Thanks to Pastor William Cwirla for this sermon on Luke 5:1-11. Here’s a really strange miracle for you:  a miraculous catch of
fish.  Tailor-made for fishermen, the first of Jesus’ disciples.
Peter, Andrew, James, and John were partners in a fishing business
owned by Zebedee, the father of James and John.  Fishermen would
probably not be your first choice for disciple material – rough,
uneducated, quick with cursing, hot-headed at times.  Not exactly on
the top ten of most pastoral call lists.  But then, that’s Jesus’ way
of doing things – the unlikely way.

He was teaching the crowd
who came to the shore of the Sea of Galilee.  Jesus co-opts Simon’s
boat and uses it for a pulpit.  After the sermon, He tells Simon, “Go
out where the water is deep and let out your nets.”

Now this is
the trust point, and the point of the miracle.  Simon may not know
much, but he does know a thing or two about fishing. 

He knows that the
best fishing is done at night, when the fish are bold and hungry and
come to the shallows to feed.  He also knows that if you don’t catch
anything at night, you may as well tend your nets and cut your losses
and hope for better the next night.  He also knows that it doesn’t make
much sense to put out into the deep during the day when you haven’t
caught anything in the shallows at night.

He also knows this:
When Jesus says something, it pays to listen.  “At your word, I will
let down the nets.”  That’s the essence of the episode, as it is with
so many episodes in the Gospel.  The crisis of faith.  Will we trust
Jesus to take Him at His Word, even when He asks the counterintuitive
thing, the unreasonable thing, the outrageous thing?  What Jesus is
doing for the fishermen is training them in trust.  If they trust Him
with catching fish, they will learn to trust Him with catching people.
If they trust Him with the little things – their livelihood, they will
learn to trust Him with the big things – forgiveness, life, and
salvation.

When you stop to think about it, it’s a small thing
for Jesus to say, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a
catch.”  For Jesus, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel.  Who needs
sonar when you’re the Lord of creation?  He spoke the Word that created
fish on the fifth day.  He knows where all the fish are, because He’s
the Creator in the flesh.  He knows where the fish are hanging out, so
it’s not a big deal for Him to direct the fishermen’s net to where the
catch is.

The impression is made.  As they pull their busting
nets into the boat, and the fish are flopping all over the deck, and
more boats are called in to help out, Simon Peter falls down at the
feet of Jesus in an act of worship and confession and says, “Depart
from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.”  Peter sounds a bit like the
prophet Isaiah when he caught a glimpse of God on His throne in the
year that King Uzziah died and saw the Lord in His glory with the six
winged seraphs flying around singing , “Holy, holy, holy,” and Isaiah
says, “I’m dead.  I’m a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst
of a people with unclean lips.  I’m a sinner among sinners.”

That’s
how it is when you come face to face with the Lord.  It’s not “shine,
Jesus shine, oh we’re so happy to be here and you should be too,” it’s
“Lord, have mercy, I’m a dead man.”  Jesus may have looked plain and
ordinary enough, like any other local in Galilee.  But no one in
Galilee has a bead on fish quite like the Lord, and when it dawns on
Peter that there is more to Jesus than meets the eye, he immediately
becomes aware of his own sin.  And his reflex is a good one – he wants
to run away, or he wants Jesus to go away.  This man who has the
Creator’s authority over the fish in the sea is simply too much to
bear.  Peter understands that his sin and God’s presence are not
compatible, just as Isaiah understood that he had no right to stand
before the Lord enthroned in glory.

We think it would be fun,
inspiring even, to have been eyewitnesses of these miracles, these
revelations of the Mystery of Christ.  We imagine that it would be
easier to believe, much easier than reading it from a book or hearing
it from the pulpit.  But we would be wrong.  The miracles proclaim the
majesty of God, the divinity of Jesus.  He does what only God in the
flesh can do, and in a way that only God in the flesh can do it.  And
that face to face encounter with God in the flesh is no source of
comfort to a sinner, unless we know for certain He is for us and not
against us, that He comes to forgive not to condemn, that He comes in
mercy, not in wrath.

It was astonishing, this catch of fish.  As
was changing water into wine, and healing sicknesses with a word, and
casting out demons.  It’s all astonishing, and frightening.  This is
how near God is to us in Jesus – He knows the location of the fish, not
to mention the birds and the ants.  He knows the number of hairs on
your head, and the number of your days.  He knows your sin, everything
you do and think and say.  He knows better than you know.  We do well
to say with Peter, “Lord, depart from me.  Don’t come near me.  You are
holy, I am anything but holy.  You are God’s sinless Son, and I’m a
poor, miserable sinner.  You are the Lord of creation, and I am your
disobedient creature.”

