Sermon for February 7th

As I mentioned a long time ago, I used to go fishing a lot with my Grandpa in Kansas. We fished his two ponds and some local ones as well on occasion. Sometimes we even ate some that we had caught, but usually we just fished for pleasure. Now, every once in awhile, I consider how some of my growing up experiences have prepared me to be a pastor, but only this week, after reading the gospel text from Luke, did I realize how much fishing prepared me to do what I do. In fact, you should all go fishing sometime just to see what I mean. Now I know that some of you may know a whole lot about fishing, but I never really have and, in fact, that’s part of the reason these fishing experiences have been so helpful to me.

Imagine looking into a pond or a lake. What can you see? Nothing, right? What about in the Housatonic river? You see the currents. Maybe you even see a fish jump up trying to catch a taste of a fly, but once it goes back under that water you don’t have a clue what’s going on. Bodies of water are really quite strange and terrifying when you think about it because most of us have no real idea whatsoever what is going down underneath us. It is a mystery, especially to me as a boy fishing with my grandpa.

But grandpa taught me that if I took a rod, and hooked on some bait, and threw it out into a pond, chances were that after enough times a fish might hit and I would catch it. I have taken this fact for granted, but, truly, the fact that I threw that line in time after time was based on a very blind faith in what my Grandpa said. I have never had a clue how many fish were in a pond, or where the bottom was, or what else was in there, or what lure to use, or when to go fishing, and yet I kept doing it and, more amazing than the fact that I did it, was the fact that it worked so many times! Me! A complete fishing moron became a pretty ok fisherman after years of practice. Not because I knew what I was doing, but because I had been given the faith to keep throwing that line into that mysterious water hoping that, eventually, a fish would take the bait.

Simon Peter, Jesus’ disciple, was NOT a fishing moron like me. He fished for a living. He and his partners threw down their nets into the sea of Gennesaret and the fish they caught were probably both their livelihood and their next meal. They no doubt knew where the best places were to fish, when the best times were to fish, what fish they would probably catch and how long they’d need to do it. So when Jesus told them to “put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch” he was talking to a professional. And what did this professional fisherman say? “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing.” This is not the statement of a slacker, or of a neophyte fisherman who doesn’t know any better. Simon Peter had the knowledge and experience that they weren’t going to be catching anything of any consequence by casting the nets right then. If anyone should have known, it would have been Simon Peter. And yet, for whatever reason, be it simply to humor Jesus or to be an obedient disciple, he did as Jesus asked and started fishing.

Now if Jesus had asked me to throw down a net and catch some fish, I would have been happy if I had caught anything. But I would not have been “astonished” or “afraid” as the text puts it. I would have been as pleased as any time I catch a fish because I don’t have a clue how it happened! I don’t understand the mystery of fishing. But Simon Peter did. He was a professional fisherman. And when the net began to break because of all the fish they were hauling in, and when he had to call over his partners for an extra boat to help, and when both boats were sinking, Simon Peter understood something I never will ever understand completely: Jesus had done a miracle. Jesus had affected the laws of fishing and made fish come that shouldn’t have been there. And while I would have been unaffected by such a miracle, Simon Peter understood the implications. He had followed Jesus’ command and done something that was impossible. I don’t know if Simon Peter had faith at first when he let down those nets, but after he caught so many fish that his boat almost sunk, you can bet that he would trusted whatever Jesus said.

And now comes the part that I mentioned at the beginning of this sermon; the part where I realized that fishing had truly prepared me for ministry in ways that I had never realized. Jesus tells Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” Imagine that Jesus had started the conversation with that statement: “from now on you will be catching people.” I’ll be you that Simon would have been clueless as to where to start, right? It would have seemed impossible! How were the disciples, a bunch of fishermen, going to make it so that people would start following Jesus? Imagine how difficult it would have seemed after Jesus had been crucified! But Simon had just witnessed a miracle of the kind of proportions only he, as a fisherman, would have truly grasped, and he would have realized that if God has the power to make fish get caught which should have never been there, he could be trusted to help him bring followers to Jesus as well, even as impossible as that seemed.

Every time I went fishing, I trusted my grandpa knew what he was talking about. I didn’t know how! I didn’t know why! But if I threw my baited hook into this mysterious pondwater, sooner or later, I’d pull out a fish! Can you understand how amazing that really is! It took a lot of trust when it comes down to it . . . or a lot of faith as some people call it. Now, as a pastor, but more importantly as a Christian, God calls me to trust him with a new command: fish for people. I understand that about as much as you do. I don’t know how to make someone believe on Jesus Christ. I don’t know why they would give up their old lives and start a new one. But Jesus tells each one of us that, as his disciples, we are expected to go out into the deep water of our lives, and start casting out our nets. The net is Jesus Christ. We’re not baiting our hooks with the latest church growth fad. We give people Jesus and he draws them into faith.

You could probably tell me 101 excuses for why people won’t listen to you and I’d believe you. New England is too liberal for Jesus, you might say. People don’t care about faith, you might argue. I don’t know what to say, you might insist. And, no doubt, as an expert in your field I bet you are right. You probably have no right to expect that your friends would come to church with you. You know your coworkers well enough to know that they’d be offended if you asked them whether they believed in Jesus Christ. I believe you! You don’t have enough time to talk to people about your faith in Jesus Christ. Just like Simon Peter knew enough to know that Jesus was asking him to do something impossible by throwing out his net into waters he knew would be empty. And yet, according to the word of Jesus Christ, his net came out with an abundance of fish.

You don’t need to understand how it’s going to happen. You don’t need to understand why it’s going to happen. But Jesus Christ has commanded us as his disciples to cast out our nets, to let Jesus loose in the world by our words and actions by bringing them to church, speaking about our faith in Jesus, sharing God’s forgiveness with them or helping them understand God’s commandments. And even though we all know that it would take a miracle for anyone to listen to us and start believing that Jesus Christ is their lord and Savior, according to today’s text, Jesus is in the habit of doing miracles. We can trust him to keep his word and do the impossible . . . even through poor fishermen like us. Amen.