“A Fishy Story”
Luke 5:1-11
Mindy Douglas Adams
Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church
5th Sunday in Ordinary Time
February 2010

The story is captivating from the start.  The scene opens with a crowd pressing in on Jesus, who is at the water's edge, as the sun peeks over the horizon on the Sea of Galilee.  He knows the people have gathered to hear him speak - to hear him bring the message of the good news of the kingdom of God.  But the edge of the water feels cramped and it must have been difficult to see all the people from where he was standing.  So seeing two boats at the shoreline (the fishermen who own the boats are on the shore washing their nets), Jesus climbs into the closest one and asks Simon, the owner, to put him out into the water a little ways away from the shore.   Now Jesus already knows Simon, for he was in Simon's home only a few days earlier and healed Simon's mother-in-law, who had been suffering from a high fever.  Simon knows Jesus, so he gets in the boat with Jesus and put the boat out a little way from the shore.  From that location Jesus begins to preach, sitting down in the boat while he teaches those gathered.  When he's done teaching, he turns to Simon and instructs him to head out into the deep water and cast his nets there.  Simon responds, calling Jesus "Master" and explaining that they have been fishing all night but have caught nothing.  Silence from Jesus.  Peter's words don't cause him to change his request.  So, for some reason, Simon does as Jesus asks.  I think I might have been a little irritated with Jesus.  But Simon must have known, after seeing Jesus heal his mother-in-law, that Jesus was one to be reckoned with - and certainly NOT one to be ignored.  So he took the boat out into deep water and let down the nets.  Immediately, the nets filled with so many fish that they were full to brimming and beginning to break.  Simon called for his partners in the other boat to come and help them with the incredible abundance.  They filled both boats so that they were so full they were about to sink.  And when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees in humility and cried, "Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!"  All who were with him that day were amazed at the catch of fish, including James and John, the sons of Zebedee.  "Then Jesus said to Simon, ‘Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.'  When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him" (5:10b-11).

          A call story.  The first one in the gospel of Luke.  And one that never really has an actual "call."  Jesus never says, "Follow me" the way he does with other disciples and in other gospels.  Jesus never says, "Would you like to be on my team?"  Jesus simply says, "Do not be afraid.  From now on you will be catching people." 

OK.  That's a little weird, don't you think?  But Peter, James and John don't seem to think so.  Somehow they read between the lines and hear Jesus saying, "Your job is different now.  No more fish.  Follow me and capture the hearts of God's people with a message of grace."  And they do.  They pull their boats high up on the shore, leave their nets where they have fallen, and walk away from it all.

          "Do not be afraid."  Jesus says these words first.  He knows, doesn't he, our tendency to fear change, to fear risk, to fear something as profound as following Jesus?  "Do not be afraid," Jesus starts with.  And I think there is something to that.

I read somewhere that the phrase "Do not fear" or "Do not be afraid" occurs 365 times in Scripture.  I don't know for sure whether that is the case, but I do know that you won't read the Bible for too long before you find these words.  You'll find them in the covenant stories of Genesis and the story of the Exodus almost everywhere you turn.  They occur in the Psalms over and over again.  Prophets, angels, Jesus, and the apostles use these words repeatedly throughout scripture.  Over and over and over again the people of God are told not to be afraid!  If these words really do occur 365 times, then that would be one time for every day of the year (except during Leap Year, of course).  Words to live by, indeed.

It should come as no surprise really, to learn that humans have lived in fear for all these thousands of years.  The fear we see revealed in scripture is not that different from the fear we see exhibited daily on the news, in our communities and in our own lives.  We are afraid of so many things and our fears rule our lives in endless ways. 

And I'm not talking about snakes and spiders either.  I'm talking about deep, dark, all-encompassing fears, some of which we aren't even brave enough to name. 

We fear failure.  We fear success, sometimes, too.  We fear that we will lose control over something in our lives, or over everything.  We fear growing old and losing our physical ability, or our mental ability, or our independence, or all of these things.  We fear that disease or illness will come to us or to someone we love.  We fear accidents.  We fear pain.  We fear death, our own, maybe, but not as much as we fear the death of someone we love.  We fear that we will be forgotten.  We fear that the money will run out. 

We make decisions based on all these fears.  Life decisions.   Daily decisions.  Decisions about what we will eat and drink.  Decisions about how we will travel.  Decisions about what we will let our children do.  Decisions about how we will care for our parents or for ourselves.  Advertisers prey on our fears and we buy products and insurance and security systems and spend money on promises that we will be safer and our family will be safer if only we do this or don't do that, buy this or don't buy that.  Fear rules our lives in ways we cannot even begin to comprehend.

