Image by Quang Nguyen vinh from Pixabay
INTRODUCTION
Hi everyone. Today is the 5th Sunday in the Season of Epiphany—the period between Christmas and the start of Lent on Ash Wednesday, March 5 – a season in which we reflect on the manifestation of Christ to all people, something that’s, of course, still happening. In the lectionary we’ve been on a bit of a journey through the Gospel of Luke, as we will be throughout much of this year, although the Gospel of John will also be a focus, especially during Lent and Easter.
We’re still early in his ministry, Jesus has been out on the road preaching throughout Galilee, wowing the crowds with his amazing message, but when he turned up in his hometown of Nazareth in Luke Chapter 4, and preached in the synagogue there, he was first praised by the locals, then they got angry against him and tried to throw him off a cliff! He miraculously escaped – “he walked through the crowd and went on his way”, Luke’s account says – and now he’s back on the road.
Today, Luke Chapter 5, we read the well-known passage about the calling of the first disciples, where Jesus utters the famous words, “From now on you will be fishers of men!” That’s us he’s talking about: fishers of people, catching people! Jesus was standing in a fishing boat on Lake Gennesaret, AKA the Sea of Galilee, when he said these words, and here we are in a little church on the shores of the beautiful Lake Albert (Yarli in Ngarrindjeri)! But before he calls the disciples Jesus conjures up a miraculous catch of fish – literal fish – for his new disciples. What’s that about?! Well, we’ll see if we can work it out in the sermon today.
GOSPEL READING: Luke 5:1-11
Jesus calls the disciples to fish for people
5:1 Once while Jesus was standing beside the Lake of Gennesaret and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God,
5:2 he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gotten out of them and were washing their nets.
5:3 He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat.
5:4 When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.”
5:5 Simon answered, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.”
5:6 When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to burst.
5:7 So they signalled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink.
5:8 But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’s knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”
5:9 For he and all who were with him were astounded at the catch of fish that they had taken,
5:10 and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who are partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.”
5:11 When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him
REFLECTION
Well, what a great – and very familiar – story! First a wonderful miracle; then the great call: “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men”, is what it says in Matthew’s and Mark’s Gospels, in the older translations.
Let’s look closely now at the two parts of the story. First the miracle of the great catch of fish. We’re still relatively early in Jesus’ ministry, but by this time he has already caused quite a stir, and gained a large following. He has been doing lots of preaching and teaching, of course, but all the way through he has also been performing plenty of miracles.
In Luke’s Gospel so far, first Jesus manages to miraculously escape the angry crowd at Nazareth who were fixing to throw him off a cliff, as we saw last week; then he drives out an evil spirit from a man in Capernaum; and while he’s there he heals Simon’s mother from a high fever, after which people literally queue up to get healed by him from all sorts of physical and mental ailments. Why does Jesus do these things; why does he perform miracles, as well as preach and teach?
Are the miracles just add-ons, a bit of razzamatazz to entertain the crowds so he can get them to listen to his teaching? Definitely not – remember, the miracles continue throughout Jesus’ ministry, culminating, eventually, in the greatest miracle of them all, the Resurrection. The normal way of understanding Jesus’ miracles is as signs – signs of the Kingdom – great acts of grace, God’s favour to the world, which, on one hand, act as demonstrations or proofs that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the one sent by God to save the people; and, on the other, point to the even greater grace or favour of the Kingdom that is to come.
That’s how the miracle in today’s story works, of course: the great catch of fish decisively convinces the four fishermen in question that Jesus is the Messiah. But let’s think about this a little bit more. The miracles are signs – they are not ends in themselves in other words – it’s what they point to that’s important. For example, Jesus is recorded as healing only eleven people in the Gospels from leprosy – ten in one go, and one in another – so, clearly, he wasn’t trying to wipe out leprosy in Israel and Palestine of the day, and it’s not until very recently, the last forty years in fact, that leprosy has finally been wiped out in most parts of the world.
On top of that, the amazing thing to note is that the miracles Jesus’ performed seemed to almost always, at the time, turn out to be counterproductive in relation to his true message. They were radically misunderstood – people, including the disciples, continually got the wrong idea.
A great example is the feeding of the 5000 in John Chapter 6 – the people responded by trying to make Jesus king, so that he was forced to run away and hide from them to stop them doing that. And then he spent the rest of the chapter trying to explain to them that, no, the bread he really came to give them was not normal physical bread, but something quite different – “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh …” – spiritual bread for spiritual sustenance, not physical bread to fill their bellies.
Eventually the people become completely disillusioned with Jesus – “ah, you performed all those miracles, but you’re only a fake Messiah, you can’t even save yourself now, let alone save us from the Romans” – so that, of course, as we know, in the end they gave him up to the Romans to be executed!
