God chooses to take along to make the Kingdom of God known in the world. Set aside your thoughts of “I’m not good enough, qualified enough, religious enough, old enough, or young enough, because the only qualification you need is a heart ready to love and a willingness to obey the call. It may be in small ways or it may be to walk away from your nets, but God goes with you. And never leaves you. Who knows what fishin’ story you will live to tell!
Magdalena's Musings 