Luke 5:1-11
February 9
David A. Davis
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In the church’s collective memory, Jesus’ call of the disciples can become pretty boilerplate, even formulaic. Jesus walks by the water where some fishing boats are pulled up along the shore. Some fisherman are tending to their nets after the latest outing. Jesus says, “Come, follow me and fish for people.” The fisherman-disciples immediately drop their nets and go. And you and I start singing, “I will make you fishers of people, fishers of people, fishers of people, if you follow me!” Truth is, when it comes to Matthew and Mark’s gospel, that crisp formula is pretty close to what’s there. Early in the two gospels, after Jesus is baptized and John the Baptist leaves the stage, after Jesus is tempted by Satan in the wilderness, Jesus walks by Peter, Andrew, James, and John and calls them to follow. Immediately, they drop their nets and go.
In the Gospel of John, the first two disciples are identified as disciples of John the Baptist. They heard John point to Jesus and say, “Behold, here is the Lamb of God!” They promptly left John to follow Jesus. They asked Jesus what he was looking for. Jesus answers, “Come and see”. One of those two was Andrew, who then went to get his brother Simon Peter. The next day, Jesus found Philip. Philip found Nathaniel. No net drop. No immediately. Only “Come and see.”
That brings us to Luke’s gospel and Jesus’ call of the disciples. In Luke’s telling of the gospel, Jesus already knows those of those fishermen, and they know of him. In addition to telling of Jesus’ baptism, his temptations in the wilderness, and his call of the disciples, here early on Luke tells of Jesus teaching in synagogues, healing, and casting out demons. As Luke tells, “a report about Jesus spread through all the surrounding country.” Just before Jesus calls the disciples, Jesus heals Simon’s mother, who had a fever. After a long day of teaching and healing, the fisherman hosted the carpenter at his house. Jesus knew of the fishermen, and the fishermen knew of Jesus. That makes it all feel a bit different.
Luke 5:1-11
Lake Gennesaret is another name for the Sea of Galilee. Clearly, the pressing in crowd has already heard about Jesus. Heard from Jesus. The word choice here of “pressing in on him to hear the word of God” connotes a sense of urgency in the Greek text. When those fishermen were out of their boats washing their nets, Jesus wasn’t just walking by. Having been to the house the night before, Jesus asks Simon to take his boat out just a bit so he could turn and teach the crowds from the boat. Not the Sermon on the Mount, the sermon in the boat. As Jesus finishes preaching to the pressed in crowd, he tells Simon “To put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” Or as the King James version puts it, “Launch out into the deep.”
Simon must have wondered about the carpenter giving the fisherman advice. But there had been this report about Jesus doing and saying amazing things, and Jesus had been over to the house. So Simon bites his tongue and drops a net that immediately fills to the point of bursting. Other fishermen come with their boats to help with the catch. Such a catch that all the boats are about to sink out there in the deep water. Simon drops to his knees among all those fish. “Go away from me, for I am a sinful man!” Jesus doesn’t go anywhere but stays right there among the fish and boats. Jesus stays right there smack in the middle of their way of life in the deep water and says, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people”. They all bring the boats, the nets, and fish to shore, and “they left everything and followed Jesus.” They didn’t just drop their nets. They left everything. Even all those fish left there for the crowd.
