Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany (Year C)
One day Jesus was standing beside Lake Gennesaret when the crowd pressed in around him to hear God’s word. 2Jesus saw two boats sitting by the lake. The fishermen had gone ashore and were washing their nets. 3Jesus boarded one of the boats, the one that belonged to Simon, then asked him to row out a little distance from the shore. Jesus sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. 4When he finished speaking to the crowds, he said to Simon, “Row out farther, into the deep water, and drop your nets for a catch.”
5Simon replied, “Master, we’ve worked hard all night and caught nothing. But because you say so, I’ll drop the nets.”
6So they dropped the nets and their catch was so huge that their nets were splitting. 7They signaled for their partners in the other boat to come and help them. They filled both boats so full that they were about to sink. 8When Simon saw the catch, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “Leave me, Lord, for I’m a sinner!” 9Simon and those with him were overcome with amazement because of the number of fish they caught. 10James and John, Zebedee’s sons, were Simon’s partners and they were amazed too.
Jesus said to Simon, “Don’t be afraid. From now on, you’ll be fishing for people.” 11As soon as they brought the boats to the shore, they left everything and followed Jesus.
Collect:
Set us free, O God, from the bondage of our falseness, and give us the liberty of that abundant life which you have made known to us in your Child our Savior Jesus the Christ; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
I’m a sucker for a good podcast. I’ve subscribed to several — from theology to all things pipe related to interviews to prayer to infinity and beyond. I started this journey by stumbling into a channel on YouTube called, Off Camera with Sam Jones. Sam Jones is director, photographer, musician, and skateboarder. He created Off Camera — a website, magazine, television show, and podcast — based on his passion for “long form conversational interviews.” He posts small snippets of his interviews on YouTube. It’s just two people, sitting in a space, having a conversation, all shot in black and white. I like the simplicity of it and the conversations are pretty eye-opening.[2] When I found out he also had those interviews in podcasts, I quickly subscribed.
In one of the snippets of his interviews with Dax Shepard, Sam asked Dax about his marriage to Kristen Bell and how two polar opposite people got together and made it work. Dax explained that Kristen was a Christian and a genuinely good person and he wasn’t. But Dax wasn’t so worried about Kristen leaving him; rather he questioned himself about staying with her —
Do I want to be with a Christian … who has eight people living in her house for free; who has to get out of a car when there’s a dog that doesn’t have a leash and ruin her whole day rescuing this dog … I wasn’t certain I wanted to be with someone like that. …
[But] she never said to me, ‘You have to be a better person.’ She never ever suggested that I should do that. Instead, I just slowly, through time, watched what fruit she bore, the way she moved through life … I looked at the results of how she lived and they’re pretty undeniable. … I just couldn’t deny the reality of how her life unfolds … She’s being generous and loving, giving people the benefit of the doubt and believing in people and believing the world’s a wonderful place and then, downriver, it proves to be all those things …
Over time, [I] was like, ‘It doesn’t really matter what case you can make intellectually, you can’t deny what the outcome is … it’s just a better life.’ And I wanted that. So I chose to move more in her direction. She didn’t ask me to. I wanted what she had and I replicated it.
It seems Kristen learned a thing or two from Jesus.
In our passage today, when Jesus finished speaking to the crowds he told Simon to row out into deep water and drop his fishing nets again. I’m sure Simon must have been watching Jesus as he spoke to the crowd. He might have noticed his strong hands. He might have even had a little game where he would try and figure out what type of work a person did by watching them. Who knows for sure. What we do know, though, is that Simon knew Jesus wasn’t a fisherman. He had to tell Jesus that they’d just come in from spending the whole night out fishing, which was the norm. I don’t know about you, but I worked the graveyard shift for many years and the last thing I wanted to do after a long shift was work a double!
“But because you say so,” Simon concedes, “I’ll do it.”
We’re not told this, but there must have been something about Jesus — whether he inherited “the look” from his Mother, or the way he spoke, or just his aura, whatever it was, Simon relented and rowed out again to the deep water and lowered his nets.
Or maybe there wasn’t anything about Jesus at all. Maybe he was just an average person with an average skill set. Maybe nothing really stood out. Maybe going back out to the deep water was Simon’s way of showing Jesus that he was the fisherman and Jesus wasn’t. Maybe that was Simon’s intention. “I’ll show him that he doesn’t know one thing about fishing. I’m the expert here, not him!” That seems to me like something Simon would say.
And, at first, Simon was right — nothing happens; just light nets in their hands. Simon glances and Jesus has a little smirk on his face. Jesus, feeling the lightness of the nets, nods his head in agreement.
But then …
Then the unthinkable happens.
