A Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Trinity
A Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Trinity
St. Luke 5:1-11
by William Klock
Our Gospels during these first few Sundays of Trinitytide—so far—have all had us following Jesus as he made his way to Jerusalem to observe the Passover for the last time. But today’s Gospel—from the Fifth Chapter of Luke—takes us back to the beginning of Jesus’ ministry—those early days when he was travelling around the region of Galilee a long way from Jerusalem. Luke gives a series of vignettes in Chapter 4. Every sabbath, he writes, Jesus was teaching in the synagogues. He read from Isaiah one sabbath in his hometown synagogue in Nazareth and then he told the people, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your own hearing!” The people were so angry that they tried to stone him and he fled from the town. So he went to Capernaum and taught in the synagogue there. That’s where a demon-possessed man stood up and shouted at Jesus: “I know who you are. You’re God’s holy one!” And just to prove it, Jesus then cast out the demon and word went out throughout the whole region. On another sabbath, after preaching in the synagogue, he was invited to the house of Simon Peter. Peter’s mother-in-law was sick with a high fever. Jesus rebuked the fever and straightaway she recovered and served them lunch. Pretty soon everyone who was sick or who had a demon showed up and Jesus healed them all. And because of that, no matter where Jesus went, Luke writes, the crowds hunted for him. And that’s how today’s Gospel begins. One day Jesus was standing by the lake of Gennesaret. Finally a moment of peace. An early morning walk on the beach. He found a little cove. The shores of Gennesaret (or Galilee as it’s otherwise known) are full of little coves. He watched as the fishermen dragged their boats ashore after a night of hard work. But then someone came down the trail to the beach. And he saw Jesus. And he went running back up the trail out of sight shouting, “He’s here! He’s here! I’ve found him!” And others began to follow the man back down the trail to the beach. And more and more until another crowd had gathered and was pressing in on Jesus. They had seen for themselves or they had heard the stories of the amazing things the God of Israel was doing through Jesus and they wanted to see more. They wanted to hear more of the good news that Jesus was proclaiming.
But it was no good trying to preach from the middle of the crowd. People kept interrupting them with their problems. Even if he could get a few words out, the crowd just couldn’t hear him. So Jesus had an idea. Sound travels wonderfully over water and the little beach cove was a perfect amphitheatre. So he made his way down to the water where he’d seen the two boats, and got into one of them, and standing there, he called to one of the fishermen. Jesus recognised the man. It was the same fellow who’d invited him to lunch after the synagogue service. It was the same fellow whose mother-in-law he’d healed. “Hey you! Was it Simon or Peter or Simon Peter. Yes, this is your boat isn’t it? Row me out a little way from the land.” Maybe Peter felt like he owed Jesus something or maybe he was flattered that Jesus had chosen his boat and remembered him from the other day. Whatever the case, Peter set aside his net, got in the boat, and rowed Jesus out into the middle of the cove. And Luke says that Jesus sat down in the boat and began to teach the crowd.
It was probably some version of Jesus’ favourite sermon. Luke has preserved one version of that sermon that we sometimes hear called “The Sermon on the Plain”—because Jesus preached it in a flat, open place, but mostly because it contrasts with the version preserved by Matthew, where Jesus preached from a hillside. We call that version “The Sermon on the Mount”. That’s the sermon where Jesus preaches about the kingdom of God. It’s the sermon in which he calls the people of Israel to trust in the Lord because he never fails to provide. He clothes the flowers of the field that wither tomorrow. He feeds the birds so that they have no need to worry. How much more important are you—the Lord’s elect, chosen, called covenant people—than flowers and birds? So stop worrying and trust him. Pursue, seek his kingdom above everything else, and trust him to take care of you. Israel had struggled for forever with idolatry—in one form or another—instead of trusting in and giving her full allegiance to the Lord. That’s what got them exiled to Babylon. The Pharisees were right. That idolatry and fickle faith was what kept them in a sort of in-house exile in their own time. So, in other words, Jesus is saying to the people of Israel: Give the Lord your allegiance. Give your all to his agenda: to holiness, to being light in the darkness, stop being so fickle. You do that and, just as he promised, the Lord will take care of you—he’ll even pour out his blessings on you.
