Luke 5:1-11, from the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany .
Luke’s story in Chapter 5:1-11 about the calling of Peter shows just how dangerous it is to let Jesus set foot in your boat.
Compared to Luke’s account, the versions in the other Gospels make the whole affair look perfectly rational and safe. In Matthew and Mark, Jesus spots Peter fishing, calls him to follow, and Peter decides to do it (Matt. 4; Mark 1). John tells us Peter met Jesus through an introduction by Peter’s brother Andrew, who was a disciple of John the Baptist (John 1). Luke’s account, alone, shows just how doomed you are once the Messiah has set his sights on you.
It all seems harmless enough at the start of the story. Jesus is preaching on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, and the crowd of listeners is so enthralled that it is literally driving him into the water. Not salt water, by the way. When we hear “sea,” we often assume it means “ocean.” But the Sea of Galilee is really a freshwater lake on the border between Northern Israel and modern-day Syria. So, think Percy Priest, not Gulf Shores.
Perhaps shortly after Jesus realizes his feet are wet, he climbs aboard a nearby fishing boat as if he owns it. Because he does, although he’s probably the only one present who knows that he does. The nominal owner, Peter, is washing his nets nearby, having fished all night with his crew without catching so much as a minnow. Peter and Jesus already know, or at least know of, each other by this point. The end of the previous chapter describes how Jesus healed Peter’s mother in law, who had been suffering from a high fever.
Given the experience, maybe Peter though it would be handy for his village to have a holy man around. Maybe that’s why Peter didn’t object when Jesus hopped into Peter’s boat, sat down, and asked Peter to edge the craft out into the water a bit so Jesus could teach without getting drowned. But then Jesus, having ended his sermon, goes a bit too far.
“Put out into deep water,” Jesus tells Peter, “and let down the nets for a catch.”
How about that? Let the local holy man sit in your boat for a few minutes, and the next thing you know, he fancies himself the captain. And never mind that the nets have just been washed. And never mind that Peter and his crew have just pulled a long, but unproductive, all-nighter. And never mind that any fool knows you don’t fish during the day.
Peter does it – God knows why – but not without grumbling. “Master,” he says – maybe adding a little ice to the word, “we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets.”
So Peter and crew do as Jesus ordered, and you probably know the rest of the story. So many fish fill the nets that the nets begin coming apart. Frantic, Peter signals his partners in a separate boat to come help. Both boats end up so full that they begin to sink.
And somewhere amid this chaos, Peter realizes Jesus is no ordinary holy man. Falling at Jesus’ knees, surrounded by, maybe even nearly covered in, flapping, flopping fish, Peter shouts essentially the same thing Abraham (Gen. 18:27), Job (Job 42:6), and Isaiah (Isaiah 6:5) had exclaimed upon realizing they were eyeball-to-eyeball with God.
“Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!”
Turns out “Captain Fool” is “The Admiral” in disguise, eh, Peter?
Then this strange story gets even stranger, because Jesus, having just made Peter’s fishing business a smashing success, fires Peter from it. He doesn’t ask, or even order, Peter to leave behind the fish, the nets, the boats, everything. He states it as a fact.
“From now on,”Jesus tells Peter. “You will fish for people.”
So, be warned, my friends: This is exactly the sort of thing you can expect will happen when you look up from your daily life to see this Jesus fellow helping himself to a seat in your boat or a moment in your day or a few of the dollars in your wallet. You might think it will be OK. Where’s the harm in being owed a favor or two by a guy with miracle power at his fingertips? Don’t be fooled, though. There might be an unexpected pile of fish in your near future, but he’s not ultimately interested in granting you wishes, like some genie you can keep stashed in a lamp. He has come for you, for every bit of you, and once he has you, he will share none of you with anything or anyone else. Taking a seat in your boat is just the start. Soon, he will take the whole boat, and you as well, out into the deep water. He will order you to toss overboard the nets you have worked so carefully to wash and dry. And when you do as he orders, the result will leave your beloved nets in tatters, your beloved boat foundering, your deck piled with not just more than you need, but more than you want.
And in the end, you’ll drag all of it and your very self onto the shore and simply abandon it there to go chasing after him and his crazy plans. Because the end of it all, you will learn, is the beginning of all that matters, and be you a sinful man, woman, boy or girl, he wants all that matters to be yours.