But the beautiful thing is that this same
God of power is a God of mercy and forgiveness.  He takes a burning
coal and burnishes the lips of his prophet with words of forgiveness:
“your guilt is taken away, your sin atoned for.”  He takes these
fishermen – Peter, Andrew, James, John – sinners, all of them, none of
them “worthy” on their own to be His disciples, let alone His apostles
and first pastors of His church, yet Jesus calls them.  “Follow me.”
Those are the disciple-making words from Jesus, that take a sinner and
call Him to repentance, to a new mind.  Follow me – and where is Jesus
going?  To His own death and resurrection.  That’s where His disciples
follow Him – through death to resurrection and life.  His path is their
path, His life their life, His forgiveness covers their sin.

They
have a new life, and by the word of Jesus, a new vocation.  “Fear not;
from now on you will be catchers of men.”  They used to catch fish in
nets, now they would catch men and women in the nets of Jesus’ death
and resurrection.  Jesus gives us an image for the business of
disciple-making.  Fishing.  Net fishing.  Don’t loose sight of that.
There are other kinds of fishing:  bait fishing, lure fishing, fly
fishing.  Those all operate on the basis of deception.  Trick the fish
into biting onto something – a piece of bait, a shiny lure, a piece of
feather or fur skipping on the surface like a fly.  And after they’ve
bitten into your little trick, you snag them on a hidden hook and reel
‘em in one at a time.

Unfortunately, I think the church operates
with that model all too often.  Bait and switch, lure them in and hook
them at just the right moment.  Appeal to their needs and hopefully you
can reel them in for the kingdom.  The biggest problem with all of that
kind of fishing is that it relies on our smarts, our strategies, our
skills, how good our bait is, how attractive our lures are, how real
our flies look.

Peter and the fishermen were doing net fishing -
casting their nets into the sea and the hauling up whatever was
caught.  On their own at night, they came up with nothing.  In the day,
at the Word of Jesus, their nets were busting full.  Net fishing is an
act of pure faith.  You cast your net hoping, praying, trusting that
there are fish under the surface to catch.  You can’t see them, and you
really have no control over what you’re catching.  Which leads to the
second point.

Net fishing is “catholic,” universal,
indiscriminate.  Nets catch anything and everything that comes their
way.  Stuff you want and stuff you don’t want.  Fish, old tires, you
name it.  Jesus told a parable comparing the action of God’s kingdom to
a dragnet that hauls in all sorts of fish and other things, and the
angels sit on the beach with buckets sorting the keepers from the
non-keepers.

That’s the image Jesus wants to set before His
church in mission in the world.  It’s a boat casting out a huge net,
taking Jesus at His word, making disciples of the nations by baptizing
and teaching.  Not luring people into the kingdom, sweeping them in,
capturing them in the gracious net of forgiveness, life, and
salvation.  Not discriminating, picking and choosing, deciding which
are the keepers and which to throw back.  And like fish caught in a
net, a lot of them don’t want to be there.  As the net tightens around
the fish, they always look for a way to escape.  But the paradox is
that the way to save your life is to lose your life, like all those
fish that were pulled up into the fishermen’s boats that day.

We
follow the Word of Jesus, the Lord of creation, the Savior of all, the
Lord of the Church.  “Make disciples of all the nations.  Go fishing in
the deep water.  Cast out your nets, the net of the good news of Jesus’
death and resurrection.  Baptize and teach, and in the baptizing and
teaching, Jesus says, “I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Go fishing, the Lord says to His church.  Cast the net of Jesus’
resurrection wide and deep into the waters of the world.  And whether
we haul in a boat load or a few, that’s the Lord’s business, and He
knows best.  The catch is His, not ours.

I can’t leave this
miracle without pointing out something obvious and yet not so obvious.
A ton of fish died that day to make a point.  Boat loads of fish hauled
out of their happy home in the sea into a boat to their certain death
to give us a picture of the kingdom of God in action.  Could that be
right?  You bet it is.  To die in Jesus, caught in His net, is to live
forever in Him.  In Baptism you were buried with Christ in His death,
caught in His net, dragged out of the depths of sin and death into His
boat. Caught by Jesus, who died and rose to save you, you couldn’t be
in a better boat.

In the name of Jesus,
Amen