"Catching Life"

(Image via: http://www.flickr.com/photos/geralds_1311/3807444802/)

July 22, 2012

Luke 5:1-11

Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. 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.

When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, ‘Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.’ Simon answered, ‘Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.’ When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. So they signalled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink.

But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, ‘Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!’ For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, ‘Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.’ When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.

SERMON: “Catching Life”

I’m going to begin this sermon with a bit of practical advice: the roof of your car is not a wise place to store your laptop computer (while I’m at it, you might avoid the washing machine and oven, too).  Here’s how I learned this:

Many of you know that I like to write my sermons on Thursday afternoons in Southern Pines at a coffee shop.  There is one particular coffee shop that has been very welcoming, not only to me, but to my furry Associate Pastor Hayden, as well.  It may just be owned by a daughter of this church.  Okay, commercial over (but this sermon is brought to you by Swank).

Back to my laptop blunder.  As I got out of my car, I placed my computer on top of it while I got the Associate Pastor out of the car and gathered my things.  I went into Swank and got my coffee and, a few minutes later, two women came in asking if someone drove a red bug.  I said that was me (not realizing why they would be looking for me).  They told me that there was a laptop sitting on top of my car.  Confident that it was not in fact raining laptops, they wanted me to be sure and get it. 

I was so grateful that I bought them coffee (did I mention how good the coffee is there?).  One of the women told me that her laptop is so important to her because of all the pictures of children and grandchildren on it, so she understands how important my laptop is to me.  As they left, she gave me a hug and said, “God bless you.”  Because of their intentional kindness to a stranger, God did bless me.

We do not very often hear stories like these.  The only way this story would make headlines is if I was running for President and my opponent had a smear campaign, “If she can’t keep up with her laptop, how can she run the country?” 

But the kindness of those two women in actually thinking of how it would feel to lose something precious and caring for someone they had never met, should be newsworthy.  It is nothing short of a miracle.

Our story from Luke centers around a miracle.  Jesus is speaking to crowds and decides to hop on a boat so that it doesn’t have to be such a claustrophobic encounter.  That boat happens to be Simon Peter’s.  After Jesus’ voice gets hoarse from all that preaching, he tells Simon to push out into the deep water and let down the nets. 

But Simon’s had a long night.  He is just coming in from a fruitless night of fishing, he’s filthy and exhausted.  He had just finished cleaning his nets, was ready to go home for a little pulled pork and put his feet up, when this Preaching Stowaway came on board. 

Now, after making him listen to a long sermon (is there anything worse?), Jesus wants him to go back and fish again.  And then clean his empty nets all over again. Simon Peter gives a perfectly petulant answer, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.”  Jesus must have given him one of those “do what I say looks”, because next thing we know, those nets are in the water and teeming with fish.

Their glee is short-lived as the boat begins to sink from the weight of that great catch.  Simon’s anxiety rises to the surface as he tells Jesus that he is a sinful man and so it would be better if Jesus just left him alone.  Perhaps he really does feel inadequate.  Or perhaps he’s just trying to be a polite Southerner and give an excuse for needing this troublemaker to leave.

Either way, Jesus doesn’t give up that easily.  They somehow make it safely to shore, and when they do, he says, “Do not be afraid, from now on you will be catching people,” literally in the Greek catching live people. 

I think there was a reason that Jesus didn’t ask them to come catch live people first.  He needed to take them into deep water, to push them beyond what they thought was possible, to have them net-work together to bring in the greatest catch of their lives, and only then could they be called.  This wasn’t to prove their worth to him: it was to prove their worth to themselves.  And, believing that they were capable of more than they ever imagined, they left everything, and followed him.

That is the miracle of our tale.  A boat full of smelly fish is not so thrilling.  But people leaving everything familiar to journey into the unknown so that complete strangers would know real, abundant life is a miracle.  The miracle of letting go of their delusions of control and following Jesus into the lives of others not tomorrow, or next week, but today.

Frederick Buechner writes of the power of each day, saying,

"In the entire history of the universe, let alone in your own history, there has never been another day just like today, and there will never be another just like it again. Today is the point to which all your yesterdays have been leading since the hour of your birth. It is the point from which all your tomorrows will proceed until the hour of your death. If you were aware of how precious today is, you could hardly live through it. Unless you are aware of how precious it is, you can hardly be said to be living at all…

Your life and my life flow into each other as wave flows into wave, and unless there is peace and joy and freedom for you, there can be no real peace or joy or freedom for me. To see reality--not as we expect it to be but as it is--is to see that unless we live for each other and in and through each other, we do not really live very satisfactorily; that there can really be life only where there really is, in just this sense, love.”

“Fishing for people” means this exact way of living: that we leave behind autonomy and self-sufficiency to live for and in and through each other.   Following their Stowaway Savior, Jesus’ disciples discovered community that transcended all barriers, and in moments of utter miracle, they stumbled upon full, precious life, in all its glory. 

Life in a paralytic walking again, in a sermon that changed everything they thought they understood with the simple words, “Blessed are the poor,” in a woman washing Jesus feet with her hair and tears, in a high official’s daughter risen from the dead.

Messy, teary, inconvenient, startling, beautiful life. 

It is tempting to think that this sort of abundant life is something of a bygone era, when God worked in more extraordinary ways than God does now.  But that day along the sea of Galilee, there were nothing more than ordinary fishermen, a desperate crowd, and a choice to follow or not.  They had no more or less breaths than we do, no more or less doubts and fears, no more or less obligations than us.  And they said yes to a journey into the lives of strangers, and there discovered the miracle of this life: living it for others.

The same Spirit who moved Pete to follow that day, stirred two women in Southern Pines to seek me out and return my laptop.  God is God, always has been, and always will be.  And for some reason, God chooses to work through us humans.  We have always been a bizarre mix of frenzied and hopeful, compassionate and selfish, and so it will always be.  The miraculous is shared through the ordinary because God chooses us.  The overflowing, everlasting grace of God is experienced here on this day, because God chooses now.  The completeness of our lives found only in seeking wholeness in the lives of others, because God designed us for each other.

May we follow our Savior with the foolishness of a fisherman who dared to believe that real life—for all—is something worth catching.  Amen.