To be Fishers of People
This blog is a draft of a sermon that was prepared by me but preached by Matt Klem a few Sunday’s ago when I was sick.
In this morning’s gospel Jesus stands in Simon Peter’s boat and then tells him to cast his nets into the deep water. Though Simon doubts that this will yield any fish since they caught nothing all night, he obeys and catches an overwhelming number of fish.
Though Jesus is at the center of this portion of Luke, I think that Simon Peter’s response to Jesus is worth paying attention to. Amazed at Jesus superior fishing ability, Simon falls at Jesus’ feet, recognizing his own unworthiness, confesses his sin, and Jesus tells him not to fear. It is worth remembering that Jesus did not do to kings or priests to gather disciples. He did not go to people with influence or authority, he went to fishermen and sinner, like Simon Peter, James and John. Jesus goes to those who are sinners. Not people who are perfect, not people who have it all together, but sinners. People “with a past.” Jesus comes to the sinner, the law-breaker, and those in need of forgiveness, those people who are spiritually of physically diseases, and are in need of healing. Jesus goes to the ‘outsiders.’
If you recall from two weeks ago, we discussed a little bit what Luke means by ‘outsider.’ Remember Jesus read the scroll from Isaiah in the presence of his hometown and proclaims that he has come to bring good news to the poor? The ‘Poor’ is not limited to the economically disadvantaged. “In that culture, one’s status in a community was not so much a function of economic realities, but depended on a number of elements, including education, gender, family heritage, religious purity, vocation, economics and so on. Thus, lack of subsistence might account for one’s designation as ‘poor’, but so might other disadvantaged conditions” (Green, Luke). ‘Poor’ had a wider meaning that includes people of low status. The poor are the people who, for one reason or another, have been relegated to the outside. This is who Jesus’ message is directed towards; this is who is responding. Jesus sees his mission to those who everyone else has forced to the fringes. It is these people who are responding to Jesus’ message with openness. This overlaps with what Jesus tell the Pharisees in Luke 5:32, “I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”
And here I would like to focus on two things:
First, how Luke expects people to respond to Jesus is a common theme in both the Gospel of Luke, as well as in the Acts of the Apostles (the other NT book attributed to Luke). Luke writes, “When [the disciples] had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.” The renunciation of all possessions or property is demanded by Jesus several times in Luke’s gospel. It is impossible to serve two masters, God and mammon, God and possessions. Wealth is a distraction at best, and at worst completely antithetical to being a follower of Jesus. Many times, Jesus tells people that in order to follow him, they must sell everything they own. Further, in Acts, the Christians often sell all they own giving it to the disciples and later deacons, to distribute as needed. But, in other places in Luke, Jesus requires that we practice hospitality on behalf of Jesus and what would become the church. If we are without the means of showing hospitality, how then can we be asked to do it? So, there doesn’t seem to be a very clear picture painted by Luke on how exactly Christians should think about possessions.
One New Testament scholar cleverly notes, “Wealth masters, if not mastered”. “Discipleship demands that one no longer be a slave to wealth or cling to possessions as though they were one’s source of security or social position, and that one give precedence to the family of God and especially to those in need” (Green, Luke, 229). There is certainly a right and wrong way to use the wealth that one has been given by God. The wealth we possess, in whatever form we possess it whether in time, talent, or treasure, is to be shared with others. This, at the very least, is how we not only communicate to outsiders that they are now considered insiders by the church, and that they have been brought into our inner circle. To not share with others, is in effect to treat them as others; to treat them the same way that those who do not follow Jesus have treated them. Wealth should be given, but never with the intention of lording it over another person. Money, however, cannot be the center of our lived experience as individuals in the church. In the Mediterranean world, there was no such thing as a free gift. In that culture, if a gift was given, there was an expectation that a gift of similar or increased value would be given in return at some stage. Their understanding of gift was completely different than ours. Jesus, however, when he says in Luke 6:35, “love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, for he himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked,” he is saying something incredibly radical in that time. From the Christian perspective, hospitality and generosity must always come before a sense of ownership and privilege.
The second thing I would like to point out is that Peter’s response to Jesus’ catching of the fish is “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” In a similar way as Isaiah in our Old Testament reading this morning, Peter’s response to recognizing that he is in the presence of God is to say, "Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips.” Both Peter and Isaiah before responding to the call to go to be sent into the world for the sake of God’s message, is to recognize who it is that they are standing in front of, who is calling them.
The first response to God’s call for mission is the recognition that we are unworthy of the task. Like Peter, we are sinners. But this is also something amazing about Jesus’ call to us. Jesus sends sinners to catch sinners. We are the outsiders, sent to catch outsiders. The sad reality is that instead of recognizing ourselves as outsiders who minister to outsiders, we have tried to make ourselves insiders to further push out outsiders. The church has too long been associated with abuse, scandal, too long come up empty in its divine calling to step up and take care of the outsider, the poor, the outcast, and disenfranchised. The church has sought power over mercy, coercion over love and understanding. Never in my living memory is the church going to be so important for being an alternative community where everyone, every outsider and outcast can feel accepted and welcome.
Jesus calls outsiders and sinners to be his disciples. And he calls his disciples to practice generosity and hospitality. Like Simon Peter we leave behind our boats and our fish, in order to do the higher calling of God. To be fishers of men.
Amen