Don’t we do the same? We read about the miracles Jesus performed, then we want him to do the same things for us now – heal us, provide our material needs when we’re struggling, take care of our loved ones, alleviate world poverty, and so on – I ask for these sorts of things in my prayers all the time! Sometimes our prayers seem to work – maybe, although we’re never quite sure – but when they don’t work, is there not a danger that our faith gradually diminishes, so that one day we suddenly turn round and realize we just don’t believe anymore? This is the way of the world today: the vast majority of people have become agnostics or atheists, profess no faith at all.
Jesus’ miracles are, yes, controversial, confusing. But how does the miracle in today’s story actually work – can it help us resolve this confusion?
Well, Jesus does seem to gratuitously, without any warning, conjure up a huge catch of fish. But this is not the miracle, the grace. Sure, Jesus does seem to suspend, or manipulate the laws of nature: somehow a large number of fish were there in one spot and he knew it, or maybe he somehow got them to gather there – how can we possibly say? The real miracle, the real grace, however, is the effect the catch of fish has, first on Simon Peter, then Andrew, and James and John – this, in fact, is the real clue to what’s going on with the miracles.
“Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”, Simon exclaims as he falls at Jesus’ knees. He is undone, has had the rug pulled out from under him, is in a state of abject terror, because he realizes in that moment that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. The miracle undoes him! Proud Peter – we know this because of his later behaviour as the Gospel stories unfold – impetuous, pig-headed, usually completely misunderstanding Jesus, occasionally getting it right, then eventually denying Jesus at the moment of real crisis, not once but three times. After the Resurrection it is only a second miraculous catch of fish, recorded in John Chapter 21, that finally gets through to him.
But I digress. The greatest miracle, the greatest grace of all – the one Jesus came to bring into the world and which still happens all the time – is the psychological-spiritual transformation Simon Peter and the other disciples, and now us, begin to undergo.
The word is Metanoia – this is the Greek word in the New Testament that is usually translated into English as “repentance”, although “conversion” might be a better word. You can see it here on this slide:
Greek: μετάνοια – metanoia
English: “repentance” or “conversion”
meta-: a complete inner change, a change in kind or nature
-noia : from gnosis, “knowledge” or “way of thinking”
metanoia: a complete change of mindset, a complete turnaround in your way of thinking.
The word Metanoia, is now used in modern psychology:
metanoia – in Psychology:
“the process of experiencing a psychotic ‘breakdown’ and subsequent, positive psychological re-building or ‘healing’”
“Go away from me, Lord, I am a sinful man!” – yes, Simon experiences a psychotic breakdown! But then through the faith in Jesus that grows in him from this day – it takes a long time to have full effect – he experiences “a subsequent, positive psychological re-building or healing”.
But what exactly is the nature of this Metanoia, this conversion, this transformation, that faith in and following Jesus brings about in us? From what sort of mindset, to what sort of mindset? Well, it’s quite simple: from our natural-born mindset of self-centredness, selfishness, thinking only of number one, to a new, very unnatural mindset of selflessness, putting others first.
The idea of a psychotic breakdown, followed by re-building, almost understates it. Commonly it’s described as a death then a re-birth, dying to self and being born again to Christ. A mini death and re-birth each day as Jesus gradually transforms us. We let go, gradually, of our natural, total self-focus, and learn to live a life of selfless service and care of others, including learning how to take the best care of ourselves.
This is the real miracle, the real grace, in today’s Gospel story, the transformation that begins in Simon, and Andrew, James and John, and the other disciples, and in us now, from this day. It is a transformation we are utterly incapable of bringing about in ourselves, through any effort of our own – it can only come about through faith in Jesus, through dying to self, and rising in Christ, each day.
“Don’t be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” Jesus tells Simon, Andrew, James and John – tells us. “Don’t be afraid”? It is a fearful thing to die to self, to let go of clinging onto our selfish desires – it’s unnatural. Simon is terrified – he knows just how self-centred he has been in his life – “go away from me, I am a sinner”. The sign of the great catch of fish undoes him, this grace that Jesus offers to the world. It is not grace for more fish, or bread, or healing, or peace on earth and an end to poverty, however – rather grace for the far greater miracle of Metanoia, the mini death and resurrection each day, the gradual transformation of each of us, from natural self-centredness to very unnatural selflessness.
But, yes, it is grace for more fish, bread, healing, peace on earth, an end to poverty, because the root cause of our own and all human problems – of anxiety, hatred, conflict, poverty, unequal access to healthcare, environmental degradation – is our natural-born selfishness. And as we undergo the Metanoia, as the whole human race gradually undergoes it, this will be the realization of God’s Kingdom on earth, the Kingdom Jesus came to proclaim and inaugurate in the world, which is now growing around us.
Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, Amen.
