Luke
5:1-11
It has been a long night for the disciple
Simon Peter. He has done everything a good fisherman is supposed to do. And he
has been doing it like this for practically all of his life. But on this day
it’s different. The usual routine isn’t working. The net is empty. Simon
doesn’t catch anything. Not one fish.
Now although I have scant experience at
fishing, I’ve done it once, maybe twice in my life - I can still identify with
Simon’s experience and I bet you can too. You know, the times where we have
tried to do everything right, given it our best, did all that we could, said
our prayers, lived faithfully, worked hard. We did all of it and still it
didn’t turn out as we hoped. Our nets come up empty and we are left to some
degree entangled in disappointment, doubt, sadness, anger, fear, confusion.
That’s basically the state that Simon and
his fishing buddies are in as they wash their empty nets on the lake’s shore.
They’ve cried uncle and given up when along comes Jesus asking Simon for a boat
so that he might get the proper space to address the crowd. But after his
public teaching is done for the day, Jesus turns to Simon and says, "Put
out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch." Now
initially, Simon resists because, come on, it's a ridiculous request.
"Master,” Simon points out, “we have worked all night long but have caught
nothing." Yet although skeptical, Simon ends up doing what Jesus asks. And
low and behold when the nets go down into the deep the fish amazingly rush in.
More fish than anyone could have imagined.
Now on the surface, this may sound like a
classic fish tale. But it goes much deeper than that. Because it’s really a
story about life and transformation - both Simon’s and ours. Jesus calls Simon
to a new life, a new way of being in the context of fishing because that’s what
he knows best. Likewise, Jesus is always coming to us in our everyday lives,
meeting us in the places and circumstances that we know best, and calling us to
something new, to something more so that we might leave the shallows of life
and put out into the deep.
Because God knows how often we live in
the shallows. How easy and tempting it is to live on the surface in our comfort
zone where we can touch the bottom and have a general sense of control. But
this level is full of mindless distractions, superficial relationships, and
lack of self reflection. It’s a place where comparisons with others take up a
lot of space and judgments about who’s in, who’s out, and who’s bad and who’s
good seems to be of utmost importance. It’s hard to be authentic and true here
for there’s not much meaning or fulfillment to be found. When we live in the
shallows our nets often come up empty. Which is why Jesus beckons each and
every one of us to, “Put out into the deep water.” To not be satisfied with
living a surface life. To go deeper for it is there that we will find our
catch.
It’s interesting, I think, that when
Jesus tells Simon to put down his net into the deep he doesn’t actually say
what he would catch. Surely everyone assumed that Jesus was talking about
catching ordinary fish, but was he really? I wonder because what did Simon do
with that bounty of fish that swarmed into his net? Did he scoop them up, run
to the market, and make a boat load of money? Was that the catch that ended up
really mattering to him? It seems not. Because at the end of the day, Simon
walks away from all of it. He, along with his companions, bring their boats to
shore and leave everything, including the fish, to follow Jesus. For what Simon
really caught that day is something even more compelling than the fulfillment
of a fisherman’s dream. It is the experience of the overwhelming abundance of
divine grace and love. What he ends up catching, ultimately, is life - the
true, rich, deep life found in Christ.
Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch. That may make sense if one is next to a body of
water with net in hand and a boat available. But for us landlubbers, how
exactly do we heed that call in our own lives? How do we move from living in
the shallows to putting out into the deeper places of life? Well, one way is to
identify a place in your life where it feels superficial. Where you feel stuck
or stymied. Where is it that you have been putting in your best efforts and
still your net comes up empty? When you find that place, pause and look for
Jesus. Because he is there. God in Christ is present and with you in the
disappointment, the doubt, the sadness, the anger, the fear, the confusion - in
whatever has you tied up in knots. Notice God’s presence because that presence
has the power to untangle and transform any situation. Because empty nets are
not the final reality for us. Even though outward circumstances may or may not
change, inwardly things can shift. No matter what is going on in our lives we
can experience new life, a new way of being as we become more and more in touch
with the overwhelming abundance of God’s grace and love that is always
available to us just below the surface.
For the deep is always a place of sacred
transformation. When Jesus called Simon Peter to deep water fishing notice that
he did not say, “Let down your nets and see if anything’s there.” No, he said,
“Let down your nets for a catch.” For you see, as it was for Simon Peter it is
for us. When we are willing to enter into the depths of life with God in Christ
the catch is always guaranteed.
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