February 9 2025 Epiphany 5

Isaiah 6.1-8    Psalm 138    1 Corinthians 15.1-11    Luke 5.1-11

All of our readings today could be summed up by a well-known statement from Saint Augustine, reflecting his human frailty before a transcendent God: “Lord, what I am for you terrifies me.  What I am with you consoles me.  For you, I am a priest.  With you, I am a Christian.”  The upshot of these readings is that our weaknesses, our failings, our inadequacies, are not an obstacle to God’s love.  We are not asked to be perfect; nor are we expected to be able to do everything; we are accepted for the ‘frail’ ‘human’ persons we are.  And when we accept that, we will be able to offer ourselves to God like Isaiah, ‘here I am, send me’, and like Peter, James, John, and their companions who pulled their boats onto the shore and ‘followed Jesus’.

How often do you think you have been in the situation that Peter finds himself.  He and his fishing buddies have put in a full night’s work, spent endless hours in the murky moonlit darkness, throwing nets into the sea and pulling them out and continually finding them empty.  Finally, as dawn breaks, they bring in the boat, dejected and exhausted, they start cleaning their rigs, washing everything down so it is ready for the next night, and then someone comes in, seemingly from nowhere, and asks you to start again.  You’ve heard it said – what is the definition of madness - doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.  Well, that is what Jesus is asking Peter to do.  He is asking him to go out into the deep water where he has just spent the entire night, only this time it is daylight, and cast a net into the water expecting a different result.  But Jesus does more than just that, because before he asks Peter to do this, he asks Peter to put the boat he has just cleaned and pulled onto the bank, into the water again so he can sit in it and teach the crowd.  Talk about stretching the friendship. 

And the thing is, Peter may not even know Jesus that well, in his early ministry Jesus did come to the house of Peter and heal his mother-in-law, and that night he healed many people who were brought to him, but this is only the second time the two of them are together and the first time they actually interact with each other.  So, is it pure coincidence that Jesus, surrounded by crowds of people, just happened to walk onto the edge of a lake with Peter and his fishing buddies cleaning up after a very unsuccessful night of fishing?  Don’t know.  But Peter clearly recognised enough in this itinerant preacher to take the gamble, put aside his exhaustion, go against everything he knew about fishing and put his net into the water during the day.  And the result shocked him to the core, his net was filled to breaking point and even when the other boat came out to assist, there were enough fish that both boats were at the point of sinking.  And Peter’s response to Jesus is one that many of us might have had too.  ‘get away from me, you are too good for me, I am not worthy of your attention’.  Peter expresses, with total humility, his unworthiness to be in the company of this special man who, while he didn’t do anything obvious, he also did, somehow, know that Peter and his mates would be rewarded for their trust that something might happen.  And it is often in those times when we are totally overwhelmed, dejected, disheartened, and feeling totally flat that we are shown small ‘epiphanies’.  Those times when we just accept we ‘have nothing to lose’ and we open ourselves to seeing what Jesus has in store for us.

But, unlike the other Synoptic gospels, this is the first indication of Jesus starting to gather a ‘group’ around him as he travelled around the country.  And Jesus doesn’t actually ‘call’ Peter and his mates, he simply makes a statement that leaves me totally underwhelmed and confused, but maybe it was a statement a seasoned fisherman would recognise for its nuance and meaning.  ‘from now on you will be catching people’.  Peter knows the depths of patience, resilience, intuition and artistry required of a fisherman.  He also knew the tools of his trade; the limitations of his body; the life-and-death importance of timing, humility and discretion.  And he also knew the water; how to respect it; how to listen to it; and how to get the best out of it.  So Peter understands this call is not a directive to abandon his experience and intelligence, but to bring the best of his knowledge and expertise forward – to become even more fully and freely himself.

Which suggests that as we follow Jesus, we also have to do it in the construct of the lives, communities, cultures, families, and vocations that we currently live in.  We need to trust that God values our intellects, our backgrounds, our skills and educations; that God will bless and multiply the ‘stuff’ of our daily lives for God’s purposes.  This is a promise rooted in gentleness and respect; a promise to cultivate us; a promise that when we risk ‘going deep’ in what we know and love, God will enliven our efforts in ways we cannot even imagine us achieving on our own.

One thing about this story that has always left me wondering is – what happened to the fish.  Peter and his buddies walked off and followed Jesus, but there are two boats overflowing with fish there – what happened to them.  Well, the fishing industry in Palestine, at this time, was fully under the control of the Roman Empire.  Caesar owned every body of water, fishing was fully regulated, and most of what was caught was exported, leaving the local communities impoverished and hungry, and the Romans collected exorbitant taxes, levies, and tolls every time fish were sold.  We don’t know what happened to them, and maybe that is not the point, just the sheer size of the catch is the ‘take-away’ point.  This image of boats so overflowing with fish that even seasoned fishermen were overwhelmed gives us a picture of the extravagant, excessive, bountiful generosity of God.  Food for all, food security for all, justice for all, nurture for all.  In this eucharistic image of plenty, Jesus shows Peter what God’s kingdom looks like when it is fully established.  There will be no empty nets, no empty tables; God’s kingdom will mean good news for everyone.  Which means that if the good news we profess is not good news for everyone, it is not of God.

Peter’s comment to Jesus ‘Master we have worked all night long but have caught nothing.  Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets’, reflects the journey many of us may have travelled.  We may have been through times where we have lived in the gap between total exhaustion and hope; between defeat and faith; resignation and obedience.  It is not being ungrateful to God if we admit that sometimes life is really hard.  We find ourselves doing the same thing over and over, and still failing.  Despite how hard we try, sometimes we do find ourselves standing on the edge, with stinking nets, totally exhausted, wondering where on earth we went wrong.

And in those times, the hardest thing to do is take that same leap of trust that Peter did – yet if you say so, I will.  If you say so, I will try again.  If you say so, I will be faithful to your call on my life.  If you say so, I will go deep instead of treading water in the shallows.  If you say so, I will throw that empty net into the water and look with hope for your kingdom to come.

May it be so.