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Hespeler, 6 February 2022 © Scott McAndless
Isaiah 6, Psalm 138, 1 Corinthians 15:1-11, Luke 5:1-11
Is it just me, or did you notice it too? Did you notice how Peter comes across as a pretty lousy fisher in our gospel reading this morning? I mean, he’s supposed to be a professional. Fishing has been his life, probably, ever since he was a child. He has even entered into a partnership with two other men, James and John the sons of Zebedee. But, in our reading, the partners of PJ&J Incorporated Fishing Enterprises seem to do just about everything wrong – at least, they don’t seem to have planned for success.
First of all, they clearly have their priorities wrong. When the scene opens, we see them on the shore washing their nets. Yes, this is an essential activity for any fishing enterprise. Good fishers know that they have to maintain their nets. If you don’t properly clean them and mend them, they will start to smell and rot and soon they will be no good to you. So, it’s not a problem that they’re washing them, but the problem seems to be that they are not washing them at the right moment.
Where they are Failing
As the story progresses, we discover that they have been out fishing all night long and that they haven’t caught a thing. So, first of all, I’ve got to wonder how dirty their nets can be if they haven’t actually caught anything. But even more important, you would expect really good fishers to have some sense of where and when the fish are available. And it turns out that there are tons of fish out there at the very moment when they are in on the shore and washing up their nets. They are clearly in the wrong place at the wrong time.
And, what’s more, Peter seems to know it. When Jesus has finished speaking to the crowds from Peter’s borrowed boat, he comes up to him and says, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” And did you notice what Peter says? He doesn’t say, “Master, there are no fish out there. They’re not interested in our nets.” He doesn’t say, “What are you a carpenter, why do you think you know where the fish are?” No, he doesn’t deny that there probably are lots of fish out there because he knows that there are.
What he does say is, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing.” That’s right, he says that there may indeed be fish out there, but we are tired. We just don’t want to fish anymore. And I’m all for workers deciding to set some boundaries and saying when they’ve had enough. But I would just like us all to understand that Peter is acknowledging that the problem isn’t that there are no fish.
A Failure of Equipment
But that is really just the first of Peter’s failures. There is much more to come. Peter does let Jesus talk him into going back out and putting down the nets despite how tired they are. Once they get out there, they proceed to gather within their nets the kind of massive catch that fishers always dream of. I mean, isn’t this why they go out in their boats every night, because they are supposed to bring back this kind of catch?
But no sooner do they get it, than new problems begin to appear. The nets, the ones that they were so carefully cleaning and tending only minutes ago, prove themselves quite unable to deal with such a catch. They immediately begin to tear. And then, when despite the tearing nets they actually manage to get their catch on board, it seems that their boats aren’t up to the task either. They immediately start to sink!
So, when it comes to the PJ&J Incorporated Fishing Enterprises, what do we see? We see a partnership of fishers who are really good at going through the motions of the industry. Yes, they will go out and put in hours upon hours of casting nets on the waters despite never catching anything. They will meticulously clean and mend their nets. But, when it comes to actually bringing in huge catches of fish, they seem to be singularly bad at the job.
Maybe they Don’t Care
And I can’t help but wonder if it may actually be because they don’t really care all that much about the results. The fact of the matter is that the fishers who plied the waters of the Sea of Galilee in the early first century had a pretty raw deal. Herod Antipas, who was the ruler in those parts, had set things up in order to make sure that he and his buddies were the ones who profited the most from the trade. It had probably gotten to the point where the men who did the labour barely scraped by no matter how hard they worked or how much they caught.
It is not unusual for workers to just put in minimum effort when that is the deal. They have lost the will to fish. And maybe that’s one reason why they have such little trouble walking away from their nets and boats and a huge catch of fish once Jesus calls them to follow him. So, maybe it’s not surprising that they are unsuccessful. It seems as if decades of mistreatment have left them feeling apathetic at best.
And finally, and perhaps related to that, they just don’t seem to believe that they should succeed. That is the rather surprising response that we get from Peter when, despite all the failures of their nets and their boats, the partners actually manage to bring in the huge load of fish. Peter just stares at all the fish and at Jesus, the man who actually made this catch possible, and he falls to his knees and cries out, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” For whatever reason, he just doesn’t seem to believe that he deserves such good things happening to him.
What does this have to do with us?
I hope you agree with me when I say that Peter, James and John just don’t really impress me very much as fishers. But wait a minute, you might say, what does any of that have to do with us? None of us are commercial fishers. It is not really a big industry around here. So why do we need lessons about that industry from this gospel passage?
