Coming Up Empty – Fifth Sunday after Epiphany (Luke 5: 1-11)
This story from the Gospel of Luke is, at its core, a call story. This is a type of story typical to religious or mythological literature in which the protagonist of the story is presented with a choice; to continue living their life as it is or to make a change, to go on a journey, or follow their new teacher. Like the story of Moses and the burning bush, or the prophet Isaiah’s vision of standing before God in the temple and angels touching his lips with hot coals, anointing him to go speak the word of God to the people. In non-Biblical story telling its young King Arthur pulling the sword from the stone, or Frodo the Hobbit accepting the task of destroying the Ring of Power, or Luke Skywalker taking his father’s lightsaber to learn the ways of the Force. As someone who chose to go to seminary and seek ordination to become a pastor, I heard lots of call stories and was asked for my story many times. People like to hear stories of how God calls people to ministry. Which, of course, is what we read in today’s scripture, the disciples’ call to ministry.
Call stories are not limited to scripture, mythology, or Christian ministry, however. There is a good chance most of us have experienced something like a call story at some point in our lives. A moment when you were presented with a choice about how you were going to move forward in your life. The book that the Thursday night study group is reading, called Life Worth Living, begins by recounting three call stories. One of them is indeed the story of Simon -who will become known as Peter- leaving behind his fishing boat to follow Jesus. The book delves into the question of what makes a good life and explores the different ways we can choose to pursue that. We haven’t finished the book yet, so I can’t give an answer to that question, but again, it does begin with three examples, Simon Peter, who decided to leave everything behind and follow Jesus, being one of those examples.
Another example is Siddhartha Gautama, or as he is known today, Buddha. He begins his call story as a wealthy man with a family, expecting a new baby. However, after going out in the world and witnessing much human suffering, he decides to leave his home and seek to overcome such suffering. Then, one day while meditating under a fig tree he comes to an answer to his question. He realizes that craving, wanting, or desiring things is what leads to suffering. If one can be freed from those impulses, they will be freed from suffering. So, the rest of his life was dedicated to spreading that message.
Similarly, Simon not-yet-Peter and the other first disciples decided that day by the lake to dedicate their lives to learning and spreading a message about a new way of life. And while they did not leave behind the life of a wealthy royal, as the Buddha did, they still left behind plenty. They had families, they had work as fisherman, and on this particular day, they left behind a two boats full of valuable fish. Fish they were not expecting to catch, but that surely would have been worth quite a bit for them and their families. Jesus calls them to follow him and become fishers of people. This is the new way forward that Jesus offers them and offers all of us. The old way, as we see in the beginning of the story, had left them coming up empty. It wasn’t until they met Jesus that they made their big catch.
So, let us take a closer look at what Simon and the other fishermen’s encounter with Jesus was about. It seems somewhat coincidental, the reason they meet Jesus that day is because he was preaching and teaching by the lake, but he was being crowded by the people. So, he notices Simon there by his boat, washing his net, and Jesus asks him to take him out in the boat, a little way from the shore, so he can have some breathing room as he teaches. Simon takes him out and these are the first steps of the call story.
The next thing Jesus does is instruct them to take the boat out into the deep water and cast their nets there. Initially there is some hesitance at this idea, as Simon tells Jesus, they had been fishing all night and caught nothing. So, here they are sitting over the deep water, as Jesus told them, hoping to catch some fish. In this part of the call story, Simon is faced with the difficult realities of life. The Buddha, before he became the Buddha, was dealing with the realities of human suffering that all his wealth could not shield him from. These fisherman deal with the fact that they haven’t had much luck fishing lately. Not only that, Jesus has them sitting over the deep water. Now, the word that appears here as ‘deep’ -the deep waters- in its Greek translation is the same word that appears in Genesis 1:2, as in, “the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep.” In Genesis, the deep represents the chaos that existed before God stepped in and harnessed it at the beginning of creation. So, when Simon casts his nets into the deep water, he is casting them into the unknown and into chaos. But this is where Jesus wants the nets to go in. This chaos is where he intends his miracle to happen. Because just as God transformed the deep at the beginning of creation, Jesus will transform the things found in the deep. The scarcity of empty nets will be turned into abundance, more fish than they can carry. The doubt and fear of tired fisherman will be transformed into faith and commitment.
