This was truly a lousy summer for fishing. It may not have been that way for all of you, but it was that way for a preacher friend of mine. He'd gone all summer and didn't catch anything that came close to the DNR guidelines for keepers. But last week, he thought he'd give it one more last go-round, and told the Lord he would call it a season if he got.
So my preacher friend goes all by himself up to Lake Winnie and has the kind of day fisherman only dream about. Right off the bat, he gets a 40-inch walleye. Then he hooks a couple of HUGE northerns. He goes to the other side of the lake and catches a whole bunch of musky. In the space of four hours, he's way over the limit, but because his pride had been so wounded during the summer and because his freezer was so empty at the moment, he decides he's going to keep all these fish. So he puts the fish in a couple of huge coolers and is just getting ready to load them into the back of his pickup when he looks up and sees the friendly man from the DNR who wears a brown uniform and carries a badge.
My preacher friend is a Lutheran, and for those of you who have never noticed these things, Lutheran pastors ALWAYS wear their clerical collars. I wouldn't be surprised if Augsburg/Fortress didn't design a line of clergy pajamas with a clerical collar on the neck and booties at the bottom. Anyway, the DNR man says, "Pastor, do you know what the legal limit is for all those fish you caught?"
The preacher, who is theologically trained to think on his feet, says, "I think you've got it wrong, Warden, I didn't catch these fish: these are my pet fish."
"Pet fish?!" the warden replies.
"Well, yes, sir. Every night I take these fish down to the lake and let 'em swim around for a while. I whistle and they jump back into their coolers and I take 'em home."
The Warden looks at him and says, "Now, I know you're a pastor and whatnot, but I've gotta tell you, Reverend, that's a bunch of hooey if I ever heard any! Fish can't do that!"
The preacher looks at the DNR man for a moment, then says, "Here, I'll show you. It really works."
The warden says, "O.K. I've GOT to see this!"
So the preacher lugs the coolers over to the lakeshore, pours the fish in to the water, crosses his arms and stands there for a while. After several minutes, the game warden turns to the preacher and says, "Well?"
"Well, what?" "When are you going to call them back?" the game warden says.
"Call who back?" the preacher asks.
"The FISH."
The preacher crosses his arms and gazes with a serious Lutheran look at the warden and says, "What fish?"
A preacher decides to go fishing. Only it's not Lake Winibegosh: it's a body of water that goes by three names: The Sea of Tiberius, The Lake of Gennesaret, and the Sea of Galilee. And even though the Bible calls it a "sea," the Sea of Galilee is only 13 miles long and 18 miles wide. It's located in a big cul de sac, about 680 feet below sea level. Lake Mille Lacs and Leech Lake both are a lot bigger.
By the standards of a Minnesotan, this lake isn't all that big. Yet it was big enough to provide a living for a lot of fishermen. Peter, James, Andrew and John were four guys who made their living by fishing.
Matthew 4:18-21 tells us that when Jesus first begins His ministry, He walks along the beach and sees Peter, Andrew, James and John mending their nets. He looks at them and says, "Follow Me."
They follow Him when He cleanses the temple; they follow Him when He casts out demons and heals. Over hill and dale they follow Him. But there's something here that isn't quite obvious to the naked eye. Sometimes you have to stop the boat and gaze intently into the water to see it. Peter, Andrew, James and John were for a time what I would call part-time Christians.
Whenever you read these stories in the gospels, you get the impression that people have instantaneous conversions. If you don't look deeper into the water, you get the impression that these people one minute were grubby old walleye fishermen with three days' growth of beard and fish guts all over their overalls and - poof - the next minute they are saints wearing white robes with haloes around their heads. But following Jesus is not like that. Sometimes there is an instantaneous change in the heart. A seed begins to sprout and grow. But I don't know of any tree that grows to maturity in a day, and I don't know of any Christian who becomes a towering saint in 24 hours.
This passage is the story of a fisherman-turned-preacher: Peter. He's been a fisherman all his life. He has caught fish, skinned fish, cleaned fish, packaged fish, and sold fish. He sees Jesus one day by the shore, Jesus says, "Follow Me and I will make you a fisher of men." Peter drops the nets, follows Him, and trades fishing for lake trout and herring and pickerel in favor of fishing for men and women.
But somewhere along the way, things don't go the way Peter planned. Peter meets with some obstacles. Peter encounters a Jesus who puts him into a situation or two where Jesus says, "Peter, I love you, but anyone who follows Me will find the need to change."
All of us have differing ways of dealing with uncomfortable situations. Some of us see obstacles and meet them head on. We fight. We scratch. We love the challenge.
Some of us are analytical when we meet challenges. We won't go in willy-nilly and pick a fight, but we will sit down with a calculator and try to find some reasonable way to come to a solution.
And some of us when encountering obstacles simply pack up. We take the next flight back home. We would rather switch than fight, so we pack our suitcases and go back to what is familiar and comfortable and non-threatening.
That's what Peter does. He's been following Jesus, going out onto the unfamiliar places, the highways and byways, the land, the earth, the dry and dusty and choking fields. But Peter is accustomed to the lake and to the water and to the gentle rocking of the boat in the evening. He prefers seagulls to sparrows. Jesus wants Peter to leave the familiar, the fishing of fish and to follow Him to fish for people. And Peter falls off the wagon. So he goes back home.
He is a Christian and yet he is not fully committed yet. So he goes back to the fishing boat, waits until midnight, then fishes all night. And this particular night, he hooks nothing. Nada. Zilch. Not even a bite.
So the morning comes and Peter goes back to his other part-time job, which is following Jesus. He comes back to shore after fishing all night and finds Jesus there and finds a big crowd. People packed in around Jesus like sardines. So Jesus climbs in Peter's boat, asks him to take it out into the bay - from which we get out term abeyance - and there Jesus teaches.