John tells a similar story of an abundant catch of fish in his gospel. You will remember it, John’s account of an appearance of the Risen Christ along the shore of the Sea of Tiberius. Yet another name for the Sea of Galilee. The disciples were all together again at their boats. Simon Peter announces that he is going fishing. The others decided to join them. At the break of day, Jesus is standing at the water’s edge. The disciples can’t see that it is him. “Children, you have no fish, have you?” The weathered fishermen admitted they had not caught a thing all night. Jesus said, “Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you fill find some.” Once again, they catch so many fish the nets are about to break. John counts them. 153 fish they caught. When they came ashore, there was a fire burning. Instead of saying “Come and see” there in John, Jesus says “Come and have breakfast”
New Testament scholars raise the possibility that in the oral tradition that shapes the gospels, we might have one miraculous, abundant catch of fish story made two ways. Told two ways. Luke takes a resurrection story and turns it into the call of the disciple,s or perhaps John takes the call story and allows it to radiate with post-Easter Risen Christ. Either way, the relationship Jesus has with those first disciples begins and ends with fish. Which is to say the call of Jesus on their lives bursts into their ordinary way of life. The appearance of the Risen Christ breaks in as they return to their day job. They were fishermen. Their encounter with God came right in the midst of the labor and the sweat and the sounds and the frustrations and the smell of everyday life. When Jesus stepped onto Peter’s boat to teach the crowds, the Savior stepped right into Peter’s office, his classroom. Jesus stood right in front of his computer. Jesus walked right onto Wall Street. Right onto campus. Right into the home office. He turned off the television and sat down in the living room. He came into the nursery right next to the changing table. Jesus pulled up a chair at the kitchen table and turned to face the world.
In the Gospel of Luke, the call of the disciples doesn’t come when Jesus stands up in the synagogue at Nazareth to unroll and read, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. The Lord has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” The call of the disciples doesn’t come the sabbath when dared to heal the man who had been tormented by an unclean spirit. The call didn’t come that sabbath evening when Jesus healed Simon’s mother-in-law. Neither did the call come as Jesus was healing the crowds at sunset on the Lord’s Day. Jesus’ call to the disciples came sometime during the work week. Which says to me that you and I ought to seek the presence of God, hear the Word of God, see the grace of God out there as often and as intentionally as we seek God’s presence, God’s Word, God’s grace in here. Pressing in as called disciples of Jesus Christ in the very fullness of life, the complexity of life, the challenge of life, with the sure expectation that indeed, God is present.
Jesus said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets”. Launch out into the deep. Deep Water. Only a few chapters after Jesus calls the disciples in Luke, he calms a storm out in the deep water. Luke tells of Jesus and the disciples setting out in the boat to go to the other side of the lake. Going to the other side of the lake, by definition, would be crossing the deep water. Jesus falls asleep in the boat. A storm comes. The boat is filling with water. The disciples know they are in danger. They wake Jesus up shouting, “Master, Master, we are perishing!’ Jesus wakes up and rebukes the wind and the “raging waves”. There is a sudden calm out in the deep water,r and Jesus says to them, “Where is your faith?” Deep water faith.
I am guessing in the ancient world, fishermen had a fraught relationship with deep water. I imagine people who fish for a living today still have a fraught relationship with deep water. Jesus telling the freshly called Simon, who he had already come to know, to put out into the deep water has to be about more than the actual depth of the sea. Jesus telling Simon to launch out in the deep has to be about more than locating a huge school of fish. Perhaps deep water is a kind of metaphor for life when the storms rage and the wind gusts. Perhaps Jesus telling Simon to launch out into the deep is his way to show the fishermen, now disciples, that he had come to know that God is present in the world. Early on in the journey, he shows those he knew and would come to love that following him is going to require a deep water faith.
Deep water faith clings to the assurance of the presence of God in day-to-day life when the storms rage and the winds gust. Deep water faith finds a way to get stronger when the days get harder and the nights get longer. Deep water faith presses in to hear a word from Jesus when the world’s clamor and blather gets ever louder. Deep water faith finds a way to soothe the soul with a calm and an assurance despite chaos unleashed all around and every day. One ought not to miss that here in Luke, Jesus’s call of the disciples doesn’t come out of the blue. It comes out of the relationship. When your relationship with the world, with the day-to-day, is fraught with deep water, deep water faith inspires the courage, the strength, and the determination to make a difference one person, one moment, one breath at a time.
The reference to “deep water” is not common in the bible. I could only find one other occurrence in the Book of Proverbs. “The purposes of the human heart are like deep water, but the intelligent will draw them out.” And the Greek word for “deep” doesn’t show up all that often in the New Testament. But here’s one you will know. “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth…nor deep…nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
That’s a promise for deep water. A promise that rises to the top with deep water faith