Park Avenue Presbyterian Church; Des Moines, Iowa
Texts: Isaiah 6: 1-8 (9-13)
Psalm 138
1 Corinthians 15: 1-11
Luke 5: 1-11 *
“Jesus: Revealing Made Disciples”
--} The truth is there’s a lot about today’s gospel lesson that “doesn’t sound right to us” if we hear it the way Luke may have intended for readers to encounter it. On first glance, too many people believe this passage is about the “call of the first disciples,” It doesn’t help that in our pew bibles, right before Luke 5 verse 1 the heading says, “Jesus calls the first disciples.” But Jesus doesn’t call any one in this passage. He doesn’t pick up the phone, he doesn’t invite, suggest, cajole, encourage, or sweet-talk anybody to be a disciple. Quite the opposite, I’d say! And if you look at the red-letter edition Jesus only speaks two lines: “put out into the deep water and let your nets down for a catch;” and “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” That’s it. No “call”—only “commands.” A better title would be, “Jesus COMMANDS the first disciples,” and we might even want to add to that, “Jesus commands the first disciples, TO DO SOME MIGHTY STRANGE THINGS.”
Too many people think that going out to the deep water is a challenge of “risk”—as if the more ventured, the more gained. But while fishing methods may have changed since the first century, it’s still the practice that fishermen use the shore as a kind of natural barrier to hold the fish against and get them into the nets. So you want to be a little ways out, but by no means out in the deep. In deep water, there’s more water and less fish, and no good way to keep them in the nets! So when Jesus says to Simon, “put out into the deep water and let your nets down for a catch,” Simon’s got to think he’s nuts!
And that’s a good thing, because as we mighty rightly surmise, “this is no ordinary person giving orders. This time we’re right; Jesus is well known along the shore of Galilee—because of the reports that spread about him. Then they heard Jesus first hand, teaching in the synagogue; witnessed Jesus casting out demons and healing people—like Simon’s mother-in-law who was ill. And what Jesus orders Simon to do isn’t “ordinary”—but we gauge that by Simon Peter’s reaction AFTER the catch of fish, when he fall sown confessing his sinfulness.
Apparently, it’s only Jesus and Simon in the boat; they go out to the deep water and Simon lets down the nets—but only because Jesus says so. That’s the measure of Jesus’ credibility. But then, the fish are so big or so many that the “catch” begins breaking the nets. A second boat is called for, but filling both boats, the boats themselves begin to break and sink. Now that’s some haul of fish! “How” it happens is hardly the point; because Simon—rather than hanging on to Jesus as the source of the great “catch,” asks Jesus to “go away from him.”
Now it could be because Jesus singlehandedly has just about broken the fishing nets and two boats [that is bad for business you know]; but I suspect that Simon begins to catch on at this point that something else is afoot. What I believe has happened is that Jesus has revealed himself to Simon; and much like Isaiah in the Temple, Simon doesn’t quite know what to do. It’s hard to wrap your mind around meeting God face to face, right?
So this isn’t a story about HOW disciples are made; this is a story so that DISCIPLESHIP can be revealed. Does that sound strange? It’s not what we’ve been taught to expect at any rate. It may sound strange, but look at what happens. Jesus makes Simon Peter take his boat out to deep water, but when the huge catch comes in, Jesus not only has to say, “Don’t be afraid,” the end result is that huge catch of fish going to waste! Verse eleven is explicit: “When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.” So one of two things happen. Either they release the catch of fish so the boats don’t sink and the nets don’t break; OR, they manage to get the catch to shore at which point they “leave everything and followed Jesus.” It’s the equivalent of having the winning lottery ticket in your hand but never getting to cash it in!