But I want to go back to the first fear I mentioned - failure - because I believe the fear of failure shapes our lives and our relationship with God.  Our fear of failure sometimes paralyzes us into inaction.  We are so afraid we can't move from point A to point B that we don't even try.  We are afraid of failure in our workplace, in our relationships, and in our personal lives.  At work, we don't try new ideas and don't make new suggestions and don't take any risks at all - because we might fail.  In our relationships we sometimes decide that it's just safer not to be in a relationship at all, because we can't be rejected by someone we haven't even sought out.   We can't fail at something we haven't tried.  In our personal lives, we keep putting off making those resolutions to change - to quit smoking, to lose weight, to study scripture more, to makes those life changes we want and need to make - because if we never make the resolution then we can't fail at keeping it, can we? 

Moses was like this, I think.  Had all kinds of excuses and self-doubts about his ability to speak and lead the people.  He was so certain he would fail, he just about had God convinced and God allowed Aaron to speak for him for awhile.  Jeremiah was the same way, "Ah Lord God!" he said. "Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy!"   Even old Isaiah was afraid his sin would get in the way of his success as a prophet of God:  "Woe is me!  I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips."  Isaiah was afraid his sin would keep him from being able to serve God.  Like so many prophets and reluctant leaders of the past, Isaiah believed he was not worthy to be a servant of God.  But then, who is?

          This sense of being unworthy was a big part of Simon Peter's call as well.  Even before Jesus says a word about "catching people" Simon seems to know something is up. 

It is as if Simon knows what Jesus is going to ask him to do, even though Jesus never does ask a question.   Simon seems to know somehow that something big is expected of him, maybe at the very moment his boat begins to sink with the weight of its abundant catch, because it is at that moment that Simon does what the other reluctant prophets of history have done in the past.  "No, Lord, go away!  You don't want me!  I'm a sinful man!  I'm not up to it.  I don't want to take the risk because I will most certainly fail.  Get away from me.  Go find someone worthy of following you." 

As soon as the previously empty nets come up filled to overflowing, Simon knows who is in his boat.  And he knows what he is going to be asked to do.  And, like any of us would be, he is afraid.  Jesus knows this, of course, and so he looks at Simon and offers the words that have been given to those chosen by God for centuries past, "Do not be afraid."

"Don't be afraid, Simon.  I'll be with you.  You'll go fishing with me for people.  It's not that big of a vocational shift."  There are no doubts in Jesus' voice.  "Do not be afraid;" he says, "from now on you will be catching people."

And that was enough for Simon - and for James and John, too, it seems, for they brought their boats to shore, left the greatest catch of their lives to rot on the beach, and they followed Jesus.

          I wonder, sometimes, what our lives might be like if we lived without fear, if we followed Jesus without fear.  I wonder, sometimes, what our lives might be like if we trusted in God so much that we let go of all our fears and just lived with complete and total trust that God would take care of us, that God would guide our lives.  So much of our time and energy goes into managing our fears, avoiding our fears, keeping that which we fear at bay.  What would happen if we listened to God's voice and heard those words, "Do not be afraid," -  really listened and understood what they meant, really relaxed and let ourselves follow Jesus wherever he leads us, no matter how risky it seems?  What would it be like to trust God so much that we had no fear?

          Bishop Michael Marshall tells the story of a little boy who is playing atop a cliff near his home one day in blustery England.  It was a very high cliff, one of those ones like you see in the movies, with the surf crashing in at the bottom of the cliff with huge white waves.  The boy was playing at a safe distance from the cliff when he was approached by three professional bird egg collectors.  The egg collectors, it seems, had spotted a nest of rare bird eggs on a ledge just over the edge of the cliff.  The egg collectors were not as young as they used to be and no longer sure-footed enough to climb down themselves.  They saw the boy and asked him if he would be willing to be lowered down the side of the cliff on a rope and collect two of the rare bird eggs for the collectors.  Marshall writes,

          As they asked the little boy if he was willing to do it, the little boy looked into their faces.  He looked at the cliff; he looked at the sea a long way below.  Then he replied in these simple words, "Okay, as long as daddy holds the rope."¹

          Friends, what is Jesus calling you do?  Where is Jesus calling you to go with your life?  What is Jesus calling you to leave behind, so that you might spread the good news of the kingdom of God in this world?  The answers to these questions are found only between you and God.  But I can bet that I know what God is saying to you.  "Don't be afraid.  Do not be afraid.  I'm holding the rope.   Let's get moving, though.  We have work to do."

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Copyright 2010: Mindy Douglas Adams

¹ Bishop Michael Marshall, "Trust Changes Everything," from 30 Good Minutes, Chicago Sunday Evening Club, 1994, Luke 5:1-11.