Trinity
5 – Luke 5:1-11 – June 30th and July 1st,
2018
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit +
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit +
When we come across Simon Peter, he is at a low point.
We see him and his partners cleaning up the nets after a long night
of fishing, a long night that yielded nothing. Peter had spent the
night throwing net after net over into the water, hauling wet rope up
by hand, and gotten nothing. No fish. Nothing to sell. And after
that back breaking but fruitless night, they are on the shore
cleaning out the nets – because the seaweed and the junk has to get
off of them and maybe when we are done we can just go home. You all
have had rough days, you know how it is at the end of the day, you
just want to be done and be done and be done. That's where Peter is
– and I know when I'm there I'm tired and cranky and dour.
Then
Jesus walks on up and drafts Peter for a bit more work. Push off
from the shore, I'll preach from your boat. It makes wonderful
acoustic sense – sound bouncing off the water, the shore forming a
bit of a natural amphitheater... but it also means that instead of
going home and getting rest, Peter is stuck there. Maybe he enjoyed
listening to Jesus preach, maybe he didn't. I'm not going to pretend
that all of you here are always just thrilled to be here and
super-attentive to the sermon, especially if your week has been hard,
or you're coming off of a night shift or something like that. Yet
the preaching goes on – probably hours of it, and tired and sore
Peter still waits, and waits... and then Jesus turns to Peter. Put
out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.
This is stupidity. This is folly. You don't catch fish in the
middle of the day, that was why they'd been fishing all night. And
if they let down the nets, they'll just have to clean them up – but
Peter resignedly says, “At your word I will let
down the nets.”
And then an unexpected victory – a catch so massive that the nets
break, so big that they have to summon the other boat and they both
begin to sink because they are just so full of fish. Peter's day has
gone from lousy to unimaginably prosperous! You might think Peter
would be overjoyed. But he's not.
But
when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees saying, 'Depart
from me, for I am a sinful man.'
Pause there and think about that. Depart from me, for I am a sinful
man. Peter isn't a fool. Peter knows something divine, something
miraculous when He sees it. This is a sign of God's presence and
activity and this is Messianic – and he's afraid. He knows that
he's a sinful man and God is here – so he begs Jesus to go. Does
that seem strange to you? Why would anyone be scared of God showing
up – oh, I don't know, do people even today get all happy dappy
about Judgment Day or the End of the World? Because that is what
Peter is seeing – the end point of all things. Don't think of this
as “oh, Jesus my friend is here” - Peter would have viewed this
as apocalyptic and fearful. The Messiah has come, the great and
awesome day of the Lord has come... and there Peter is. A sinful
man. And he had been looking God square in the face; he had been
sassy and saucy (we toiled all night and caught nothing) with God
Himself.
That got people killed in the Old Testament. Even
Elijah, the greatest prophet, had to wrap his face and cover himself
before talking to God – even Elijah wouldn't dare to enter the cave
where God appeared but remained at a distance. Of course he did –
sinful man doesn't do well in the presence of God! And there's
Simon-Peter – and he'd been sassing the Messiah. And so he asks
Jesus to go. And this isn't a sign of disbelief or no faith – no,
Peter is a faithful man. But he is sinful, and he knows that sin and
God don't mix, so the best he can hope for, the mercy he seeks from
Jesus is this: Go away, and just don't smite me. That's what Peter
thought mercy would be – God, just leave me alone.
Do you know what the real difference, the real impact
of Jesus is in practical terms? We new testament folks have a hard
time even conceiving of how anyone could possibly want God to depart
from him. Oh, we still get mad at God when lousy stuff happens –
Elijah grumbled in the Old Testament and we grouse at God about how
things aren't fair today too... but when we grouse at God we just go
ahead and grouse. We don't wait patiently on a mountain top and then
humbly cover our faces – we look up to heaven and grouse. Kind of
presumptuous, isn't it? That's how comfortable we are with God –
because we are New Testament people – we are people who have been
born and raised in the last days of the world. We see everything
through the lens of Christ Jesus, God come to be with us in a way
that we can handle, God come to redeem and forgive.
