February 7, 2010 - Epiphany 5

Jesus Inspires Us to Follow
Luke 5:1-11
Epiphany 5 – February 7, 2010

The book of Hebrews says that the Word of God is living and active. As a reader & a preacher of that Word, I have always appreciated that – because it means that every time you come to a story, you can expect that you might find something new, that God might speak to you in a new way, that you might see it with fresh eyes. Which is a good thing, because otherwise pretty much every sermon there was to preach would have been preached centuries ago.

But I was thinking about that as I was reading this story from Luke's gospel. Because we've heard this story before. And most of the time when I read it, or when I've heard it preached, I think the focus has been on 2 main things. Either we talk about Jesus calling his first disciples, how he comes to them in the middle of their normal working lives and suddenly calls them to do something new, yet related – and how Jesus can call us right where we are to do new things with the gifts and skills we already have. Or we hear this as an evangelism sermon – that Jesus comes and calls Simon Peter and James and John and tells them that from now on they'll be catching people – that their new mission will be to spread the word, to cast the net of Jesus' love far & wide and draw people in to that love, and how Jesus calls us to do the same thing.

But as you know, this weekend, I was leading a retreat of St. John's people up at Graymoor. Our topic was stewardship – not just stewardship of our money, but of our whole lives. So we looked at things like stewardship of our time, of our relationships, of our bodies, of God's creation, in addition to talking about stewardship of our money. So it's probably not so surprising that when I reread this story, I found myself seeing stewardship themes written all over it.

Here we have Simon Peter and his business partners, James & John, and they've got this little fishing company. And as we enter the story, business ain't so good. When Jesus shows up at the seashore to preach and to teach, they're just about to call it quits. They fished all night out in their boats, and they've come up with nothing. They put down their nets over & over & not a single fish did they catch. So, they're done. They're cleaning out the nets – getting ready for the next go 'round, the next chance to go out and go fishing, hoping that tonight will bring better luck and lots of fish, because times'll soon be pretty hard for a bunch of fishermen who can't catch any fish. Pretty soon the business will be out-of-business and they'll find themselves out of luck, out of work, out of money.

And even though their world was so different than ours, we can all relate to those kinds of worries, those kinds of fears. We have our own economic uncertainties to deal with. If we haven't been directly hit by the recession ourselves, we have family and friends who have. We're starting to wonder if the waters have been fished out. We hope that business, in all its various forms, will pick up soon, because otherwise business will be out of business, and we could find ourselves out of luck, out of work, and out of money. It's discouraging, it's frightening. It's only natural to be anxious when we look at the waters around us and don't see any fish waiting to be caught.

And then Jesus, who hopped into Simon's boat so he could preach without getting run over by the crowd, finishes what he has to say & turns to Peter and says, “Put out into deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” Now pardon me if I read a bit of skepticism into Peter's response here – but that's the way I hear it. “Okay Jesus. You know we were out fishing all night, right? You know we didn't catch anything, right? You know that if there were fish out there to catch, we would've caught 'em, right? But if you say so, we'll go ahead and do it.” But I imagine Simon Peter wasn't really expecting anything to happen.

But then it does! Where just a little while before, there was nothing, suddenly the waters are teeming with life! Peter puts down his nets, and no sooner did they hit the sea than they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break! Never in his life had Peter seen such a catch of fish. So many fish that he had to call the other boat to quick come over & help haul in the nets & even with the other boat, there are so many fish that the boats just about sink from the weight. Abundance that they couldn't imagine, almost leaping into their boats! It just blows them away, and poor Peter pulls this “I'm not worthy” scene. Jesus simply tells him not to be afraid, that he's got bigger fish to fry, or rather, that from now on, he'll be catching people.
And it just strikes me, over and over again in the Bible, but especially in this story, how often God's people think they've come to the end of their resources, that there's no more, and we start to worry about the scarcity of the world, about the not-enough-ness of the world. And it is hard to trust Jesus when he says to us, put out your boat into deep waters and go ahead & put down your nets. Because we know there's nothing left there. We've done all there is to do and come up empty, and what does Jesus know about fishing anyway?

But just because we can't see it below the surface, doesn't mean that God's abundance isn't there! I've said it before, and I'm pretty sure I'll say it again, that we spend so much time looking at the things we don't have that we often fail to see the overflowing abundance that God has placed in our lives.

But here's the other thing about this story that really blows me away. Not only do Peter & James & John have this miraculous catch of fish, this beyond-imagining bounty that nearly sinks their boats. That would be quite a story all by itself. But you see what happens next, right? Jesus says, “From now on you will be catching people,” and when they get to shore, the 3 of them, they just leave it all there. They pull those boats up on the shore, weighed down with the biggest catch they have ever seen, and they leave it and walk away. They leave their boats, they leave their nets, they leave those fish. And I don't know about you, but the rational, practical, logical side of me thinks that's kinda dumb. At least go sell the fish & take the money along for the journey!

We tend to think of our stewardship, financial and otherwise, as this logical, rational kind of thing. We weigh out the options, we make the best decisions we can, we want to make the best use possible of the resources we have. But this story shows us another side. Sometimes, being a good steward means taking risks. Sometimes it means letting go of the things we thought mattered for the sake of something bigger, something beyond anything we could imagine. Sometimes stewardship means letting go of our attachments so we can follow Jesus wherever he leads – and you can't take boatloads of fish along for the ride – they weigh you down, and after a while, they just start to smell.

Stewardship is about learning to see the abundance all around us, and then learning to let it go, trusting that the one who calls us to follow will provide us with enough along the way. May God give us eyes to see God's abundance, and ears to hear Christ's call, and feet to follow wherever he may lead. Amen.