Miraculous Catch of Fish

Isaiah 6:1-8            Psalm 138               1 Corinthians 15:1-11    Luke 5:1-11

Many years ago, when I was just beginning to wonder if the priesthood might be the path I was being invited to walk, I remember feeling such awe and enormity – the tiniest glimpse into those words from that fabulous Isaiah reading – that the Holy, Holy, Holy One, might be calling me, and did I dare say, ‘here am I, send me’. And I remember talking to a friend who was at the start of his vocations process and when I voiced this sense of awe he said to me, ‘getting ordained just seems to make sense of my experiences this far’.

Make sense?!

I’d never even considered that sense would come into this in any way. Sense was for logic and reason and didn’t enter into the realms of eternity. Mine was a much more thresholds shaking… burning coals sort of encounter. None of it made sense.

So, it is interesting to me that both of us got ordained. It is interesting to me that God called the little girl who started to dance, aged two, to a church with dancing each week. And it is interesting to me to see these two passages alongside each other – this reading from Isaiah and the story from Luke. It makes it possible that sometimes God works in the ordinary – in the realm of things that just make sense – and other times is so other, so extraordinary, it is almost ludicrous.

Luke’s account, of Jesus calling the first disciples in this way, is unique. Mark and Matthew both speak about Jesus walking along the waterside and calling those fishermen to ‘follow me’, but only Luke includes this miraculous catch of fish. And when we hear a story of Simon and an abundance of fish and a declaration of ‘Lord’ and his fear of being a sinful man, we might also recall John’s post resurrection account of the barbecue breakfast, yes? These transformational, redemptive, fishing stories bookend Christ’s earthly ministry; beginning and ending at the work site, the place that had formed Simon since a child, and his family before him. It kind of makes sense to call a fisherman while he was fishing.

Jesus sees two boats. The fishermen are deflated, exhausted, they fished all night and caught nothing so they give up. Jesus borrows their boat, gets Simon to row out a little way and teaches the crowd from there. I wonder what he said. Whatever it was, it isn’t the thing of note, and it is only when he has finished preaching that our story really begins.

It is not in the ordinary act of teaching and preaching, but in the extraordinary act of fishing in silent still waters. Even though it made no sense to do so, Simon says ‘if you say so, I will’. And they caught so many fish their nets were beginning to break and their friends came to help and then their boats began to sink, so swamped were they with fish, and then, then Simon Peter sees and falls to the ground and says ‘go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man’. Right there, in the ordinary work of fishing, something extraordinary happens and it changes things.

It changes Simon (yet to become Peter). He sees the extraordinary and feels unworthy. Right there, in the middle of that which is most familiar to him, most ordinary, comes something inexplicable, unexpected. He had the most boring of nights, not even so much as a nibble, and then is swamped. No wonder he is filled with fear – he has seen something against the usual order of things. He knows these waters, he knows fishing and this carpenter – the one who is supposed to know about the wood of his boat, not the fish of the water – he has really done something.

As in our Isaiah reading, Simon has heard the voice of the Lord asking him to go and he has responded, he has gone, he has fished, and the response is overwhelming.

Then Jesus said to Simon, ‘do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people’.

Yesterday I read that the Greek word for catching, used here, is zogron; it is rare in the New Testament and has a very specific meaning – it means to catch alive. The fish Simon and his friends have caught will soon be dead, but Jesus is inviting them to catch people alive – and more than that, to catch people so that they might live, and really live, fully and forever. What an invitation – catch fish that will surely die or catch people who will truly live. Even though they just landed the catch of their lives, is there any wonder they immediately leave everything and follow Him?

The fisherfolk Jesus met at the water’s edge were boringly ordinary. There was nothing outstanding about them. They were doing what they did every night and day and the Christ met them there, walked right into their mundane life and invited them to change direction, take their existing skills and experience and apply it to things with deeper, greater, world changing significance.

Simon knows he is really nothing much. What on earth can he contribute? But Jesus calls him, as he is, tells him not to be afraid and to come now. And we see that all the way through the pages of scripture – God is always calling the ill-equipped and unprepared; Moses, Gideon, Jeremiah, King David, Mary, our own St Paul. And it doesn’t stop there. Down through history, ever since, we have seen the same – Joan of Arc, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr, Oscar Romero, Ghandi, Schindler, the list is endless. And it includes me and it includes you.

God doesn’t wait for God’s people to be ready, for it to make sense, and yet there are times we are ready, there are times it does make sense. Simon was ready with his boat and his nets. He might not yet be the greatest public speaker or healer or the bravest or whatever it is, but it made sense that fishermen might now fish for people.

So, whether we are ready and prepared, whether the call makes sense or is nonsense, when God calls, when God asks ‘whom shall I send?’, and when we meet the Christ, and hear the call to follow we have the same choice as those at the water’s edge with broken boats. Will we choose to leave our fear, preconceptions, reasoning, excuses behind? Will we add our voice to those in the pages of scripture and those echoing through the ages and say yes? Again. Over and over? Will we leave everything and follow.

Here I am, send me. Amen.