And Peter sat there right in front of Jesus, holding the oars, keeping the boat in position and Jesus facing the shore, and he listened. The Bible doesn’t tell us anything about Peter’s past, but just like anyone else, he had one. I don’t think Peter was any great or notorious sinner or anything like that. Reading between the lines, I think it’s safe to conclude that he was just your ordinary, average Judean who obeyed torah as best he could, who celebrated Passover with his family every year, who went to the temple in Jerusalem as required—at least most of the time. But he knew he wasn’t perfect. He could be impetuous at times. He could fly off the handle. But most of all, as Jesus preached, I think Peter was convicted of his own fickleness. He tithed, but sometimes he did so grudgingly. He kept the sabbath, but sometimes he worried where the money was going to come from when he took off that one day a week from fishing. Some days, especially in the summer, sunset on Saturday just couldn’t come soon enough for Peter so he could get back to work.
Jesus got Peter thinking. Did he really trust in the Lord? Or did Peter trust in Peter? Had he really given his full allegiance to the God of Israel or was Peter really serving Peter? And Peter mulled on these things as Jesus finished speaking and said to him, “Put out into the deeper part, and let down your nets for a catch.”
Peter was still playing through in his head what Jesus had been saying about trusting the Lord and giving him his full allegiance. This snapped him out of it. No more introspection. It’s like Jesus knew what he was thinking. Peter didn’t really want to let down his nets. He’d fished all night and they hadn’t caught anything. They certainly weren’t going to catch anything in the daylight. That’s because they fished with nets made of linen. The fish could see them in the day, but they’d swim right into them in the dark at night. And Peter had just finished cleaning and mending his nets. Now he’d have to clean them—and if they hit a snag, maybe mend them too—all over again. Peter was born and bred to fishing. He knew everything there was to know about it. He knew the habits of fish, he knew about nets, he knew about the seasons, the time of day, and the play of light in the water. He knew about boats. He knew about marketing and selling fish. He was a fisherman! And if First Century fishermen were anything like Twenty-first Century fishermen, the last thing you’d want to do with Peter is start an argument over fishing—especially if you’re not a fisherman. And, of course, Jesus was not. His father had taught him the carpentry and the building trade.
Peter really, really didn’t want to cast his net into the water again and he wouldn’t have for anyone else. But this was Jesus. Just like everyone else, Peter wasn’t quite sure exactly what to make of him, but he’d not only heard the stories; he’d seen it for himself. His mother-in-law had been on the verge of death, but Jesus made her well—so well that virtually instantly she was up serving them lunch. And so he says to Jesus, “Master”. Let me pause there. Master is okay, but it might not be the best translation. In the Gospels people address Jesus as “teacher” or “rabbi” or even as “lord”, but unique in Luke’s Gospel, people occasionally address him as epistata. An epistates is someone in charge, someone with authority. The ten lepers address Jesus as epistata. The disciples, when they were in the boat being tossed around by the storm, addressed him as epistata. That’s how Peter addresses Jesus here. “We were working hard all night and caught nothing. But okay, Master. You’re the boss, you’re calling the shots here. So if you say so, I’ll let down the nets.”
Peter sounds like he’s letting down his nets grudgingly. I wonder if that’s how it really was. He’s been convicted in his own heart of how he’s been half-hearted in serving the Lord. He’s just been hearing Jesus preach about God taking care of flowers and birds. Or something along those lines, because we know Jesus liked to preach on that topic. It was exactly what fickle, half-hearted Israel needed to hear. So Peter probably didn’t want to go through the hassle of letting down his nets again, but I think he wanted to trust that through Jesus, the God of Israel really would look after him. Jesus might not know anything about fishing, but Peter had seen that Jesus had authority and that he took charge of things—whether demons or blindness or sickness or even the fish in the sea. He could see, plain as day, that the God of Israel was working through Jesus. Peter was thinking on those words: “Seek first the kingdom of God and all these thing will be added to you.”