For this to happen, however, Simon must first decide to listen. So, the decision is made to listen to Jesus, and they cast out their nets into the deep, braving the uncertainty of chaos, but still expecting to catch nothing. Then the miracle happens. They begin to catch so many fish the boat begins to sink a little. So, they call over the other boat, and it gets loaded up to sinking weight with fish. This a huge, extravagant miracle that Jesus is performing. This large of a haul of fish would certainly make a difference in these fishermen’s lives. It is a valuable cargo they now carry. However, what Jesus does with the fish is not about the value of the fish, it is about what Jesus can do in their lives. Transforming the deep. Bringing hope to a time of uncertainty.
Simon is moved by Christ’s overwhelmingly peaceful presence. The pile of fish raised from the deep is the physical manifestation of Christ’s abundantly peaceful spirit. Simon sees it and is confronted with his own shortcomings, as a fisherman and perhaps even as a human striving to find peace in the world. It breaks him down in that moment. Simon falls before Jesus, calling himself a sinner and unworthy of this miracle. Jesus tells him not to be afraid and gives him the call to put down his fishing nets and follow him. To come and fish for people.
They leave behind all those fish for the chance to follow Jesus and fish for people. They leave behind the old way and put faith in the new way Jesus is showing them. This means leaving behind not just family and friends and their job, but also, leaving behind the old value system. And that system was influenced by the Roman Empire. Galilee was a prominent fishing territory, and it was regulated and tightly controlled by the Roman authorities, who wanted to extract all the value they could out of the poor fisherman of the area. It is difficult to walk away from such a system, yet that is what Jesus asks them to do.
To follow Jesus means becoming part of his movement. It is not just a matter of saving souls and bringing them to God through Christ. The Gospel of Luke tells us that to follow Jesus as a disciple means becoming part of a movement away from empire, away from old ideas of what is valuable and worth fishing for. These old ways just lead us to keep coming up empty.
The third call story from the book Life Worth Living, after Buddha and after Peter, is Ida B. Wells. She was born into slavery and was freed by the Emancipation Proclamation. In her life after slavery, she became a schoolteacher. Eventually, she worked her way to becoming a journalist and the part owner of a newspaper called Free Speech. Her moment came when three men that she knew were lynched by a racist mob. Wells admitted that in the past, in her old way of thinking, she may have looked past lynchings because she was able to convince herself that the person must have done something out of line, and so the lynching was their own fault. However, this time she knew the men, she knew that they had done nothing wrong. So, she began speaking out against all lynchings. Calling them what they were, hateful, racist acts that were not meant to deal out justice of any kind, but death. For speaking this truth Ida lost her newspaper when it was destroyed by another angry, racist mob. She did not let this stop her though. From then on, she committed to living a new life as an activist, speaking out against lynchings and other racist practices, and eventually, even women’s suffrage, the right to vote. She cast her net down into the deep of an unjust and angry world and it changed people’s lives.
Ida B. Wells, Buddha, Simon and the first disciples, these are all examples of people who were called and answered. Who were confronted with a choice to make and decided to live life in a new way. The choice came about when they were confronted with realities of life that we might associate with the deep water. Realities of life that make things chaotic, confusing, and unpredictable. Buddha was confronted with the suffering and death that is part of human existence, and the knowledge that not even his wealth and power could not ultimately shield him from that. Ida B Wells was confronted with the evils of racism, despite her freedom from slavery. Simon was confronted with empty nets, despite his efforts.
Which leads us to another part of the call story. That the people in these stories respond to their call because they sense that their must be more to it all. More than fishing and coming up empty. More than death and taxes. More than pain and more than other people’s hate and anger. More than the accumulation of the stuff we are told will make our life better or give it meaning. After all, Jesus blessed the fishermen that day with two boat loads of fish, but didn’t just leave it at that, saying, “Here you go. You’re rich now.” He also didn’t come to them, see that their nets were coming up empty and say, “Don’t worry about it. There is more to life than this. Follow me.” No. He showed them a miracle. He helped them fill their nets many times over. Gave them the most abundant blessing any of them could have imagined, and then he said “do not be afraid. Follow me.” Because there is more to life than even this.
Christ calls them to a new way of living. To fish for people. To find new meaning in sharing the good news with other people and bringing them to this new way of life. That is the way Christ shows us and calls us to. A way of well being for all God’s creation. So, let that be the call we respond to. Let us risk putting our nets down in the deep water, because that is where we can find the people. There in the chaos and the confusion. Where we hear the cry, “There has to be more than this!” The places where they most need to hear Jesus’ response. “Don’t be afraid. Follow me.” Let us respond to God’s call on our lives. And with Christ’s help we might be the heroes of our stories.
Amen.