This
is what it meant when Jesus said to Peter, “Do
not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.”
Do not be afraid – whenever you hear that phrase in the bible that
means that God is about ready to do something good for the sake of
His people – He is going to show mercy and forgive and make things
right. The punishments for sin will be taken away and sinful man is
going to be forgiven instead of blown to smithereens. And we are the
baptized, we live, we have our identity established in the fact that
we have been forgiven by God. We are the people who live viewing God
as their dear Father whom they can approach in prayer with confidence
as dear children ask their dear father. We are those who have been
given faith and are those who have been invited to Christ's table
this day for strengthening of that faith. As St. Paul says,
“Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God.
Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as
coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God.”
We are caught men and women, we are those who have been caught and
rescued from the world and brought into God's house by the power of
the Word and Spirit.
And
sometimes we can forget just how strange and wondrous it is to have
faith. Many of us are just simply used to it – we can't remember a
time when we didn't have faith. We can forget just how foolish our
faith is. From our Epistle lesson, Paul is not wrong when He says
that the Gospel, this forgiveness in Christ without any works on our
part, it foolish and folly. We live in the world, we know how that
works. If someone wrongs us, does something to hurt us, don't we
EXPECT them to make it up to us? You messed up, how about a little
“restitution”? In this world we live in “I'll make it up to
you” - that's the wisdom of the world. And yet that's not how you
relate to God – well, okay, sometimes in your sin that is how you
try to relate to God – we will want to cut a deal, maybe at least
I'll wash your back God and you can wash my back in this way sort of
thing. But that's not how it works with God. God's approach to you
is utterly foolish. He gives and gives without demanding anything
back. Here you go Peter, have some fish, and no, I don't need a cut
of the profits, no I don't need “free” advertising on the side of
you boat. Here you go. Utterly free. And that is what God does for
you – while we were yet
sinners, Christ died for us.
Oh, the foolishness of the Cross, to die for sinners! Jesus cries
out for mercy for those who are crucifying Him, He cries out for
mercy for you and me – a mercy that takes dead, dying, sinful
people – people full of sin where everything is tainted and wrecked
by selfishness and greed and hatred and lust and envy – mercy that
takes people like you and me and dies for us. Dies to forgive and
give live and save. Jesus going to the cross, according to the
wisdom and logic and dog eat dog sense of the world, is the dumbest
thing in history.
But
that's who Jesus is. That's what your God is like. Just when Peter
has a chance to corner the Galilean market on fish, Jesus calls him
away from that. No, Peter, we're not going to be rolling in dough,
that's not my goal. We're going to wander around and proclaim mercy
and forgiveness, and even to people who will reject it and kill me –
but as go, some of them will be caught up into faith. And even after
Easter, as you go on your way you'll end up making disciples of all
nations (even the races you don't like) by baptizing them and
teaching them. And over the many generations, that's where we come
in. We have been caught up in all this Jesus stuff. We have
received His love and mercy – and we are even entitled to speak it
forth. Foolishly. Stupidly. We have a boldness to forgive others
who don't deserve it in the slightest. We have a boldness to love
our enemies, and let them know that God Himself died to forgive them.
We have the boldness to confront our own sin – because let's not
pretend that we are perfect. No, we are bold to face down our sin
and fight it down – that sin gets in the way of loving our neighbor
or forgiving them so for their sake we need to fight it, and we do so
boldly because we know that God is faithful and just to cleanse us
from all unrighteousness. That fight against our own sin will be the
theme for the next few weeks, in fact. But all of this is seen and
viewed through the astonishing love that God has for us in Christ.
Peter's
day had gone from lousy to wondrous in a way he couldn't imagine.
Didn't mean things were suddenly easy – but they were good. Christ
saw to that. And this Jesus promises to make all things work for
your good with His foolish love for you. In the Name of the Father
and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.