at Batesville Presbyterian Church on February 4, 2007
Lake Gennesaret is a beautiful setting for the story today. The lake has a holy aura about it left over from the time when Jesus walked the shores and taught the people sitting in a boat out a little ways on the water. Once when he was standing on the shore of Lake Gennesaret, the crowd was pushing in on him to better hear the Word of God. He noticed two boats tied up. The fishermen had just left them and were out scrubbing their nets. He climbed into Simon's boat and asked him to put out a little from the shore. Sitting there, using the boat for a pulpit, he taught the crowd.
While Jesus is teaching from the boat, some fishermen are cleaning their nets on the shore, listening to Jesus teach as they work. These professional fishermen are in the process of cleaning their nets because they have finished working for the night. They have fished all night and caught nothing. As a casual fisherman I've had the experience fishing all day and not catching anything. It is not a pleasant experience. How much worse these professional fishermen must have felt for they have fished all night and caught nothing. They have lost time. They have lost money. They are tired and probably a bit miffed as they go through the laborious task of cleaning their nets.
When he finished teaching, he said to Simon, "Push out into deep water and let your nets out for a catch." Jesus, a carpenter by trade, is telling them to take the nets they have just cleaned and go back out in the water and cast their nets out into the deep water and they will catch some fish. This means the nets will get dirty again, full of weeds or whatever dwells in the deep water in Lake Gennesaret. It must have seemed to the fishermen like an irrational suggestion.
Simon says, "Master, we've been fishing hard all night and haven't caught even a minnow. But if you say so, I'll let out the nets."
Here we see a repeating pattern in the Biblical narrative. God's messenger makes a seemingly irrational suggestion and when people respond unbelievably good things happen. For instance, take Naaman the Syrian who suffered from leprosy. Jesus referred to Naaman in his first sermon and so gave a hint as to the pattern of his coming ministry. Naaman was a Syrian general. That is three strikes against him. First, he is a person of a different religion. Second, he is a citizen of an enemy nation. Third, he is a general in an enemy army. As we like to say in baseball and elsewhere, three strikes and you're out. Yet, the message of both the Old and the New Testament is that God is continually breaking that rule. Far from being out, God considered Naaman to be in, and so when Naaman came to the prophet Elisha, God spoke through Elisha to give Naaman a seemingly irrational suggestion. If you want to be cured of you leprosy, go wash yourself seven times in the River Jordan. Naaman thought this was a ridiculous suggestion and refused to consider it until his servants talked him intro trying what the prophet suggested. The result is that Naaman was cured. This man with three strikes against was cured while others were not. He was cured because he acted on a seemingly unreasonable suggestion from God. It's as if Jesus, in his first sermon, was giving a clue about his upcoming ministry and saying, "Hide and watch. See what happens to the people who respond to my seemingly illogical suggestions."
This is certainly the case in our story this morning. Jesus has just told some fishermen who had just fished all night and caught nothing to take their clean nets back into the middle of Lake Gennesaret and throw them in the deep water and they'll catch some fish. This is not a rational suggestion. But Simon has already experienced the power of Jesus. He was there when Jesus healed his mother-in-law from a fever. He has seen Jesus cure mentally and emotionally distressed people in Capernaum.
So Simon acts on Jesus' seemingly ridiculous suggestion. He gets his fishing crew together. They get the boats back out in the middle of the lake. They let out the nets into the deep water. When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. These nets that had caught nothing after fishing all night. These nets that had just been cleaned. These nets were now so full of fish they were bursting at the seams. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink. The two boats were simply swamped with fish.
But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, "Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!" For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. And at this tender moment when Simon's heart was fully open to the mysteriously powerful presence of God in this man, Jesus said to Simon, "Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people." When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.
Let the record show that what Jesus said to Simon about fishing for people came to pass. For we read in the Acts of the Apostles that on the day of Pentecost, Simon Peter preached to a crowd of people in Jerusalem. That day about three thousand took him at his word, were baptized and were signed up. They committed themselves to the teaching of the apostles, the life together, the common meal, and the prayers. Every day their number grew as God added those who were saved.
All of this followed from such a fragile beginning. Jesus made a seemingly irrational suggestion to Simon and his fishing partners. They did what Jesus suggested and the rest is history. Obedience to God's seemingly unreasonable suggestions is the way into the deep waters of the miraculous power of God. Try it in your own life this week and see what happens. When the Spirit nudges you in a certain direction, respond and go there, act, and do that. When Jesus says to you, "Go deep," don't question why or how, just do it.