But that is just the thing, isn’t it? This story isn’t really about fishing. You can tell that by the way that it ends. At the end of the story, Jesus doesn’t tell the boys that they should go and try to fish better, does he? No, he challenges them to do something quite different. He challenges them to fish for people instead. That means that everything that has happened in this story up until this point has actually been trying to teach us about fishing for people, not fish. And fishing for people is still the business of the church.
So, and stay with me for a minute here, what if this story isn’t really about how lousy PJ&J are as fishers, what if it’s actually about how lousy we are at fishing for people? What if we take the negative example of these fishing business folk and apply it to the life of our church today to ask why it is that we are sometimes not so good at attracting people. So, what are some of the mistakes that PJ&J make that we are making too?
We’re not Where the Fish Are
Well, first of all, as I said, their first mistake seems to be that they’re in the wrong place at the wrong time. They are in here on the shore washing and mending their nets, when the fish are plentiful out there in the lake. And I’m pretty sure we do that too. How much energy in the life of the church is expended on maintaining our nets, on taking care of our own worship practices and maintaining the things that feed our own spiritual life?
Now, I am not suggesting that these things are not important, of course they are. But sometimes our emphasis on them is misplaced. We need to be focusing on the world outside the walls of the church. We continually make this mistake of thinking that the church exists for the sake of those who are inside of it, when it actually exists for the sake of the community and of the world.
Now, you might say to me that there are no fish out there – that there aren’t hordes of people who would respond to the message of the gospel. But I think there is no doubt that what Jesus tells Peter in the story is the same thing that he would tell us. There are fish out there. There is so much in the gospel message, in the Bible and its various applications that respond so directly to the very things that people are struggling with in our world right now, that there is no way that the issue is that they’re just aren’t any fish in the lake. The problem is elsewhere. The problem, as quickly becomes evident when PJ&J head out, is with our nets and our boat.
Our Nets
So, let’s start with the nets. What, in the church today, might be considered the nets. Well, a net is the thing that, when it encounters fish passing by, gets those fish to stay around for a little while. Think of it this way. As a church lives out its life, it will come in contact with various people in the community and in the world. It will meet them as they pass through the building, as they click through the presence of the church on the internet, as we reach out to people in the community to try and meet their needs in some way and so on. These are all good things that we do, but these are not really the things that bring people into the life of the church.
No, that’s what happens when somebody has an encounter that connects them on a deep personal and spiritual level to the life of the church. These are the nets of the church. They are what happens when somebody has a personal encounter with, not one or two, but a few people in the church. It is what happens when somebody shares something about themselves, and they are met with love and appreciation for who they are. It is what happens when they have some significant experience associated with the church.
These are the things that I would call our nets. They persuade people that it is worth sticking around. And we do not deploy them in predatory ways like industrial fishing trawlers go after fish, but when we connect with people in these ways with integrity and a genuine spirit, people will stick around. But it is something that the whole church needs to be involved in. So, if we really want to be effective at what Jesus calls catching people, we really need to pay attention to these nets. But if our nets are breaking, we will not fish well for people.
Sinking Boats
The other problem that we have is that our boats are sinking. And that is also something that has a specific meaning in the context of fishing for people. You see, when we look at the people who come in or potentially come into the life of the church, we have a tendency to see them in terms of what they can do for the church – what work they can do, what committees they can sit on, what support they can give.
But if we are really attracting the fish – those who are most in need of the good news that we can offer – they will mostly come to us without the capacity to do any of those things. The people who need the gospel most, are actually those who have been broken and wounded by the world and its ways. They need to do some healing and growing. In the initial phases, they will likely take more from the church than they will be able to give back.
And you know what that feels like? That feels like they are making the boat sink rather than float because they can take up a lot of the energy of the church. And if we do not act with patience and grace towards all the people that we come into contact with, they simply will not be around long enough to begin to contribute to the life of the church. They will leave or fall out and we will soon be sinking for real.
We Don’t Believe in our Message’s Power
And the final reason why we have so much trouble fishing for people has to do with Peter’s reaction when he actually saw success that he was unprepared for. His immediate conclusion was that he did not deserve it. He wanted Jesus to go away because he didn’t deserve it. And I think we fall into that error too. We just don’t believe that we are worthy of success in the life of the church. We don’t believe in the message we have to share or that anyone would respond. We need to learn to have faith because that is a lie.
Sure, we are far from perfect in the way we live out the life of the church. But we have a God of grace who is happy to send good things our way not because we deserve it but because we belong to Christ. And we do have a message that we can be confident will actually reply to the very real issues that people are struggling with. We need to believe Jesus when he says to us that yes, he will make us fish for people.
So, you see, this story is really not about how bad PJ&J were at fishing. It is about us and the challenges we have fishing for people today. I really do think there is a whole lot we can learn from where they fell short.