Sermon
In his book “The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus: What's So Good About the Good News?” Peter Gomes encourages pastors to not just preach about Jesus, but to preach the good news that stems from the text. This is the equivalent of one recommendation I received about preaching, to ask “so what?” when writing a sermon. Not just “here's the thing” but “here's why the thing matters.” Three of the four gospels include this story of the call of the disciples. Matthew and Mark give us just 5 verses to describe this scene of Jesus calling the first disciples. The emphasis there is that Jesus called and the disciples followed, obeyed, left everything.
In Luke however, we are given 11 detail-filled verses to tell the same story. In Luke's version Jesus called and the disciples followed, obeyed and left everything. But in Luke's version we are drawn into the setting as a whole. In Matthew and Mark, Jesus shows up at the sea and calls the disciples and they leave. In Luke time slows down a bit. What was Jesus doing there? Why did he go out in a boat in the first place. There's much more dialogue in the Luke version of this scene, bringing us a little more intimacy. In Luke the water is just a lake, not the sea, bringing to mind not the storm and wind of the sea, but a calmer more intimate place. Jesus asks one of the fishermen to row him a little ways from the shore so he can preach and teach the crowds from there. This gives context to the calling of the disciples. Jesus met them in their everyday life and interacted with them in their work. Who knows if the fishermen were even listening to Jesus as he taught from the boat. They were finished with their work, exhausted, cleaning their nets – their empty nets since they had caught nothing. After his teaching out on the water Jesus engages directly with them telling them to go ahead and put their nets out for a catch.
Here's the part of the text that I want to look at in slow motion. So far Jesus has moved from being nearby – the fishermen didn't approach him. Then he moved into their world – onto the lake, and even then it's not clear if the fishermen were interested. And then he moved closer while letting the fishermen maintain their own autonomy. Jesus' first words are not an invitation for the fishermen to do anything outside of their own context, to go anywhere or change anything. Jesus only asks them to do what they're doing, one more time.
What dialogue might you and I insert here? Maybe, “Thanks, but, I don't mean to be rude, but we've been doing this for generations and we know what we're doing.” Or, “No way, we are just so tired, we'll try again tomorrow.” Or, “Are you kidding me?”
Again, Luke's dialogue tells us that Simon answered, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing.” The first response to Jesus' invitation was what we might expect from the tired fishermen that they were. But here's the best part of this passage…
Yet….
They reconsidered. That's huge. What made them take Jesus up on his invitation if even with great doubt? What happened within that tiny word “yet?” The words every parent longs to hear – “if you say so.”
Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.”
And when they do of course they not only catch plenty of fish, but they fill up two boats with bursting nets of fish and bring them to shore. Jesus didn't do the fishing instead of them, for them. The fishermen still did the work. Wow! Jesus is really something – he must be really amazing, capable of bringing us fish when there were none. Let's keep him around so he can help us get this many fish every time!
Luke, more prone to emphasize the humanity of Jesus' interactions, allows us to see one example of a real live approach by Jesus. This is a pattern we can recognize. Starting in the distance perhaps, just something we see out of the corner of our mind's eye, Jesus waits. Then Jesus comes closer to us at that moment when we begin to be around some of Jesus' teachings, maybe not even paying close attention. Then Jesus engages with us, right where we are, right in the middle of a task maybe, and shows us that with Jesus our task is amazingly better. The outcome of living our life with Jesus might be to get twice as much, be twice as successful, feel less exhausted than without him.
That should be the end of this lesson, right? Bring in God and your life with be twice as nice. So why do the fishermen leave two bursting to full boats full of fish, all this abundance that Jesus brought to them? Why would we leave the very success that came our way after following Jesus?
Maybe the first invitation was just practice. This is what it's like to follow. Jesus didn't promise anything. He said, why don't you put down your nets for a catch. The response was completely up to them. Jesus didn't make the work less hard. They still had to haul in the catch, ask for help from one another, and bring it to shore themselves.
As with other biblical texts, only after the recognition of God's glory was there another opportunity for a response. Simon Peter fell to the ground. What do we do when we recognize something holy? Most of us are stopped in our tracks. Maybe we just get really quiet. Maybe we try to take it all in. Maybe we become frightened from an outdated idea that in the presence of God we will only get punished because we can never live up to expectations; we don't remember that while it's true that we can never live up to God's perfection, it is only in God's nature to be generous. We receive grace, we receive forgiveness, we get another chance, we are redeemable, we are worthy. No matter what, holiness changes us. The presence of God changes us, sometimes against all odds.
For Simon Peter, Jesus' response was not to say that he was forgiven, or that his sins were no more – Jesus' response was to draw him in even further. He drew all of the fishermen in even further. I'm sure there was another “yet” moment in their response to Jesus' call. Why would we leave behind two full boats of fish, a success that we have never seen the likes of before? Yet…if you say so.
It's not only pastors who have a call story. We all have moments in our lives that moved us in new directions. I had finally had the opportunity to move to San Francisco, why would I leave after just five years to go back to Chicago for seminary? I had a great job, why would I leave that? I hadn't been around the Church very long. Why would I go to seminary? I even had an apartment in the Marina, with parking! Why would I leave that? Yet….
Calls aren't just for pastors. Calls aren't even just for individuals. When in your life have you shifted directions? Maybe you decided to marry, not to marry, or end a marriage. Maybe you decided to have children by birth or adoption, or to not have children. Maybe you chose a school over another. Maybe your family felt called to move somewhere, take on different priorities, make a change. Of course so many of our choices are made for us through socioeconomic forces, biology, life stages, or end of life. But when there is a true choice to be made, what finally pushes us toward the choice we make? Where in the conversation do we find ourselves starting to shift, and say “yet…..”
It's easy to preach the abundance of the fish, the glory of the double gift, the joy of following God. But I am inviting us to hear the Luke version of the call of these disciples that includes the part where God calls but we're tired; we're over worked; we're exhausted; we're finished for the day and cleaning our nets. Or when we think we already have everything we want – a double portion; a good life. Somehow God gets us to say “yet.” God recognizes that we need to choose, and that being human is full of choices. Our free will allows us to live those choices, and still God is there waiting.
I'm going to allow just a minute or two of silence after the sermon for reflection. If you'd like, you may want to reflect on the question, “When have I ever move from doubt to action by some nudge that made me say “and yet….”
Please pray with me….