Fifth Sunday after Epiphany

February 7, 2010

Sermon by Rev. Dr. Marcus Pera

The Holy Gospel according to St. Luke. (Luke 5:1‑22)

Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaet, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” Simon answered, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.” When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.” For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. 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.

The Gospel of our Lord.

In the name of Jesus, sisters and brothers, grace, mercy, and peace be unto you. Amen.

It must have been shortly after we moved here, and it was on a Friday, I remember, and I was in town that weekend and driving on some of the expressways, and I noticed an unusually large amount of traffic at mid‑afternoon, early afternoon. And finally I asked somebody what the deal was, and they said, “Well, it’s the opening of fishing season.” Well, obviously, people getting to their favorite lake, getting to their cabin, getting a line into the water, being able to get a jump-start on the fishing season.

The place I work out is in Bally’s, and one of the things I do is I do a little treadmill, and I do a couple of machines, and then I end up in the sauna. The sauna is always an interesting place because there is some good street conversation going on. One of the conversations about a week ago was simply somebody that was explaining how he had spent the weekend. He was out ice fishing in his ice house, and then he was describing it to his friend and saying there was “nothing all that elaborate about it, but we do have a flat-screen TV in it; and also, of course, a heater.” And there it is, staying warm, flat-screen TV, watching some football, line in the water. As some would say, “Does it get any better than this?”

When people are out fishing, one of the things they do often is they catch something and they tell others about it, and they get a little carried away and they say, “Hey, I caught this trout, or this northern, it was this big.” And the person next to them says, “How big was that?” And the hands kind of come together a little bit, and they said, “Well, I think it was this big.” There’s an exaggeration that happens frequently enough so that we say it’s telling fish stories. Well, these are all fishing related. We have not a fish story, a fishing story in the Gospel Lesson for today. But ask yourself the question: “Is it yet even a fishing story, or something else, or is it something more than that?” So let’s wade in and see if we find and discover an answer to that question.

Jesus had done a lot of miracles around Capernaum, healing people. And people, obviously, had begun to come out to listen to him speak, preach, and also hopefully, I suppose, to see a few miracles as well. And this day he’s on the seashore of the Sea of Galilee, by Capernaum, and the crowds are pressing in on him. And so he sees a boat there. And it isn’t clear if he knew it was Simon’s boat or not, but he gets in and says, “Push me out a little bit,” to get a little distance from the people, maybe even to do the thing that you know happens—when a lake is real still and you talk, it almost becomes an amplifier for the sound. At any rate, he got out a little bit from the shore to talk with the people. And after that was done, he says to Simon, “Let’s go fishing.” Now, you can imagine Simon’s reaction. Simon is the professional; he is a fisherman. After all, Jesus is what, a carpenter and maybe a would-be or apprentice rabbi. Who knows what they thought of him at that point, but certainly not an expert in fishing. Well, Simon finally says, “We have been fishing all night and haven’t caught a thing.” But for some reason he is inclined to say, “Let’s go.” And Jesus says, “Let’s push out into the deep.” How far out into the deep do you have to go? The Sea of Galilee had a history of some pretty violent storms. It’s as deep as 150 feet in some places. The winds come down from what are now the Golan Heights, and it can disrupt that water and make it downright dangerous. “But let’s push out into the deep.” How far into the deep so that you kind of lose control? How far out into the deep that you have to trust, but let’s go out into the deep. Jesus says, “Throw the nets on the other side.” They throw the nets on the other side;.a wonderful catch of fish; so many that they have to beckon another boat to help them pull them in. And, in fact, it destabilizes both of the boats, with all the fish in them.

Now, Peter recognizes that this isn’t just an ordinary or even just a typical experience. Peter recognizes that he is in the presence of something different. He is in the presence of and experiencing something very transcending. And so Peter recognizes his creatureliness. But Jesus again says, “Don’t fear,” and then says, “After this you will become a catcher of people.” A kind of interesting phrase because that catcher of people, if you use the two words that are there within the Greek, it kind of says, “give life,” life, strength, and restoring; giving strength and restoration in a way to life. And if you look at what happened immediately after, there is a healing of the paralytic; there is also a person with leprosy cleansed. Before that, there were miracles. You can go back to Chapter 4 where Jesus says what he’s about: to preach good news to the poor, to heal the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, and proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. To catch people perhaps is to bring that kind of new life, that kind of healing, that kind of good news to people.

I think often it gives us the wrong impression. We go out and catch people. Let’s net them, let’s lasso them, let’s pull them into church. The Holy Spirit gives the increase. We are to be the people who share the good news. We are the people who are bearers and people who speak health and life and restoration and strength to others. Well, that’s what Peter experienced. This is a fishing story, yes. But it’s something more than a fishing story. There is an experience of transcendence that’s unusual.

