Atom“Fishing with Jesus” Luke 5:1-11
“Do not be afraid…from now on you will be fishing for people.” Luke 5:10
I still remember a time in the 3rd grade at “Release Time Classes.” (This was a practice public schools had of “releasing” students one afternoon a week to go to a local church and join in faith learning.) I went to my friends’ church and still can picture us standing together and casting imaginary fishing rods and singing, “I will make you fishers of men, fishers of men, fishers of men. I will make you fishers of men, if you follow me.” This gospel lesson is one of those stories of Jesus that once you hear it you rarely forget it.
Jesus’ disciples had been out fishing all night and had caught nothing. They were tired. They were discouraged. Fishing was more than a hobby for them. It was their livelihood and way of life. Jesus shows up at the shore with a whole crowd of people around him. So, he asks to borrow a boat to distance himself a little, get them all in front of him, and speak to the whole crowd.
I’m guessing that the teaching went well…Luke really doesn’t say. Apparently the sermon wasn’t as memorable as the fishing that followed. Jesus, the carpenter and preacher turns to these seasoned fishermen and tells them to put out into the deeper water and to, “Put down your nets for a catch.”
Now, fishing folks in those days knew that the most fish were caught at night and in shallow water. So weary Peter turns to Jesus and says, “Master…look…we’ve worked all night but haven’t caught a thing. (You can almost hear the pause here, hoping Jesus would reconsider.) But, if you say so...” I can almost hear the sigh.
And so they did. And Luke says that they caught so many fish that it scared them. They thought their nets would break. They thought their boat would sink. Who besides Randy Meher (Peter Prodonov) ever catches fish like that? What a story! And what a promise!
And a pretty good spot to stop this morning. At least that’s what I thought. “Stop on verse 6,” I told myself. “Folks will love the part about how many fish the disciples caught after they had the good sense to listen to Jesus.” “Yeah, stop at verse six. Focus on how after a night of failure, when they did what Jesus told them, they so much success that they could hardly pull the catch into the boat.”
It’s a good place to stop, because if you’ve ever spent much time in the church, you know that there are plenty of times when we feel the failure. Jesus calls us to be “fishers of people” – “Follow me and I’ll teach you to catch people.” Yet we often have so little to show for our efforts. “Master, we’ve worked all night and we’ve caught nothing.” “I’ve taught this church school class for twelve years now, without anyone ever saying “thanks.” I’ve invited neighbors to worship, but they’ve always got other commitments. No matter how often we invite others to our Bible study, we never seem to grow. Master, we’ve worked all night long and we’ve caught nothing.”
“So, stop at verse six,” I told myself. “Remember the success. Let the congregation leave church on this February morning less depressed than when they got here.” “Listen to Jesus,” remind them, “and God will give great success.
But I read on…verse 8. The story of Jesus’ fishing trip doesn’t end simply with the great catch of fish. Verse 8: “But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees saying, ‘Go away from me, Lord, I am a sinful man!’ For he and everybody with him were amazed at the catch of fish they had taken.”
Now why would Peter say that? “Get away from me Jesus. I’m a sinful man?” You would have thought Peter would have been celebrating, what with a huge catch of fish after a futile night. Why “Get away from me, Jesus?”
Well, if you don’t know why he said, “Get away from me Jesus,” then you probably don’t know the danger that Peter could see in continued fishing with Jesus. The danger Peter saw is that if you fish with Jesus, it’s going to be different than fishing has ever been before. Jesus is going to take you places you haven’t been before. He’s going to challenge the way you think about not only about fishing, but about life. Jesus may even change you. He may call you into different waters then you’ve ever fished before. And for a lot of us, that’s not too comfortable of an idea. Change is not something we easily do. But sometimes change needs to happen if we are going to catch fish.
I remember calling my parents some years ago about this time in early February.. “How’s the fishing?” I asked. You should know that my parents loved to ice fish, together but also independently. In fact they each had their own Vexlar fish locators. “So, how is it?” I asked. “Well, not too good,” Dad said. “We caught a few, but we had to work for them.” He went on to tell me how they had gone out to a favorite fishing spot and there was group already there. Nobody was catching much, so my Dad decided to move around a little. Now, I used to have to explain this to folks in Nebraska and Iowa, but here in Detroit Lakes you probably understand that there are two different tribes of people who ice-fish. There are those with fish houses – “the village people,” I call them, the “settlers.” They sit by the fire and play cards and watch TV and check their bobbers between hands of pinochle. Then there are the Nomadic ice-fishers who simply stand out on the ice in the cold and wind and stomp their feet and jiggle their bobbers and cut more holes when the fish don’t bite. They keep moving. You probably already guessed it, but that’s my tribe….nomadic. If the fish weren’t biting in one hole, my Dad would cut more, sometimes 30 or 40 and just keep moving…even before power augers. So, on the particular day my Dad was telling me about he just kept cutting holes and he and Mom kept moving around and in so doing managed to catch a dozen crappies or so. Sometime later, friends of theirs came out to fish and stopped near the first group and asked how fishing was. “Not catching much,” they said, “except for that older couple over there.” They pointed to my folks. “But they’ve been trolling.”