Peter is dead tired. I imagine that all he can think of during Jesus' sermon is going home to bed. But as soon as the sermon is over and everybody goes to lunch, Jesus looks at Peter and says, "Put the boat out into the deep and let's go fishing again."
Here it is late morning, and Jesus wants to go fishing. And Peter, the professional fisherman, finds himself objecting for three reasons. A) The aforementioned fact that he is so tired and wants nothing more than to hit the sack. B) The fact that it is late morning, close to noontime, and everybody knows that you don't catch fish this time of day. And C) the fact that the fish they catch are caught in the shallow waters along the shoals. Get out into the deep and there aren't any fish out there.
Three objections: three good reasons not to follow Jesus. Three good reasons not to obey Jesus. But Peter says, "Jesus, we fished all night and didn't catch a thing. But if You say to do this, we'll do it." That's the thing about faith: it isn't always logical. It doesn't always make sense. It demands that we take chances. It demands that we see not with our eyes but with our heart. And at some point, faith will demand that we go out into the deep, out into the uncharted, out to places where it's not so comfortable.
So Peter pulls out into the deep and casts his nets. In an area where Peter doesn't want to be, much less a place where he had ever been before, he hauls in the nets and there are so many fish that the nets are in danger of breaking. He calls out to James and John to bring their boat out into the deep and to help. It takes two boats to bring in the fish.
This episode in Peter's life comes at a time when he needed it most. I believe the similar things happen to anyone who is serious about following Christ. In order to see how great is God, we have to see how sinful we are. In order to see the greatness of God, we have to see just how far we are from Him by nature.
But more than this, Jesus comes to Peter and speaks to him in a way that he in particular could understand. You see, not only did Peter see the sinfulness of his human nature, he also sees in this his own particular sin, that of being a part-time Christian. He had followed Jesus full-time, encountered something he didn't like, then returned part-time to his old job.
Note how Jesus deals with Peter: He doesn't scold him, doesn't heap up guilt, doesn't sit down with a list of Peter's shortcomings and point fingers. What Jesus does is encourage Peter. Instead of giving up, instead of throwing in the towel when things don't go his way, Jesus gives Peter the guarantee that when you give something to Jesus, He takes it and multiplies it.
What can we learn from our friend Pete? First of all, there is no such thing as a permanent part-time Christian. One does not punch in on a time clock to follow Jesus then punch out at the sound of the whistle. God loves us too much for that. It is a "love so demanding, so divine (that) demands my life, my soul, my all."
Secondly, we all grow discouraged from time-to-time. You shouldn't think that it's heresy to say that sometimes we get disappointed when God doesn't do what we want Him to do. We live in a time where we expect things to be fast and instantaneous. And when you combine that with human disposition, which is impatient by nature, then it's natural to be dismayed.
Thirdly, the natural thing for many is to give up, especially if things don't come easy. A little bit ago, we heard Dick Silverness play, very beautifully I might add, his soprano saxophone. You know, one of my problems as a musician is that certain things came too easily for me. It didn't take me long at all to learn to play the guitar. I picked it up and it just came naturally to me. And I can play just about ANY string instrument: banjo, mandolin, string bass, cello. But there's one string instrument I can NOT play, and that's a violin. And the reason I can't or don't or won't play it is because when I tried it, it sounded like a cat scratching its claws on a chalkboard. It screeched. I finally got to the point where I could bow the open strings. But when I pressed down on the strings, I found out that my fingers were too accustomed to fretted instruments, and fretted instruments give you quite a bit of grace. But when I played the violin, the notes sounded way off pitch and hurt my ears. So, after only giving it a couple of hours, I laid down the violin because it didn't come easy. And the same thing goes with brass instruments: give me a little time and I could probably pick up a trumpet or a baritone horn or a Sousaphone and be tooting in no time. But the same thing happened with wind and reed instruments that happened to the violin: a few squawks, and just because I didn't sound like James Galway or Kenny G., I gave up. And now I really wish I could have had two things back then: number one, a sound proof room, and number two, the patience that comes from raising teenage daughters.
And I couldn't have raised teenage girls, not that I really did raise them, if it hadn't been for the fourth thing you can learn from our passage, which is the use of encouragement. Notice how Jesus gets Peter to get back out there. He says, "I know it seems difficult and hard, but I know you can do it." And that's what God is trying to tell us every day, "By yourself, it really is TOO difficult. But with God, nothing is impossible."
Fifthly, the reason we as a church and as Christians don't catch more people is because we are either too scared or unwilling or just plain too lazy to launch out into the uncharted and the deep. Remember Peter's first reaction to Jesus? He didn't say the precise phrase, but Peter used the Seven Last Words of the Church: We Never Did It That Way Before. But after he said it once, Peter, the fisherman turned preacher‹which is a lot better, I guess, than the preacher turned fisherman‹Peter went out to places and caught more fish than you could ever imagine. And that's what God does with ordinary, average, humdrum people just like you and me. He tells us to launch out to the deep and the uncharted, and He uses us more than we could ever imagine. He uses us to reel in fish; He uses us to throw back fish.
I've heard that after Isabel (the hurricane, not the soprano) left North Carolina, that the mayor of one of the villages went out to access the damage. And there he sees a young man walking along throwing starfish back into the sea. In spite of the fact there are thousands of them, the young man persistently, with great diligence walks along hurling them back into the ocean.
Hizonnor the Mayor catches up with the young man. "What are you doin?"
"I'm trying to save the lives of these starfish."
"But there are thousands of them. What difference could it possibly make?"
The young man picks up a starfish and says, "It DOES make a difference . . . to this one."
God calls us to catch; God calls us to throw back. But more importantly, He asks us to make a difference.
© Rev. Duane Brown, 2003
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