The Fifth Sunday after Epiphany

Preached by The Very Reverend Robert Neske, Dean, at Saint Mark’s Pro-Cathedral, Hastings, February 7, 2010

Jesus has returned from his nearly disastrous visit to Nazareth to the Capernaum and the area around the Sea of Galilee, which Luke calls by its actual name, the lake Gennesaret. He has been preaching near the shoreline where the fishermen, who make their living from the lake, beach their boats, sort their catch, repair and dry their nets. Odd as it might appear to us; this was actually a good place to preach and teach as the people from the towns would have come there to buy the freshly caught fish. This morning however, so many people have gathered to listen to what Jesus has to say, that our Lord is about to be forced into the lake. People were also having a hard time hearing his words so we are told: “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.”

 Can you image what an imposition this would have been for Simon Peter? The boats had been beached, the nets had been hung up to dry; Simon and his partners had had a terrible night in that they hadn’t caught a single fish, they were tired and out of sorts, and in all likelihood wanted nothing more than go home and get some sleep so they could get up and do it all again that night, and here was this rabbi commandeering his boat for a lecture platform. Who needed this? But then as now, people are inclined to tolerate the idiocy and eccentricity of the clergy, so Simon does as Jesus asks of him.

 “When he had finished speaking, (Jesus) said to Simon, "Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch." Things have just gone from bad to worse. The nets are dry, it is the middle of the day, and they’d had a rotten night, having never caught a thing and besides which any idiot knows that the time to catch fish was at night with torches. Not to mention the fact that this fellow is a rabbi and some say a carpenter, what could he possibly know about catching fish?

 Theses thoughts of something like them were no doubt running through Simon Peter’s mind when Jesus said: "Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch." Simon appeals to the obvious: Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing” but something about Jesus, in his presence and in his words makes Simon throw reason and good sense to the wind, for he then adds: “Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets." And he does. “Yet if you say so…” Once again we see someone responding to that particular note of authority that is heard in Jesus’ voice.

 Within minutes the nets are full to the point of breaking and Simon and his brother Andrew are so overwhelmed they need to call their partners James and John to help them take in this draught of fish. It is a remarkable moment, we might almost say, a miraculous moment which for some unknown reason Luke never identifies as such; perhaps the third evangelist figured that the moment spoke for itself. Yet Simon Peter sees in Jesus directions a supernatural power at work and responds in and with a personal self judgment: “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!"

 Simon is afraid. He is in the presence of the Holy and he is frightened because he has no illusions about whom and what he is. This the natural reaction of human beings when we find ourselves confronted by the Holy, whether we can define the Holy of not.

As we hear in our first lesson from Isaiah; Isaiah’s reaction like Jeremiah’s last week is one of near panic: Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!" Isaiah has seen God and the Seraphim, one of the ranks of the Heavenly Host, he is terrified because humans do not look upon God and live, this is what the prophet is saying; he is a dead man , a goner; and in a way Isaiah is right, for whoever and whatever Isaiah thought he was, he will never be that person again.

 This is also true for Simon. The fisherman may not know is going on, but he is smart enough to know that God is in the midst of this and change is in the air. It is then that Jesus says: "Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people." From this point on for Peter, Andrew, James and John, their lives as fishermen is over. Whatever else they might have been or thought they would be has been swept aside at exactly the same time they are hauling in more fish than they’ve ever seen in their lives. Wouldn’t you know it, they minute the hit the pinnacle of their chosen occupation, it ceases to be their vocation, “and when they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.”

 It is one of the ongoing ironies of religious life; people lives are going in one direction, they encounter the Holy and suddenly they are going places they would never thought they would ever go. Like the apostle Paul who wrote: “For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain.” The last person you would ever imagine God calling would be Paul, yet it is Paul who is the founder of the Church. It is never about who are what we are, but rather about what we are to become; being and becoming.

 It is no less true for us. We have been called to follow Christ, to fulfill the promises made on our behalf at baptism. That was the easy part; the more difficult truth is that having joined our life with Christ we have left ourselves open to the eccentricities of God, who is often vague in communicating his will, until that moment we find ourselves plunked down in the in the middle of some reality, that could only be the will of God, because only God would put us there. There is a moment in a little film called the 13^th Warrior, which is based on Michael Crichton’s The Eaters of the Dead, when the hero believing he is about to face his death kneels in prayer and says: “Go, I have squandered my days with thoughts of many things. This was not one of them. But I ask O God only that in these next moments that I use my life well.

 Who could not offer the same prayer? The call of the fishermen reminds us that whatever we think our lives may be, they are in the hands of God who always expects more of us than we think we are capable of doing. What God asks is that we be ready to leave all and follow where Christ leads, to the glory of God and the betterment of the world.