Fifth Sunday after Epiphany
February 7, 2010
What’s the Catch?
Luke 5:1-11
The Job of Catching People
The weeks after Christmas and New Year’s (this time that we call “Epiphany”) are devoted to a whole bunch of firsts: the baby steps Jesus takes at the beginning of his ministry as an adult around the age of 30.
Jesus Calls Us in Our Everyday
First Jesus was baptized. And then we had his first miracle and his first sermon. And now today we come to his first disciples.
And isn’t that worthy of our close attention? Hardly does Jesus begin his ministry, then he calls people like you and me to join him in his mission. He encounters people on the job—in the workplace—in the very middle of their daily occupations. What is it that you do? Shout your job out.
Jesus takes your job whatever that job is. And Jesus turns it into the job of “catching people.” And all of this began the day that Jesus taught some fishermen how to fish.
First Catch: Faith
Once when Jesus was standing by the Lake of Galilee and preaching the word of God, Jesus had to get into a boat in order to be heard. He bounced his voice off the water. And after he finished preaching, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.”
And by the time the story’s over there is not one catch, but two! Neither of which have anything to do with fish.
The first thing that Peter caught was “faith.” This is not a fish story. This is a faith story. “If you say so, I will let down the nets.” That is the first “catch” in this story. The catch of faith.
Peter, James and John were professional fishermen. They had no reason to take orders from an amateur. They had no reason to expect a big success if they obeyed the Lord’s direction. The weather wasn’t right. The winds were in the wrong direction. The time of day was off. Every fisherman knows there is a time when it just isn’t worth it anymore. Right? Any fishermen here.
And yet, despite it all, Peter, James and John did precisely what Jesus told them to do, “If you say so, we will let down the nets.” This is the obedience of faith. A faith that leaps over every obstacle and objection and simply “trusts the Lord” even when there is no evidence to justify that faith. The word of Jesus can never be verified, except in faith—by “acting” on it.
The Results are Amazing!
The Results are Amazing!
Amazing Results
And the result is amazing! It is wonderful. Miraculous. Sooo many fish that their nets began to break and they had to summon another boat to come and give them all a hand.
This catch is symbolic of the amazingly successful mission that Peter and other Christians would ultimately conduct. Thousands and thousands and thousands of people would respond just in their own lifetime to say nothing about the two billion people that are Christian in the world today. All from this one mission. The mission of Jesus.
Second Catch: People
Which brings us to the other catch, the catch of people.
Peter is the first to recognize that Jesus had some other fish to fry than simply giving three commercial fishermen the catch of their career. This was God…this was God calling THEM to mission and ministry.
And Peter was the first to respond the way that all of us must respond to the call of God—with a sense of our inadequacy. “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”
And I am sure that one of your first reactions today (as I now tell you that Jesus is calling YOU to be a fisher of people) is to say,
“Who me? You talk’n to me? Who am I to share the good news of Jesus Christ? Why, my word, I can barely hold my life together. I am tired and exhausted. I’ve been working every day. Who am I to be Jesus to someone else?”
An awareness of our faults and failings, our inadequacy, always comes when we are called to take on a task like that. “Go away from me, Lord for I am a sinful man!” That is what Isaiah said in our First Reading…and Moses…and Jeremiah, Peter, Paul. Almost every spokesperson for God recorded in the Bible had an overwhelming sense of their inadequacy.
Jesus Empowers Us
But that did not stop God from calling, empowering and sending folks like you and me. “Do not be afraid, Peter; from now on you will be catching people.”
Jesus Empowers Us
For God does not come in Jesus to scold or embarrass or shame us. God comes in Jesus to empower and enable us.
It is not the power and persuasiveness of our words that catches people for Jesus and snags them by the gills and hauls them over the side of the boat into the swarming company of the church. It is the power of Christ’s own word that catches people.
Practice the Risk of Faith
But how can that word get heard by anyone at all, unless our fears are overcome and we take the risk to speak of Jesus to someone else?
That takes “faith.” A faith which says, “If you say so, I will let down the nets.” And so the one catch leads to the other.
The first catch is faith. Those who are hooked on Jesus Christ are sent out to hook others on Jesus, too. Jesus wants us to cast our nets deep and wide until the nets begin to break and we fill the church to overflowing. The second catch is people.
So, let’s give it a little practice. Turn to a person near you. Any person near you. And in one minute I want you to share what Jesus means to you. Just one minute. One minute each. Take turns. I will tell you when to switch. Ready, set, go!
That didn’t hurt, now did it? Remember what Jesus said, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.”
© 2010 Pastor Paul Jaster