I think the main reason Luke records these words from Peter about having fished all night and caught nothing is that he wants to remind us that this is the way the Lord works. Jesus is telling Peter to fish at the worst possible time to fish. Jesus does this throughout the Gospels. He hears that Lazarus is sick and near to death, but then he waits three days before going—time enough for Lazarus to be well and truly dead. So instead of healing Lazarus from sickness, he raises him from the dead and calls him out of his tomb. Or think of the woman who was bleeding for twelve years or the man who was blind from birth. In that last instance Jesus had the opportunity to explain why these things happened. The disciples with their conventional wisdom assumed that either the man or his parents were great sinners and that the Lord had punished him with blindness. But Jesus said that, no, the man was born blind that God might reveal his glory. Because that’s how the God of Israel works and Israel is the chief example. The Lord allowed his people to become slaves in Egypt so that he might display his glory both to them and to the watching nations. In the events of the Exodus the God of Israel exposed the king and the gods of Egypt as frauds, totally lacking the great power and authority they claimed to have. The God of Israel single-handedly beat the gods of Egypt at their own games and humbled mighty Pharaoh—the greatest king on earth—and drowned his army in the sea. And at the same time, in Israel, he created a people who would forever be singing his praises and announcing his glory to the nations. All because they had watched him do the impossible. Every newborn baby boy was circumcised and, in that, he was given the sign of God’s covenant promise. And every year the fathers of Israel led their families as they ate the Passover meal and recalled the Lord’s promises and the glory he displayed on their behalf in the Exodus.
Jesus was doing the same thing. He had come to lead the people in a new exodus and along the way, he was acting out that exodus, that divine deliverance as he did the impossible—and the more impossible the better, because the more power and authority it displayed. Why had Peter (and James and John, his partners) why had they been skunked that night? I don’t know. Maybe Peter said something unkind to his wife before leaving that night. Maybe he’d shorted the Lord in his tithing that week. Maybe he’d dallied too long with that dancing girl the day before. Maybe Peter thought his empty nets were punishment for some sin. But if he’d asked Jesus, “Why did I toil all night and catch nothing? Did I sin?” Jesus would have said, “No, Peter. It was so that the Lord, the God of Israel, would be glorified.”
And that’s exactly what happens. Luke writes, beginning at verse 6 that when they let down their nets, they caught such a huge number of fish that their nets began to break. Usually they’d fish all night for a catch that wouldn’t break their nets, but now Peter let down his net and before he could even pull it back into the boat to keep from becoming over-full of fish, the catch was so great that it strained the integrity of the net. I assume it was just he and Jesus in the boat and he and Jesus were, themselves, straining to pull the net in. They signalled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them, Luke writes. So they came, and filled both the boats, and they began to sink.
And right there, in a sinking boat, with fish wriggling all around them, Luke writes that Peter took stock of everything that had just happened. He fell down at Jesus’ knees. “Depart from me, Lord!” he said, “Because I’m a sinful man!” James and John, the sons of Zebedee, Simon Peter’s partners were just as amazed, Luke writes. But being in the other boat, they couldn’t kneel at Jesus’ knees. But Peter knelt there convicted of his sins by this amazing display of God’s glory. I found myself asking this week why Peter didn’t have this same reaction when Jesus healed his mother-in-law. Why was Peter’s mother-in-law sick? For the same reason: so that Jesus could display the glory of the God of Israel. Presumably Peter was impressed when he saw the healing. But it didn’t impact him the way the multitude of fish did. And maybe that’s because Peter was a fisherman, not a doctor. It highlight the fact that God gets to each of us in different ways to convict us of sin and to move us to faith. Every one of us has a different story of how God got hold of us. That, too, is how he works. But one way or another, each of us has been amazed and captivated by the glory of God.
Our reactions to that revelation are often different too. Some people encountered God’s glory and were moved to faith as Jesus wiped away their tears. Peter, however, is met by that glory and is moved to tears. He knew how the prophets had preached about the coming judgement of Israel for her sins. He’d heard Jesus preach—not just the warm-fuzzies, but also the announcement of soon-coming judgement. And when he saw the glory of God, when he experienced the presence of the holy, Peter found himself overwhelmed by his own sinfulness. He knew he didn’t belong in the presence of the holy. He knew he belonged with those people who would find themselves in the outer darkness weeping and gnashing their teeth. He responded just like Isaiah when he found himself in the presence of the holiness of God. Remember Isaiah. He cried out, “Woe is me! For I am lost. For I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” (Isaiah 6:5). But it was just as Isaiah acknowledged his sinfulness that an angel flew down to touch his lips with a cleansing and holy fire. The angel announced that his guilt had departed and that his sin had been blotted out. And when the Lord called out, “Whom shall I send? Who will go for us? Who will proclaim my message to Israel?” Isaiah cried out, “Here I am! Send me!”