Let’s go on to that First Lesson, and that is another experience or story of transcendence. And that’s Isaiah. We have Isaiah in the temple. There’s an interesting quote from a person by the name of Annie Dillard, a novelist, well-known writer. And she said that when you go to church they ought to give you a crash helmet, they ought to give you a life preserver, and they ought to leash you to the pew in case God shows up. I think it’s a wonderful quote: “A helmet protector, a life preserver, leash you to the seat in case God shows up.” Do you think that was kind of Isaiah’s experience? Here he is, at a big temple, and God in that vision shows up. But he can only see the hem of God’s garment. Do you remember with Moses, when God said, “You can see my backside but you can’t see me and live.” It’s only the backside vision that Isaiah has, and he sees the hem of God’s garment. But he feels the presence of the Holy others. And here are these seraphims, these angels, little, cute kind of angels that we talk about—not all that cute in this description—two wings, they cover their face; two wings, they cover their bottom side; two wings they have available to be able to serve. And Isaiah, in the midst of this, feels his creatureliness, like Peter did. And the seraphim comes over and touches him with a coal. And then Isaiah is able to respond and to say, “Here am I. Send me, send me.”

It is Martin Buber that said that real life is in needing. It’s in needing. He titles his book the “I-Thou.” Yes, C.S. Lewis talked about that kind of needing, and he wondered why there wasn’t any utterance back from God, until he recognized that he was uttering. In these latter days, God has spoken to us by his Son. It is in this needing. The real miracle for Peter was not that they caught all these fish. The real miracle for Peter was in who he met in the boat that day. And in that experience of transcendence, and being touched and empowered in a transformative way, there is an ability and a desire to respond. Catching people, bringing life, sharing good news, saying, “Here am I. Send me, send me.” That’s really what Paul experienced also, that Second Lesson for today. Paul experienced it in a way that says, here are all these people to whom Jesus appeared. He almost confesses the Creed. He says, Jesus is born, he suffered, he died, he was buried, he rose again, and then appeared to all these people; “and, “lastly appeared to me also.” And he says it’s because of the grace of God. And he said, “I worked harder than all of them; but, again, it is the grace of God that is within me”; the grace that made it possible for him to respond as he, too, encountered the Holy One. This amazing grace of God is reflected and talked about in those ways.

There’s a book, “The Amazing Grace of God,” by Philip Yancey, a writer, and in the last section of the book he tells a true story about when Bill Moyers was working on a documentary on the song, “Amazing Grace.” And he had this interview that he wanted to do with Jessye Norman, and he had to go to London to do it. And it was Wembly Stadium that they were in the underneath part. And what was happening at Wembly Stadium was that there was this massive celebration for the beginning changes that were happening in South Africa; the dismantling of apartheid. There were 70,000 people in the stadium. Groups like “Guns and Roses” were there, and they were doing all of the kind of music and celebration. And you can imagine what went with it: a fair amount of flow of beer and liquor and a fair amount of flow of drugs as well. So the crowd, after about twelve hours, also was getting a little unruly. And Jessye was talking and saying to Bill Moyers, “You know, of course, that John Newton, in writing this, was a slave trader.” He was a slave trader. In fact, he was waiting for a shipment of slaves when he wrote the song, “How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds.” But he finally came to a conversion and understanding about that. He became a minister; he joined Wilberforce in England, who was the force behind bringing a legislative change and getting slavery off the books in London. And then he also wrote this beautiful song of “Amazing Grace.” Well, Jessye Norman was ready to sing the song. She needed to go on stage in a dashiki, with the microphone, no back-up music. And she comes on the stage and she gradually starts to sing, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.” And the crowd gradually starts to be quiet. And all of the sudden there is almost a total quiet in the place. And all of the sudden people start joining her in the different stanzas of singing. And then the last one is:

“When we have been there ten thousand years,

Bright shining as the sun.

We have no less days to sing God’s praise

Than when we had first begun.”

Seventy thousand in complete silence; and she said something to the effect that she didn’t know why it became that silent. But Yancey, in that writing, says he knows why—because they were standing in the midst of grace and in the midst of transcendence.

As we hear that transcendent presence of God, we don’t need crash helmets and lifesavers this morning; at least that isn’t our usually experience of God. But we do come here because we know God will show up and does show up. He shows up in the Word; he shows up in our conversation with one another; he shows up in his presence in his body and blood in the Holy Eucharist. We feel a little bit of our creaturliness. But we also feel the transformative power of God; and, in that transformative power, catching people. “Here am I. Send me, send me.” “But for the grace of God, I work harder than all the rest.”

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