Past Sermon

Sermon Title: "A Surprising Catch "
Date: February 4, 2007
Minister: Rev. Charles E. Ensley, Jr.

Lesson:  Luke 5:1-11

(What follows is a two person dialogue meditation on the above text.)

JIM:  Today’s lesson is from the fifth chapter of the Gospel according to Luke, verses 1 through 11.  While Luke reports this story of Jesus and the great catch of fish early in Jesus ministry, along with selected disciples choosing to follow him as a result, John reports it much later, as a post-resurrection appearance of Jesus.  While these two gospels utilize different sources, it is of significance to note there are many similarities among the stories, which only point to its authenticity.  Why the same story is told in two different time-frames suggest it has a complicated history that scholars cannot now recover with any confidence.  It is, however, filled with many surprising revelations.  Hear how Luke reports it:

Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God,

CEE:  The lake of Gennesaret, an early name for the Sea of Galilee…formed a natural boundary between Galilee, inhabited by both Gentiles and Jews, and the largely Gentile territories of Gaulanitis and the Decapolis.  A thriving fishing industry flourished on the Sea of Galilee, for fish was one of the staples in first-century Palestine, where more fish was eaten than any other meat.  Fish was eaten fresh, processed, salted, dried, or pickled for export.

JIM:  Jesus saw two boats there at the shore of the lake;

CEE:  The late twentieth century saw discovery of a first century fishing boat in the mud of the Sea of Galilee… It measures approximately 26.5 feet long by 7.5 feet wide by 4.5 feet high... A boat this size could accommodate a crew of four to seven, with sails or oars used for power, and a larger oar or sweep used for steering.

JIM:  The fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets.

CEE:  The seine net is used in the daytime.  It is a weighted net that hangs vertically in the water.  The fish that the net has encircled are trapped and dragged to shore…  The seine relies on a fish habit of trying to escape a net by diving to the bottom, rather than swimming around the end of the net…  The trammel net is a type of gillnet…  Fish swim through the larger outer mesh and strike the backwall of finer smaller mesh…  Such nets work best when the fish cannot see the web, and were used for night-time fishing.  It was the only kind of net that was washed, so we know this story takes place in the morning, after a night of fishing.

JIM:  Jesus got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore.  Then Jesus sat down and taught the crowds from the boat.

CEE:  The captain on any boat is the final authority on everything that goes on there.  Simon Peter was clearly the captain on his boat.  The captain bears responsibility for the very lives of the others and for the success of the enterprise.

JIM:  When Jesus 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.”

CEE:  What does Peter’s voice sound like?  Respectful obedience?  Perhaps, instead, Peter used sarcasm…  The inner dialogue going on in Peter’s mind, and probably those of the other fishermen at Jesus’ suggestion, might have gone like this:  “We’re the fishermen.  We’re the ones who toiled all night using all our skill and good gear and caught nothing, and now an upstart rabbi from nowhere is trying to tell us where to look and what to do.  And telling us to use a trammel net, rather than a seine net, in broad daylight?  Well, I’ll just show him.”

JIM:  When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break.

CEE:  Several kinds of fish that were commercially important in the Sea of Galilee during Jesus’ time were the musht (tilapia), barbells (carp family), and sardines.  Catfish also grew in the lake, but because they have no scales, they were not kosher and, due to prohibitions in the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, could not be eaten by Jews.

JIM:  So they signaled 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!”

CEE:  A fishing or boating person would recognize this as the pivotal moment in the story.  It takes courage and humility for the captain of a vessel to admit in front of his crew that he was wrong.  The miracle here is not the large catch, nor the type of gear used.  It is the personal story of Simon Peter…  The transfer of command of the enterprise shifts from Simon Peter to Jesus.

JIM:  For Simon 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.

CEE:  Peter and Andrew owned a boat, and Zebedee, James, and John owned a boat.  The two groups were in partnership, so they had to cooperate, yet also be able to make quick and independent decisions.  They worked together under the stress of close quarters and frequent physical danger… They exhibit many characteristics that would make them excellent “crew” for Jesus.

JIM:  Then Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.”

CEE:  Jesus in turn can be viewed as thinking like a fisherman in determining the shape of his ministry.  He made decisions based on where he would have the most chance of success.  He went to the most repressed and poverty-stricken people, those who were ill, demon possessed, on the margins of society.  He literally went to where the fish were.  While the fishing culture is half-hidden in the Gospels, it underlies the evangelizing strategy that Jesus employed.

JIM:  When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.

CEE:  Today we have difficulty imagining what it means to “leave it all behind” unless we do something quite unusual, along the lines of becoming a missionary or drastically changing our lifestyle.  And so we wistfully read this story once again this Epiphany season, and go back to our nets and our ordinary lives as if this story were not about us, and this call were not ours, too.  But what if we can, in fact, clean the nets and strike out again in the morning to do the work of our lives and yet, at the same time, live lives true to the gospel, given to God, faithful to the Word that called Simon and his partners away?  What if our lives could be transformed right where they are, with the people we love and know? Can our imaginations open us up to epiphanies all around us, wonders that challenge our expectations?  After all, the last thing those “tired fishermen” were expecting was a showing of God’s awesome power right there, at the end of another workday.  Why couldn’t the same be said of our workdays:  that they hold the possibility of seeing God’s hand at work in our lives and all around us?  I believe that Jesus still shows up and surprises us, and we can find our lives changed forever, even if, at first, we don’t recognize him or know it was he who did it.  It’s an intensely personal experience, and if we preachers get such a sharing started, perhaps people in the pews and those who meet us wherever we are, at the nets or sitting in hospital waiting rooms, might hear a word of good news so compelling that their lives, too, would never be the same.

It is somewhat fashionable to read the Bible through scientific eyes, checking out the “wonders” to decide whether there is some “rational” explanation for them.  Fortunately, Simon Peter had sense enough to be open to a wonder when he saw one, even if he didn’t understand it.

__________________

This meditation interweaves the text of Luke 5:1–11 with adapted excerpts from:

--  Irene Martin, Sea Fire: Tales of Jesus and Fishing (Crossroad Publishing Company, New York); 

--  Renita Weems (New Proclamation Year C 2001); 

--  Sermon Seeds for Luke 5:1-11 from the United Church of Christ/SAMUEL website;

--  commentary by Gail R. O’Day on Luke in The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. IX, (Abingdon Press, Nashville), 1995, pp. 115-118.