February 4, 2001

Rev. Eugene Nelson, Jr.

The Community Church of Sebastopol

Luke 5:1-11

            As many of you know, I love to fish.  It’s just so absorbing for me, that when I’m fishing, even if  I’m not catching fish (which is usually the case) I’m really not thinking about things like sermons or church budgets or committee meetings or all those other things that seem to fill my mind.  It’s a good escape for me. 

             Last summer, my daughter Becky and I spent a day floating the Fall River up in Northeastern California, a very famous trout stream known both for its number of fish and for the size of the fish.  I love to fish, but I really don’t consider myself to be a great fisherman.  So like most fisherman, I dream of catching the big one, but I don’t really believe I ever will.  I don’t expect it.  I’m not good enough.  It’s not going to happen for me.  So we were there fishing as we had been all day.  We had caught a few fish and were having a fine time.  It was getting late in the afternoon and I just kind of tossed out my fly.  It was actually a little Tom Dilley special - a little zug bug, into the Fall River and was retrieving my line, just thinking about who knows what. 

             And then all of a sudden a tug on the line, a huge splash of water and then the line just goes stripping off my pole and down the stream it goes and in that moment I realized - I had caught the big one.  But I didn’t know what to do with it.  I’m not supposed to catch the big one.  I’m not prepared.  I wasn’t ready.  I didn’t know what to do.  Here goes my line and I figure I’m going to have to do something or this fish is going all the way to the Sacramento River before we’re done here.  So finally I tried to put a little tension on the line, tried to turn the fish’s head in the water.  Well, as soon as that fish felt the tension, it snapped my line like a toothpick and it was gone.  What do you do when you catch the big one and you’re not ready.  I’ll tell you what you do.  You sit and cry in your boat for the rest of the afternoon.  That’s what you do.

 I wonder if this isn’t what Simon Peter and the others were thinking.  It had been another long night, no fish, what else is new?  Same old, same old.  One night just like another.  Maybe we’ll get it tomorrow.  No great expectations.  don’t expect much to happen.  Then, without warning, a stranger on the shore, a crowd gathers, a request to use a boat and then a suggestion from a non-fisherman no less about where to put their nets, resulting in a miraculous a stupendous catch of fish, and it slowly begins to dawn on  Simon Peter, “I don’t think I’m in Kansas anymore.”    There in his boat, dead tired, up to his armpits in fish, he finds himself in the presence of the Lord.  This isn’t right.  I’m not ready.  It isn’t supposed to be like this.  The Lord, in my fishing boat?”  What do you do when you have hooked the big one, and you aren’t ready?

             It was evening.  The subway train was full of weary riders on their way  home from a long day at work.  They didn’t look each other in the eye.  They didn’t want to know anyone and didn’t want to be known.  Just wanted to get home.

             Joe was driving the subway as he had every night for 25 years.  He spoke with very few of the riders, might smile politely as they stepped on to the train.  Or might not.  But this night, something changed.  There was a scream.  A woman cried out, “I’m going to have a baby.  Somebody help me.  I need help!”  Joe stopped the train and ran back to find a woman on the floor in great pain.  “I’m going to have a baby!”  she cried again.

             “No you’re not,” he replied as he took her hand, trying to calm her and himself.  “Don’t worry, you’re not going to have a baby here.  Everything will be alright.”  But she cried out again, “I need help.  I’m going to have this baby!”

             Just then a woman appeared behind Joe, bringing with her a healthy dose of reality.  “You’ll need something white to wrap the baby in.  Do you have anything?  What will you wrap the baby in?”

             Joe quickly slipped off his white shirt.  “Will this do?”  “Yes,” she said confidently.  Within minutes, Joe was wrapping a newborn baby in his white uniform shirt.  The wailing of the infant filled the subway car.

             And then, as if this hadn’t been amazing enough, another amazing thing happened.  The people on the subway, those street-hardened New Yorkers, began to celebrate.  They put their newspapers down.  They put their fear and distrust down.  They shed their nameless, faceless existence and hugged one another and cheered and cried.  For a moment, an ordinary ride home on a dark, dingy subway was transformed.  Joe took all this in and later reflected, “For ten minutes, the people on the New York city subway loved one another.”

