A Sermon preached by the Rev. Michael Anderson Bullock
[Isaiah 6:1- 13; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11; Luke 5:1-11]
With respect to today’s gospel, I have two questions to pose to you. The first is: Have you ever met someone who had the capacity to have you drop everything in order to be with him or her? The second question is this: What is it about Jesus that causes people like us to drop everything and join him in his life’s work?
And in terms of these questions, what do you make of today’s gospel scene? How does it illustrate for us the life of following Jesus?
Truthfully, I have to laugh at what I notice as not being reported by St. Luke, concerning the issues facing Simon. (And please note that he is not yet anointed as “Peter”). From a reasonable and personal viewpoint, I have to chuckle at what I can imagine as the conversation between Simon and his wife. Luke perhaps conveniently leaves these things out. For instance, what did Simon’s wife have to say about this radical shift in their home life. “Who’s going to pay the bills?” “Will you come home for weekends?” “What about the family business?” “What about us?”
The fact is that the only comment Luke and the other synoptic gospels make about these no-nonsense fishermen, these Galilean boat owners and business entrepreneurs, is that they simply “left everything and followed Jesus”.1
So, what do you think would cause these seasoned, salt-of-the-earth fishermen to drop everything and follow Jesus? What is going on here? Moreover, how can folks like us connect with Jesus, and (overcoming our hesitancy, our resistance, our fear) accept his call to refocus our lives on him and “catch people”?
Especially in these divisive and ragged times of ours, what does it take for us to follow Jesus? It occurs to me that today’s gospel and its fishing story hold a quiet but important key to what it takes for you and me to participate in the Kingdom-work of Jesus. And the element of the story that catches my attention is the boat – Simon’s boat -- and what might the image of the boat have to say to us as St. Philip’s.
The compelling magnetism of Jesus is apparent in that crowds gather around him simply to hear what he says, what he teaches. In today’s case, so many gathered on the narrow beach that he was forced to improvise and move to a boat in order to continue teaching. He saw two boats with fishermen at the end of their workday, buttoning-up their vessels and washing their nets. Without as much as a hello, Jesus got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a bit from shore, where using the natural amphitheater effects of the Sea of Galilee’s coastline, Jesus continued his teaching. When he finished speaking, Jesus turned to Simon; and what I take as a gesture of gratitude for his help, invited the fisherman to put out into the lake’s deep water and drop his nets.
Now two things strike me about this scene. The first one is technical. While I am not a fisherman, I have read that in environs such as the Sea of Galilee, the nighttime is the best time to catch fish. I suppose that during the heat of the day the fish sink to the bottom’s cooling depth and are less accessible. Yet, in this scene, Jesus tells Simon to fish while the sun shines. Interesting: A carpenter telling a fisherman how to fish!
The second thing that strikes me about this scene is the compelling human interaction between Jesus and Simon. What I mean is that in Simon’s position, if I had spent the whole night fishing with no luck at all and then having to do the dreary work of cleaning the boat and hanging its water-laden nets, I might not have responded nearly as graciously as Simon did to this teacher, who tells me to try again. But Simon, perhaps with a shrug of his shoulders, did what Jesus invited him to do. And you clearly know what happened. The resulting catch was so overwhelming that the nets began to strain -- along with Simon’s back -- that he yelled to his partners (brother Andrew and James and John Zebedee) for assistance in hauling the fish to shore.
What happens next is both interesting and a most telling crescendo to the story of Jesus and his first disciples. In the face of this overwhelming catch of fish, Luke, without any special notice, says: “When Simon Peter” (please note that this is Luke’s first use of Simon’s new name) – “when Simon Peter saw [the catch],” he fell down at Jesus’ knees and confessed that being in the presence of what surely was a God-thing was too much for him to bear. “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinner.”2 At which, Jesus knew that Simon Peter (with his new name and his new life being birthed in that boat) – Jesus knew that Simon Peter had glimpsed the reality of what was going on in and with Jesus. As a result, Jesus offered him a second invitation: “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.”3
For me, the boat, Simon’s boat, functions as the model of who and what we are as followers of Jesus and what we are to do as the church, as St. Philip’s.
I know quite well that one of the most common images of the church is a boat. (I have called your attention to the fact that the congregation sits in the “nave”. And looking up, you can see the architectural expression of the boat’s hull and its ribs.). Yet, more to the point, I notice that Jesus uses Simon’s boat as a vehicle that expresses not only what it means to follow Jesus but also what it is like to be dealing with the God-life. Here is what I see in terms of this boat image and its relationship in following Jesus.
The first of the boat’s expressions comes immediately in this day’s gospel. Jesus teaches from the boat. In fact, the boat allows Jesus to improvise in order to meet the circumstances of the people and their eagerness to listen to him. As I say, Jesus teaches from the boat, and I firmly believe that St. Philip’s is called to be such a boat, teaching and proclaiming by our words and examples the deep and freeing truth of “Emmanuel: God with us”.
Of course, Simon Peter’s boat has a distinct purpose. It is a fishing boat, designed and equipped to catch fish, and fish are caught to feed people. This is the second image for us here at St. Philip’s to recognize. As followers of Jesus, we are called to feed folks – to feed their hearts and minds and their bodies with the abundance of our life’s catch,-- something we literally and spiritually do here in our boat on Main Street. We do this because we know that St. Philip’s is not a cruise ship. Our boat is a working boat, a fishing boat.
Adding to this fishing boat image, I believe it is very important to catch (pun intended!) the Greek sense of what Jesus identifies as Simon Peter’s new mission and ministry: to catch people. The Greek word for “catch” or “catching” is zogron. Tellingly, this “catching” is not about snagging or trapping fish. Zogron means to “catch alive” as in what may, in fact, be a pun from Jesus: namely, “to catch and revive”.
The boat that is St. Philip’s does snag people or trap people for the sake of creating a big, impressive “catch”. Rather, our fishing is about gathering – gathering people into new life, the “revived” life of Christ’s resurrection, love, mercy, and hope.
And the last part of the image of the boat that strikes me is quite mundane actually but, nonetheless, crucial. Simon Peter and his fishing business partners had to take care of their boats. They required maintenance and rehabbing in order to stay operational. It is always centrally important to keep in mind that the “church” is people, not a building but people who are committed to being Christ’s Body in the world, for the sake of the world. But the truth of this should not allow us to neglect keeping the boat seaworthy so that the transforming teaching and proclamation may continue; that the fishing may be accomplished to feed people and to gather (not snag) the people into the net of salvation, the net of “health and wholeness”. The point is: In order to do this, the boat must be ready to sail; and Jesus calls us to keep sailing, not fearfully hugging the shore but moving into the deep to demonstrate with our own lives what life with God is like.
So, let’s keep weighing the anchor, and let’s get to work with our gathering nets. There’s action in our boat. Thanks be to God. Amen.
1. Luke 5:11
2. Luke 5:8
3. Luke 5:10
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