If you fish much you know that there are times when you won’t catch anything. Failure in fishing happens...and we’re tempted to say, “That’s just the way it goes; get used to it.” And there’s something in us wouldn’t have minded hearing a fishing story this morning that ended that way – with not much. We can get used to that. We know all too well about fishing all night without a bite, or of being in church all day with little to show for it. It’s a Good Friday kind of thing. It’s accepting that life has its share of emptiness and loss. It’s accepting that we have a sin problem the keeps us from being all God would have us be. Get used to it…it’s just the way it is.
How scary, then, to encounter a Jesus who takes the way it is and turns it on its head…a Jesus who takes Good Friday and turns it into Easter…a Jesus who takes a night of futile fishing and turns it into a morning of bursting nets…a Jesus who invites us into possibilities for living that we may have never considered before. I mean…it is one thing to celebrate the new life of Easter that is hope after we die, but to celebrate the new life of Easter that begins now, that challenges us, stretches us, makes us live differently – fish differently – do church differently…that can scare the wits out of us!
I have to believe that in some ways the dwindling of membership in the Lutheran church in the United States has something to do with being more comfortable with this Good Friday thinking than with Easter thinking. “Lord, depart from us, we’re sinners. It’s just the way we are. Don’t try to change us.” We’re comfortable with who we are and who we have been as Lutherans and changing or stretching or fishing in new waters makes us nervous. We’re a rural church and an ethnic church – made up of mostly Northern European immigrants who brought their Lutheranism and their style of worship with them. Growth happens when we Lutherans invite other Lutherans to join us and when big Lutherans birth little Lutherans. We’re faithful and solid servants, if not terribly exciting in the way we do church. Garrison Keillor of Prairie Home Companion fame is fond of saying of us that “Lutherans exhibit a wide range of emotions that run all the way from A to B!” I believe he exaggerates…at least I hope so!
I also believe, based upon the word of Jesus that we have in this gospel, that there are times to reconsider how we fish – how we do church. “Put out in the deep waters,” says Jesus, “and let down your nets for a catch. Fish in places you haven’t fished before, at times you haven’t fished, in ways you haven’t fished. And don’t be afraid. I will show you.”
I have to tell you that I have been blessed to be a part of church here in Detroit Lakes that has from time to time heard this call to fish a bit differently than the church I grew up in. Varying worship schedules and locations fishes different waters. Outdoor worship is different water. It is in some ways harder than doing church the usual way – in the sanctuary. It requires more of us to make it happen – but it invites different people to join in new ways. So, what’s the next worship thing? Pastor Dave is meeting now with a group of people – you are welcome to join – considering how our worship can continue to invite and gather from this community…perhaps in new waters.
Children’s ministries and youth ministries are by necessity always re-inventing themselves. Doing church the way we did it when I was in Junior High would not reach families in the same way today. Wednesday activities and learning joined to meals invite whole families to participate here. This takes more people and more work – but leads us to fish different waters. What might be the next thing? Is the deeper water Young Adult ministry? Do you hear the call?
We could say that building the Christ First addition 10 years ago was a push into deeper waters to “Open Doors” wider to the community through welcoming space. “God’s Faithful Followers” grew out because this space allowed us to fish differently. The “push into deeper waters” might also reflect the personal stewardship required to support so ambitious a building.
I offer to you that we might apply this “fishing” image to any outreach we might imagine for the future – what next? What new waters might we fish? Do you hear a call for First Lutheran?
But let me also make Jesus’ invitation a personal call – for each of us as followers of Jesus. In the face of the failure that we often experience in gathering folks into the community of Jesus, I offer a word from my Dad that echoes the word of Jesus. “Keep your line in the water.” His experience is that the people who catch the most fish are the ones who do the most fishing. When my brothers and I went fishing with my Dad we often grew frustrated because Dad always caught the most fish. His advice? “Keep your line in the water! You don’t catch fish with your hook in the air.” Of course he was right. We spent so much time bringing in our lines to check the bait or just resting after we had caught a fish that we probably fished less than half the time Dad did. He always had his line in the water first, last, and most in between.
And so it is with sharing the faith. The most important thing is to keep your line in the water. Keep telling the story of your hope in Jesus. Keep inviting neighbors to church. It probably doesn’t surprise you anymore that this is one of the most neglected aspects of our followership. You have heard, even as we lament the decline in our mainline congregations over against the growth of the newer “evangelical” congregations, that one reason for the decline is that we don’t ask. You have heard that the average Lutheran invites someone other than family to church only once every 27 years and the average Episcopalian every 32 years, while the average Assembly of God member once every seven years! That is significant. Yet, one of the reasons I believe that First Lutheran has kept pace is that you do better than that. Ask our new members joining this morning and most of them will point to someone who asked them, invited them, or saw them here when they were “shopping around” and invited them back.
So, keep fishing. Keep inviting. Throw your nets into the deep water. Visit someone who is sick and offer a prayer. Speak a word of forgiveness to someone who believes they’ve messed up so bad no one would forgive them, not even God. Hang out with the youth at the Boys and Girls Club. And tell them why…tell them it’s because of Jesus. You may come up empty, but keep fishing.
Jesus said, “Push out into the deep water a ways and let down your nets for a catch.” When you are inclined to answer the Lord’s call with the claim that it is too much – “Depart from me, Lord; I am a sinner” – remember that Good Friday is past. Easter has come. This means that Jesus is yet with us – even when we’re fishing! Let’s pray… Lord, someone once cast their nets of hope and brought us in to the family; may we be followers who do the same. Use our words, our actions, our lives to gather others into your kingdom. Amen.
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