Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
Text: (Luke 5:11)
And when he had finished speaking, [Jesus] said to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” And Simon answered, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.”
Kä mëë cɛ thuɔ̱k kɛ ruac, cuɛ Thay-mɔn jiök i̱, "Gɛri murkäb guäth mi lueŋ, kä luay cambaknikun yieer kä bia ka̱p kɛ rɛc." Kä cu Thay-mɔn ɛ loc i̱, "Kuäär, cakɔ jɛ ɣɔ̱n kɛ wäär kɛɛliw, kä thilɛ mi cakɔ jek. Kä kɛ ɣöö ci jɛ lar bä cambakni luay yieer."
Prayer: Lord God, our heavenly Father, enlighten our darkness with the light of your Holy Spirit, so that I may preach well and we all may hear well, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
In Romans 12, St Paul says: Be transformed by the renewal of your mind. In 2 Corinthians 10, he says: We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.
This is what is happening in our reading today. St Peter, or Simon as he is called in the reading today, is transformed by the renewal of his mind – his thoughts are being taken captive to obey Christ.
Peter says: “Master, we toiled all night and caught nothing!”
He protests with the voice of reason! His knee-jerk reaction to Jesus’ words kicks in! He thinks there is something strange, maybe silly, maybe ridiculous about what Jesus is asking him to do!
He says: “Master, we toiled all night and caught nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.”
Even though his immediate reaction is to think that there’s no point doing what’s been done already, and even though at this time he hardly knows Jesus, and even though he thinks Jesus is asking him to do something strange and even pointless – nevertheless, he still says: “But at your word I will let down the nets!” He submits, he surrenders to his master, he yields to his command.
And what happens? He collects a great catch of fish! So many that they need to call the other boat to come and help! So many that the nets break!
And to think that on the previous night, nothing happened. To think that the night before, they had wasted all their energy with no reward for their work!
The only difference today is that Jesus himself tells them to fish, and he himself is with them in the boat.
When Jesus comes to us with a challenge, with a command, with a calling, he often comes to us with the same things we have been doing all our lives. But he comes to us as someone we don’t know very well yet, he comes to us as someone we have witnessed from a distance. In the gospel of Luke, we read that Peter’s mother-in-law was healed not so long ago. This is the only thing we know so far about Peter’s experience with Jesus. He had experienced Jesus’ power and his love only from a distance. He had watched a miracle happen to someone else, but he hadn’t had Jesus come and make a call upon his life yet.
Now Jesus comes to Peter himself and gives him such a simple command: “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” And with these words, Jesus catches Peter into his own nets. Once you are trapped in the nets of Jesus, there’s no getting out of them. They are nets which put you to death, which is exactly what happens to fish when they are pulled out of the water gasping for air. In baptism, we are put to death. In the daily task of commending our sin into the forgiving hands of God the Father, we are killed. And through the resurrection of Jesus we are raised to new life. We are given the life that only comes from him, and from no one else.
But we think that if we are dragged out of the water, when we are cut off from our life, our livelihood and everything we hold precious, that we have nothing to gain and everything to lose. But in actual fact, the exact opposite is true: We are being rescued from sin, from death, and from the power of the devil, we are being caught in Jesus nets and dragged out of the devil’s own swamp, and we are being lifted up, higher and higher towards the light of heaven. We need to be a dead fish, a caught fish, and then one that is eaten by Jesus, devoured for lunch by the word of God, consumed with the words of Jesus, marinaded with his forgiveness and with his mercy, peppered and sprinkled with his blood, and taken into his life for his service.
Now, maybe you think I’m going overboard here (pardon the pun)! But Jesus says to Peter, “Do not be afraid, from now on you will catching men!” You will catching people!
So, people: Don’t you know what it’s like to be caught? Have you ever put yourself in the shoes of a fish? Get yourself caught and die! Get eaten by Jesus! Get cooked by his forgiveness! When you’re dead, then at least you’re something tasty! And once there is no more fish left, once breakfast is eaten, there is nothing left of you, little fish: only Jesus is left!
And that’s what your life is now in holy baptism: Jesus lives in you, you live in him. You must decrease, he must increase. You eat his body and blood in the Lord’s Supper, he eats you, he consumes you with the Holy Spirit, and consecrates you for a life in his service. You come and eat the body and blood of the one who is eternally worshipped by all the angels and saints in heaven, and he devours you with his mercy, with his love, his compassion, his forgiveness, his life, his salvation. You eat his righteousness, you eat his purity, you eat his life, and he eats your sin, your impurity, and your death, and even dies for it. There is nothing that Jesus doesn’t give you that is not pure, total love, because he is Love. He is truly God, as Thomas says to him: my Lord and my God, and God is love.