             It might be in a subway, it might be in a boat full of fish, it might be tonight at the dinner table.  One thing to take from our text is that God is not particular about the times and places of making God’s love and presence known.  You just never know when love will overcome the typical day, and light and life will once again defy the power of darkness and death.  The extraordinary breaks into the ordinary and without warning we are grasped by God’s love.  “For ten minutes, the people on the New York City subway loved each other.”  Who would have ever thought?  Talk about miracles!  We are back to a classic Advent theme, which is also a classic Biblical theme.  In the midst of our day to day rat race, God just might speak a word of hope.  In the midst of pain and grief, God just might encounter us with incredible promise.  Open your eyes.  Open your hearts.  People, look around.   Be ready.  Be alert.  Don’t let the big one get away.

             But we aren’t quite done with this story.  This is not only an epiphany story - a story where God makes Godself known, even in a mess of fish.  It is also a call to ministry story.

             “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets.  Don’t be afraid.  From now on, I’ll teach you to catch people.”  Ah, but Simon is afraid.  Very afraid. I think of Moses, Isaiah, Sara and Abraham, Jeremiah, Simon Peter.  It seems that when people find themselves face to face with the Holy One, they get just a bit nervous.  Suddenly all their shortcomings, their failures, their selfish and petty acts are magnified.  “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”  If I would have known that the Lord was going to show up in my boat, maybe I would have lived a more worthy life.  Now what am I going to do?  Nothing in our lives remains hidden under the penetrating light of God’s presence.  Simon Peter feels unworthy to stand face to face with Jesus.  But that might not be the only reason he is afraid.

             Peter, put your nets out one more time.

             Peter, be astonished by the possibility of God

             Peter, wake up!

             Peter, I will make you a fisher of people.

             The miraculous catch of fish not only reveals who Jesus is but also leads to a call for action - for response.  It isn’t enough just to see the Lord.  Now Peter must be prepared to serve the Lord.  And here as I said, we have another, deeper reason for Peter’s fear.  He knows that his days of fishing - at least for fish - are over.  His life has just turned in a radically new direction.  God has something special in mind for him…for us?  “Put out into the deep water and let down the nets.”  In the words of theology professor, Frederick Neidner, “We don’t mend, tend or haul the net; rather, by God’s grace, we become the net.”

             A pastor writes:  “I received a telephone call at 7 a.m.  Had I heard?  Thomas was in jail.  DUI.  It would take two hundred dollars to bail him out.  I got the call just before I was to leave for the Men’s Bible Study and Prayer Breakfast.  When I got there, after our Bible study, I told the men about Thomas being in jail.  They knew him.  They knew his mother.  His father had died when the boy was very young.  His mother had tried to raise him as best she could, but at seventeen he had become quite unmanageable.  Some of the men offered to go with me to the jail.  When we got there, they emptied their wallets and bailed him out.  Out in the parking lot we had a prayer with him.  They told him that they were concerned about him because they cared about him.  John took Thomas home with him for a few nights.  A week later, George took Thomas with him to his AA meeting.”

             “From now on, you will be catching people.”  The literal meaning of the word, “catch” here is to take alive.  From now on you will be catching people, bringing them back alive, saving them from destruction and death.  The guys in that Men’s Bible Study refused to let Thomas simply slip beneath the waves.  They became the net that caught him and brought him back, hopefully before it was too late.  That’s the problem of going fishing with Jesus.  We become his nets - tossed into the deep, tumultuous waters of human life.  Who knows who we may encounter in the depths.  Will they be our kind of people?  Will they fit into our kind of church?  Will they betray and disappoint us in the end?  We don’t know!  But we do know this.  Jesus wants us to bring ‘em back alive.  I think I begin to understand why Peter was so afraid.  It can be a bit unnerving to dive into the deep waters of God’s unmanageable, mysterious, powerful, unconditional grace.

             But know this.  It is that same grace that will sustain us and see us through, wherever we cast our nets, or better yet, wherever Jesus decides to cast us - the grace of forgiving and redirection, the grace of encouraging and upholding, the grace of making new what is old in us.  It’ll be there so be not afraid.  For in the words of one author, “While God may not call those who are ready, God does make ready those who receive God’s call.”  “I’m going to teach you to catch people,” says Jesus, “Or I’ll die trying.”