February 4, 2007 – Fifth Sunday after Epiphany
Luke 5:1-11
Grace and peace to you from God the Creator and the Lord Jesus. Amen.
Legend has it that once while he was touring Europe the great sculptor Rodin spotted an enormous marble crucifix. He was so taken by the giant cross that he decided he had to have it for himself. So he bought the cross and arranged to have it transported to his home. But when it arrived it became clear that the cross was literally too large for his house.
So he did an interesting thing: He knocked out the walls and raised the roof, and rebuilt his home around the cross! Imagine: Rebuilding your home around a new, more compelling reality!
That’s drastic enough, but imagine rebuilding your life around a new, more compelling vision of the future! That’s exactly what Simon Peter did. His imagination was so fired by a vision of the future that he took the total of his accumulated life and applied it in a very different direction.
Simon Peter was a fisherman, Scripture tells us. He was in business with two brothers, James and John. It must have been a fairly lucrative trade; just a few verses before our lesson this morning we learn that Simon owned a home in Capernaum. So he wasn’t among the poorest of the poor. But the fishing business, then as now, is not consistently reliable: We know of at least this occasion when, as the sun was coming up and Simon was coming in to shore after a night’s fishing, he came up empty.
And that’s when Simon Peter, minding his own business, going about his unspectacular daily routine, had his encounter with the Son of God.
The Bible tells us that Simon was not part of the crowd that had sought Jesus out that morning. Instead, he was just a bystander who had been sought out by Jesus, sought out and recruited for a seemingly minor task. Simon, Jesus said, let me use your boat, one of the tools of your trade, for my own purpose. Simon obliged, and when Jesus had finished teaching the crowd that had gathered at the lakeside, Jesus turned his attention to Simon.
You know the rest of the story: Putting out into the deep water, letting down the nets, the outrageously extravagant catch of fish, Peter’s awe-filled recognition that he was in the presence of the Holy One of God; Jesus’ reassurance (Peter, don’t be afraid); and that promise – from now on, you will be catching people.
Strange image, isn’t it, catching people? In the Hebrew Bible, our Old Testament, God had promised to send out fishermen to catch people, but there the reference was to catching people for judgment. This was not good news.
But in this passage in the New Testament, Jesus uses a very different form of the word, “to catch.” Here it means, literally, “to keep alive.” Jesus is interesting in catching people, too, but not for judgment; rather, for salvation. Call it God’s own catch-and-release program. Simon Peter, James and John and the others will be catching people and releasing them into the Kingdom of God. And in fact that’s exactly what happens. If we fast-forward in this story to the book of Acts – we know that the author of Luke also wrote Acts – in the second chapter, we see that because of the lifestyle of Peter and James and John and the others literally thousands upon thousands of people came to faith in Christ.
And it all started right here in this story. In fact, we can trace it to two verses – 4 and 5 – when Jesus comes to Peter and says, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.”
To Simon Peter, that must have sounded absolutely crazy. Think about it. Peter and the others weren’t out fishing for enjoyment, some diversion. This was their livelihood; they did this for a living! They knew the fishing business! When you don’t catch fish, there’s no big mystery here: There aren’t any fish to catch in the immediate area. But here comes a preacher, who, for all they know, knows zip about fishing, and he claims to know better.
How easy and understandable it would have been for Peter to say, “Jesus, I appreciate the encouragement, admire the optimism. But fishing is what I do. I know this business. I’m the captain here, so off my boat!” Instead, Peter took his experience, his instincts, his judgment; he set it all aside in favor of obedience to the command of Christ.
And when he did that, when he said, in verse 5, “Yet if you say so I will let down the nets,” Simon Peter began to shift the focus of his life from success to significance. From success as he had defined it – more fish, bigger business – to significance as Jesus defined it – doing the work of God in human interaction that builds up and strengthens the Kingdom of God.
When Peter began to shift his focus from success to significance, he took on an attitude, and we see that attitude as we follow the development of Peter through Luke’s gospel and the book of Acts. Call it a Kingdom of God attitude. It’s an attitude that is focused outward instead of inward, an attitude that seeks to make oneself available to the call of God.
I saw a great example of that attitude last week. I received an email from one of our members who said he and a friend had been thinking of going on one of our mission trips this Spring Break, either to Mexico or New Orleans. He said they had intended to wait until they got closer to the departure date to commit to going because they didn’t know if they would be able to take time out of their business. But, he said, they finally decided that they were going to commit right now. They figured that business was going to do what business was going to do, so they were going!
That’s a kingdom attitude, and it was given to each of us in our baptism, the attitude that seeks to be open to the call of God. We don’t always use that attitude. Sometimes we don’t use it because we’re convinced that our livelihood can’t possibly be connected to the Kingdom of God. So we say, “Jesus, I appreciate the encouragement, admire the optimism; but religion is religion and the real world is the real world. I know my business, it’s my life, I’m the captain here – off my boat!”
The tragedy of that kind of thinking is that, if we do it often enough, we can deafen ourselves to the call of God. We can bring to life that strange passage in our first lesson, from Isaiah, when the prophet talks about listening but not comprehending, looking but not understanding. The truth is that God seeks to work through us in whatever context we happen to find ourselves, whether it makes sense to us or not. It is for us to stay open to God’s invitation to put out into the deep waters and let down our nets.
Sometimes, we don’t use our Kingdom attitude because we’re fearful that we won’t be up to the task that God might lay before us. So we say, “Lord, I’m not strong enough, I’m not courageous enough, I’m not bright or articulate or wise or whatever enough; I’m just not able.”
But God does not call those who are able; God enables those he calls, and he calls each and every one of us. What might seem to us to be a small task could be huge in God’s estimation, and could be decisive in the life of someone to whom God calls us. It isn’t for us to evaluate the situations God calls us to; it is for us to answer and follow through in faith.
When they started planning the production of the Hollywood epic Ben Hur, they looked to the end of the film, to that all-important, dramatic chariot race. Remember that scene? It was important to the director, Cecil B. DeMille, that the main actor, Charlton Heston, actually drive one of the chariots instead of having a stunt double do it. He wanted the film to be as authentic as possible.
So DeMille called Heston in and said, “Mr. Heston, I want you to learn how to drive a chariot for that chariot race.”
“OK, you’re the director, I’ll learn how to drive a chariot.”
So he took some time off the filming schedule and learned how to drive a chariot. Found out it was an enormously difficult task, handling four horses from a box on wheels. In a couple of weeks he came back to DeMille and said, “Well, Mr. DeMille, I learned how to drive a chariot, but I can almost guarantee you that I can’t win that race.”
DeMille smiled and said, “Mr. Heston, you just stay in the race; I’ll make sure you win.”
God has already given us victory over death through the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is for us to stay in the race, every day, and live that victory.