And it’s that scene all over again in that sinking fishing boat on the Sea of Galilee with fish wriggling all around. Peter knelt there shaking at Jesus kneels and Jesus said, “Don’t be afraid. From now on you’ll be catching men!” Jesus is, himself, the holy fire who purifies us from our sins.
Now, it doesn’t come across in our English translations, but when Jesus says that Peter will be catching men, that “catching” isn’t usually a word associated with fishing. It has the sense of catching someone or something alive—like a warrior catching an enemy, but sparing his life. There’s a reason behind Jesus’ odd choice of words. What he’s doing is echoing the words of Jeremiah 16. There, through the Prophet, the Lord announced the judgement that was about to come on the people of Judea for their unfaithfulness and their idolatry. The Babylonians would come and none would escape. The Lord says, “I am sending for many fishers, declares the Lord, and they shall catch them…For my eyes are on their ways. They are not hidden from me, nor is their iniquity concealed form my eyes.” Jesus draws on the common Greek translation of the prophet. He uses the same word: catch. The people of Judea in those days wouldn’t be killed, but neither would they escape the judgement of exile. But now Jesus flips the imagery around. The people of Judah are still in their long exile, still experiencing the punishment brought by their sins, but now the Lord will send fishers again, this time to catch sinners and to rescue them alive from the coming judgement. What was in Jeremiah’s day an image of the Lord’s judgement on sinners, Jesus now turns into an image of God’s mercy for them. As Jesus says in John’s Gospel, “God did not send the son into the world to condemn the world, but so that the world could be saved by him.” That’s what Jesus has come to do. And even though only he can go to the cross to accomplish the redemption of sinners, he’s not going on this fishing trip alone. He’s calling Peter (and James and John and eventually a whole host of men and women that we call the church) to go fishing with him, to catch men and women that they—that we—might be delivered from our sins and from the coming judgement.
How much of this did Peter understand that day? Probably not much. But what he did know is that in Jesus the God of Israel was at work. He knew that judgement was inevitable and he knew that somehow and in some way the Lord was making deliverance possible through Jesus. He had seen the glory of the Lord and there was no going back. And so, Luke writes, They brought their boats to land, then they abandoned everything and followed him.
Peter walked away from all of it. The boats, the net, the sea, the fish. They had been his source of security. That’s what he’d trusted. But he heard that reminder from Jesus: Seek first God’s kingdom, and all these things will be added to you. If the Lord could fill his nets to bursting just to make this point, Peter was ready to trust him with everything—to give his full allegiance to Jesus the Messiah. If God could do this, he could do anything. And so Peter gave his allegiance to the Lord Jesus. And he knew hardship and he knew persecution and eventually he would even come to know martyrdom. His faith and his love for Jesus would eventually lead him from Jerusalem all the way to Rome and all along the way he proclaimed the glory of God. All the way he proclaimed the good news that Jesus died to forgive sins and rose to restore God’s life to us and to the world, and that this Jesus is the Lord of all who shows us the glory of his Father. Peter went out into the world to challenge the fake gods and the fake kings in whom we trust, and proclaimed the crucified and risen Lord so that everyone would know the glory of the one, true God. Peter eventually died for that message. But Peter knew that his risen Lord was master over death itself, just as he’d been master over all those fish that one morning years before. And so he trusted Jesus’ promise: Seek first God’s kingdom and his righteousness—even if it means martyrdom—and he will take care of you.
Let’s pray: Father, you have called us and made us your people. You send us out, like Simon Peter, to fish for people that they might know the life of your kingdom. When we’re tempted to protest, thinking that we are unworthy of the task, that we are too sinful, that we aren’t up to it, remind us that in Jesus you have forgiven us, that you have made us holy, that you have filled us with your Spirit, and that you have given us this remarkable and irresistible story to tell the world, this story of your goodness, your love, your grace, your mercy, and your faithfulness. Your glory. Give us the grace to do the work of your kingdom as we trust in your faithfulness to us and to all who hear it. Amen.