I offer this reading of the story—against the conventional wisdom—for a couple of reasons. First, the point doesn’t seem to be the catch of fish. The “catch” becomes the reason for “leaving” and “following” Jesus. It’s almost intentional that the “catch” be left behind because of the urgency of the next thing—that is, “catching people.” And second, there’s a contrast here that we almost always MISS, or MISUNDERSTAND. Think about how fish are caught and what we do with them. Nearly every day, Simon and his partners would take their day’s catch of fish to the market, lay them out—eyes a-glazed—and sell them for money. “Caught fish” soon wind up dead, right? But Luke cleverly changes this metaphor with a change of language.
The word Luke uses in verse 10, when Jesus tells Simon he “will be catching people” actually means “to take alive”—or “to rescue.” It is not a word that is used in relationship to capturing or harvesting animals; in fact it is an INAPPROPRIATE term to be applied to hunting or fishing. The verb means literally, “to rescue from the peril of death.” So if we take Luke’s words at face value, they mean something quite different than the way we’ve been taught to hear them. Luke is saying something like, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be CATCHING men and women alive”—implying a kind of making or keeping them alive before it’s too late! The opposite really of fishing. Extrapolating the meaning a bit, the contrast between Simon’s “catch” and Simon’s “catching” is what commentator Peter Eaton describes as “the kingdom of God [requiring] not dead fish but human beings FULLY ALIVE—not creatures writhing in the last gasps before death, but people living the life of the good news in all its fullness!
Seriously—isn’t this a better reason why Simon Peter and his partners might “leave everything” to go with Jesus? Because it’s not about the fortune, it’s about being fully alive? Isn’t that why “heaven” becomes such an important place for us—because we want to be “fully alive!” Suddenly what LUKE has to say to us is starting to sound more right—isn’t it?
So if this is what Luke is saying our common reading of this passage has to change. First, isn’t not really about the catch of fish, it’s about catching people alive—saving them before it’s too late. Think Simon’s mother-in-law who was ill when Jesus was introduced to her; how she got up from her death-bed and began serving again. If the force is not about what happens in the boat, but what Simon Peter is going to be doing—“catching people alive,” then this is a story not about “calling disciples” but revealing a new life for disciples. Jesus isn’t commoditizing discipleship; in other words, it isn’t about how many or how much; instead, Jesus is revealing the character or nature of discipleship. Jesus isn’t offering the job, he’s still holding out the job description—much like he was doing at Nazareth, reminding the Nazareans it wasn’t about getting miracles or having benefits as much as it was fulfilling the word of the prophets.
A DISCIPLESHIP job description might look like this:
• Can you be obedient—even when what you’re asked to do wouldn’t seem to be the best practical or worldly advice?
o Like putting down your nets in deep water;
o Or leaving behind a huge catch of fish.
• Can you focus not on the number of fish you can catch, but instead of catching people and saving them before it’s too late?
o Like Jesus will abandon the 99 sheep to find the one lost;
o Being disciplined enough to focus on rescuing the few who need saving RIGHT NOW, rather than trying to get the many.
• Can you trust yourself to a different way of doing business, giving more and taking less?
o Taking time to walk with people and discover their needs, like Jesus with the crowds;
o And BE INTENTIONAL about meeting those needs, NOW—for the poor, the captive, the blind, the lame, freedom for the oppressed and declaring the year of the Lord’s favor?
Even if your answer to all of these questions is an emphatic, “YES,” at the end of today’s reading no job offer has yet been extended. That the disciples follow—leaving everything—is good news. It’s liberating news for them and us! But it’s not yet the offer we might think it is.
Eventually Luke tells us that Jesus chooses the twelve. Perhaps not as much an “invitation,” but Jesus affirming that human beings can demonstrate the principles of the Kingdom of God being lived out. Not just a “calling,” Jesus offers transformation—not as a huge catch of fish—but as the means for “catching” the world. Because if we as human beings are willing to live out the kingdom’s values—that is, the words of the prophets—through US, Jesus can reveal himself. Through our actions and deeds, our lifestyle of ministry, people don’t have to be “caught out,” but rather can be “save alive.” Because those who are “saved alive” can be transformed to be disciples—and they don’t have to be left behind.
--+ AMEN.
INVITATION:
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