And we receive this love by trusting in it. That’s what faith is: simply to be caught by Jesus and dragged upwards from the deep by him. St Paul says: Everything that does not proceed from faith is sin. When we turn away from faith, when we don’t want to be caught, then we dive back into the water and nothing is given to us. There is no love, no patience, no peace, no joy, without faith. There is no life with Jesus without being caught by him. Everything we need in this life and everything he commands of us and expects from us, comes from faith and from nowhere else.
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But back to our text…
Peter says to Jesus: “Master, we toiled all night and caught nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.”
Let’s put aside the fish for a moment, and put ourselves in Peter’s shoes.
At the end of our reading, Jesus calls Peter and the other men with him to follow him into a life dedicated to him, a life following him, a life in the service of Jesus, at the feet of Jesus and in the words of Jesus. And we read: “When they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed him.”
But before that all happens, Jesus puts a little test on Peter. He gives him a simple command: “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.”
So many times have we heard the words of Jesus before. So many times have we been told by him what we should do, how we should live, what we should believe. And we say to him: “Master, we toiled all night and we have caught nothing!”
We say to Jesus: “I’ve tried that before, Jesus, and it didn’t work!” “That doesn’t make sense, Jesus!” “Your commandments to me are crazy, Jesus!”
The greatest trap for us is to forget that God made the world.
As Christians, we often like to talk about Jesus’ death on the cross, and we like to talk about the Holy Spirit, but we don’t like to think too much about creation. Now there are all sorts of debates between atheists and Christians, “science and religion”, and even among Christians of different stripes about how, whether and if God created the world. But that’s a subject for another sermon.
But as Christians we have to remember one fundamental thing: The first words in the bible are, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” These are also the first words of the Nicene and Apostle’s creeds.
With these words the line is drawn in the sand between believers and unbelievers. If we don’t believe that God created the world, then we probably believe that the world is a god, and that there is no help apart from what the world can give us.
Jesus is calling us to faith, and calling us again to faith, and calling us to be salt and light in the world, and he does it again and again, and we don’t often listen. We often don’t want to hear! Instead, we say: “I know what’s best for my life. I know better than Jesus! And obviously, Jesus didn’t actually mean what he says.”
Well, I’ve got news for you, you slippery fish! He does mean what he says, he does keep his promises, and he’s even died on the cross for you and risen from the dead for you!
The next time you hear something of the words of Jesus that you don’t agree with, then listen to the advice your heart gives to you, and ask yourself, why don’t I want to follow? Why not do exactly what Jesus says? Then you’ll be able to work out very quickly what gods you worship: you’ll be able to find out very quickly what idols you have. And usually, the idol is money, comfort, and luxury.
God the Father created the world. Jesus Christ the Son created the world. And the Holy Spirit created the world. And if there is a word from the Scriptures that sits uncomfortably with you, it is a test for you. It is a test to see whether you will suffer the martyrdom of being a fool for Christ. It is a test to see whether you believe that God is there to be served in honest work, whether you believe he is to be served in obeying your parents and honouring politicians and leaders or in abundantly helping the poor, whether you believe that he is to be served in raising, teaching and nourishing the children that he himself gives, whether you believe he is to be served in speaking the truth in love. Or even when it comes to doctrine: There is a test to see whether you believe that “baptism now saves you”, whether you believe that “This is my body” “This is my blood”, or whether you believe that “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” The Holy Spirit says through the words of St Paul in our epistle reading today: For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
Listen to what Jesus commands you, even if it sounds foolish. If Jesus commands you to do something, act first, and think later. You probably have a bad conscience about something. There is probably something that niggles on you that you know Jesus expects of you, but you’ve never got on with it, and done it. Or maybe there’s something that you’re caught in and embroiled in, that you’ve never stopped. It’s probably because you trust in the world more than you trust in its Creator – but never mind, listen to the words of your Creator. He knows where you can catch some fish!
If you want to protest to Jesus go ahead! He’s happy to hear your protest!
Say: “Master, we toiled all night and we’ve caught nothing!”
Go and say to him, “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?”
Maybe you have been allowed to toil all night and get absolutely jolly nowhere so that in the morning you have nothing to put your trust in but Jesus Christ alone, and his words, and his encouragement, his friendly words and his cheerful voice that says to you, “Put out into the deep!”
Don’t forget Peter’s crucial word: BUT! Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! BUT at your word I will let down the nets.”
“But at your word!”
Christianity will grow and flourish and be strengthened and renewed purely “at your word”! Do you trust your own judgment or do you trust Jesus’ own words?
And Jesus says: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”
There will always be a catch of fish! And even though you might have toiled all night and caught nothing, nevertheless, say with Peter, “But at your word I will let down the nets.”
Amen.
Lord Jesus Christ, your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. Help me to trust in your words, to believe in the words of the Scriptures, even if they go against my reason and my judgment. You are Wisdom itself, and the source of all wisdom. Send me the wisdom of your Holy Spirit, even when I look like a fool, and lead me in the school of your disciples. Amen.
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