Preaching text: Luke 5:1-11, Isaiah 6:1-13
Most, if not all of us, are pretty familiar with the story of Jesus calling the first disciples. Jesus comes down to the seashore, sees some fishermen, says ‘follow me,’ and they drop everything and follow him. That’s how the story typically goes, very barebones and simple.
Luke’s Gospel tells a slightly different version of that familiar tale, which we have as our Gospel lesson today. He fills in some details that the other Gospel authors either didn’t know or chose to omit. In Luke’s version, we hear his encounter with the fisherman occurs in the midst of a moment of teaching, where the crowd so presses in on Jesus that he has to commandeer one of the fishing boats to give himself some breathing room. He then also performs a miracle by grant those same fisherman a miraculous catch of fish.
In this version of the story, it is easy to imagine why the fishermen decide to leave everything and follow Jesus. First, they’ve had to listen in on his teaching. While they are not the target of Jesus’ teaching efforts here (He’s focused on the crowds), they can’t help but overhear what he’s saying. Did they perhaps hear something that intrigued or fascinated them? We don’t know for sure, but it’s a safe guess. There’s also what happens after Jesus is done teaching.
Jesus tells them to go out into the deeper water and lower their nets again. Peter protests, claiming that they didn’t have any success earlier in those spots, so this would likely be a waste of time, but he relents. Peter and his partners know their trade. Their comments to Jesus are not uninformed. They have no reason to believe they will catch anything now when they had no luck all night long. Must to their astonishment, they catch more fish than ever seen before in their lives.
Surely, those two experiences would be more than enough for anyone to want to follow Jesus, but Luke tells us that’s not actually what happens. Peter freaks out. He panics and tells Jesus to go away, to leave, because Peter says he is “a sinful man.” Why such a reaction? One would think, given his line of work, that such a massive haul of fish would be cause for immense celebration. Here is enough to support his family for a month or longer perhaps. But no, Peter responds in abject terror.
The reason why is simple. He reacts the way everyone reacts when in the presence of God. Think about the Old Testament stories: Moses, Abraham, Isaiah, Jeremiah. Any of these guys. When God comes to them, they freak out. They panic. They are terrified. It’s the only reaction they can have. Because when we are confronted with the perfection of the Divine, our own inadequacies take center stage. We realize how pitiful we really are, how flawed, our sinful, in comparison to that which is truly perfect. We recognize our unworthiness and instinctively become threatened by that which is so much more than we are.
Take our first lesson today as example. Isaiah is in the temple and God comes into his midst with his angels. He does what Peter does and panics. “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips!” God has come into my midst and I am toast.
It’s usually at this point that the real miracle happens. For Isaiah. For Peter. For pretty much everyone who meets God like this. And also for us. God or Jesus or an angel speaks in a kindly voice and says “Do not be afraid.” Those words, regarded by many, to be the most important words in all of Scripture. Because they are the beginning of grace.
Do not fear. God has not come to you to destroy or to punish or to erase or any other thing you might fear. He has come instead to invite you into his service, to make you a part of his great plan. You, me, Peter, Isaiah, Moses, Mary, whoever. As flawed and imperfect as we are, he has come to us to make us his. “Do not be afraid, for now on, you will be catching people.”
There’s a bit of bumper sticker theology that I’ve come to like: God does not call the qualified, he qualifies the called. And that’s true. I think about my own story. Why am I up here? I’ve always been a person who’s far more comfortable with books and machines than with people. Painfully shy when I was a child and a good portion of adulthood to boot. I didn’t really date until after I graduated from college. And yet here I am now in one of the most intense people-oriented professions you can have. All because God once said to me, “Go and become a pastor of my church.”
Almost 18 years I’ve done this now. I can’t imagine doing anything else with my life. I suppose God knew something I didn’t. Funny that.
Did Peter have similar thoughts? I imagine he did. I’m just a fisherman, a salt-of-the-earth works-with-his-hands sort of guy. I’m no scholar, no great educated man. Just Simon Peter the fisherman. And yet, when Jesus called him, he became so much more. A leader, an evangelist, a paragon of the faith.
Each one of us has a calling. God may have given it to you or me in so grand a manner as he did Peter or Isaiah, but he calls us to his service nonetheless. He calls us in the waters of baptism. He calls us in the wine and bread of communion. And he does not call based on who you are. He calls based on who you could be. Who he knows you can be, because he knows you better than you know yourself. Peter, James, John, and Andrew, all of them were men of greatness and potential, but only Jesus knew it. So are you and me and God sees that in us in ways we cannot.
I know I get up here all the time and I talk about how we, as the church and as followers of Jesus, are to change the world, to give the world vision of God’s kingdom. It’s a tall order and I know it. Scares the daylights out of me often times too. It’s too much. Too big. But then I remember what God has said to me, through his Word and his sacraments, through the experiences of my life, through his call. “Do not be afraid. From now on, you will be catching people.” So it is with all of us. Amen.
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