They start to feel the nets tugging again and again. First just a little bit here and there. “Okay, no big deal,” Simon thinks to himself, “So this Jesus guy was lucky and we’ve caught a few fish. That doesn’t make him a better fisher than me.”
But then the nets start to get heavier and heavier in their hands. They try to pull up the nets and find them heavier than their accustomed to. A bit of panic sets in as the fishermen soon realize they’d better get their nets into the boat before they won’t even be able to lift them!
Simon calls to his partners, James and John, to come out and help them. The other boat arrives and the fishers drop their nets to support the already overflowing catch from the first nets. But to their amazement, their own nets start filling up!
As the fear and dread starts to creep up Simon’s spine, he looks over at Jesus who’s right there beside the other men trying desperately to pull in the nets full of fish. Simon decides the best course of action would be to row to shore as quickly as possible while they try to recover the nets full of fish or they’ll all sink! And the whole time, Jesus has this big, goofy grin on his face.
When they finally make it to shore with the biggest haul this little fishing company had ever caught, someone calls out to Jesus, “We need to take you with us more often!” Everyone hardily agrees and is laughing at their good fortune.
Everyone, that is, except Simon.
Simon can barely stand. His knees are week. His world is spinning. The ground seems to be trembling like it’s about to swallow him whole. There is something about Jesus and it frightens Simon down to his core.
“Leave me!” Simon bellows.
The frivolity on the beach quickly subsides as the fishers and the people watch Simon rush over and fall at Jesus’ feet, prostrate before him. Simon lifts his head and looks at Jesus. With tears streaming down his face and his hands clenched together in a sort of twisted prayer pose, Simon begs, “Leave me, Lord. Leave me, for I’m a sinner.”
The air is heavy with the moment.
Jesus, looking down at Simon, reaches out and cradles the fisherman’s scruffy face in his large, rough, carpenter’s hands. “Oh Simon,” Jesus says tenderly, “Don’t be afraid.” Taking Simon by the arm, Jesus lifts him to his feet and says, “From now on, you’ll be fishing for people.”
And with that, Simon and his partners leave everything behind and follow Jesus.
How about us? Have we ever encountered someone who moved us so deeply that we wanted to emulate them? Have we ever “watched from the shadows” and saw how a person acted and reacted to the events and people in her life and thought either, “Do I want to be like that?” or “I’ve got to make a change in my life to be more like that”? I have a few people in my life like that. And not just other followers of Jesus. I have some friends that people would call “pagans” — and they would welcome that title — who live and treat people better than some Christians I know.
Later on, Dax said,
Conversely, I’ll pat myself on the back, she has come this same exact distance towards me as I’ve come towards her … Without me, she’s never on your show admitting she has depression. She’s never doing that; that’s like something she got from me. And that’s added this level to her life that these people reach out to her and say, ‘I’ve been with a guy three years [and] I’ve never admitted to him that I have depression; I’m so ashamed of that.’ [Kristen’s] seen the results of her being honest and flawed and all these things …
It happened to her and it happened me and neither one of us were saying, ‘You gotta start doing it this way,’ or ‘You need to be this way.’ It’s like some magic osmosis happened.
So friends, do we have people on our lives, people who aren’t “labeled” Christian but follow more closely to the teachings and life of Jesus? Have we ever been told that we can follow their example? Has anyone ever given us permission to do that? And I mean “permission” here. Some of us have had our lives so restricted by our faith communities that we’ve been told that, to really be a Christian, we must cut ties with all of our non-Christian friends. We’ve been told that we can’t have anything in our lives that someone might consider questionable.
But then we’ve been confronted with Jesus. In the stories we read about him in the Gospels, we see him associating more with the “wrong” people — people rejected by religion and society — than with the “right” people — those approved of my religion and society. In him we see God touching the untouchable. And we’re conflicted. “How can my faith community tell me I shouldn’t associate with these people when they were the types of people Jesus shared meals with?”
Beloved, we need to know that we have permission — yes, permission — to have friends that our not labeled Christian. We have permission to follow our hearts. We have permission, perhaps even a duty or calling, to follow the leading of the Spirit even when She moves us in a direction that our faith community says is out of bounds. Jesus did that. His early followers did that.
And we can do that to.
We have permission to do that.
We have God’s call on our lives to leave everything and follow Jesus wherever he may lead us.
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In the Love of the Three in One,
Br. Jack+, LC
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[1] Scripture quotations marked (CEB) are taken from The Common English Bible. Copyright © 2011 by Common English Bible.
[2] For example: In Sam’s interview with Kristen Bell, she confessed that she suffered from anxiety and depression. You sure can’t tell be watching her!
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