As we examine our Gospel for this Sunday (St. Luke 5:1…), the first thing to meet us is the phrase: “the people pressed upon Jesus to hear the word of God.”
What has happened in Luke’s account up to this point? Jesus has returned from His baptism and temptation in the wilderness to the region of Galilee, to Nazareth his old home. He has made an astonishing statement in His hometown synagogue which caused his old neighbors to take offense: “This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.” Not because they didn’t, as the text tells us, consider them gracious words, but because they knew Him, and He rightly said to them “No prophet is accepted in his own country.” And so he came down to Capernaum, and taught them on the Sabbath days. “And they were astonished at his doctrine, for his word was with power.” There, in the synagogue, he cast out a demon and later cured Simon’s mother-in- law, and laid His hands on all the sick who were brought to Him and healed them, and cast out devils. And we are told that the demons knew that He was the Christ. He has subsequently preached in other synagogues of Galilee. And now, the “people pressed upon Him to hear the word of God.”
These people, unlike the demons, do not yet know who Jesus is, but they know that the words which proceed from Him are words of power, words of life, indeed the word of God. Jesus was an exceptional preacher! And why not – the Word of God speaks the words of God.
Those with a receptive heart know that there is something unique about this Rabbi, this teacher, and they crowd around Him to hear these words.
Then, after the teaching, Jesus instructs a fisherman he has been staying with to launch out again into the deep. Simon knows better – it has been a bad night for fishing, and there will be nothing to catch now that the sun is beating down. But he says, after they have made their way out into the lake of Gennesaret “at thy word, I will let down the net.” There is a miraculous catch, which breaks the net, and Simon and Andrew (who isn’t named in the account, but surely is there) have to call for their partners James and John to help, and both ships are filled to the brim, so that they begin to sink.
Simon Peter has a revelation at this. The futility of a night with no catch has given way to a miraculous abundance, at the word of this strange man from Nazareth. His reaction may seem strange, but his words belie the thought of his heart: “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.”
My life will not bear this miracle, it is not a life that can bear the presence of such a man as this wonder-working teacher. And such is the rightful reaction of all our hearts at the presence of Jesus.
Our lives, before His presence has entered into our experience, are as empty and futile as the night of no fish. Indeed, they are, like Simon Peter’s, sinful and bereft of anything deserving of the grace of a miracle. And somewhere inside Simon, I suspect was the beginning of a nagging sense that, if he were to decide aright, he would have to follow this man, this Jesus from Nazareth, for he could not deny the proof of what he had seen at his own house, the rebuking of a fever, the healing of a multitude, the casting out of devils, and now, this mysterious ability to find a huge shoal of fish, where he, the lifelong fisherman, had found none. To leave family, home, occupation, everything familiar. No, far easier to say, Depart from me, O Lord.
But Jesus speaks to all the anxieties and uncertainties of his heart: “Fear not.” The words we always hear in the context of an epiphany of heavenly messengers, whether angelic, or in this case, Divine. Do not be afraid. And then He speaks to what awaits these four fishermen: “from henceforth, you shall catch men.” The Lord uses something familiar to these men, a harvest of fish, to point them to a different harvest: a harvest of the spirit; the harvest of souls brought to maturity in Him – souls delivered from the barren waters of sinfulness and futility. Their worldly attachments would be seen in the reality of their transitory nature.
We need to remember that the Church of Jesus Christ is not a self-improvement society, but the call to a new and heavenly life – fishing us out of the sea of our worldiness, the false promises of the demons and nothingness, bringing us to reality, to real being in Christ. To the healing of our souls, to the possibilities of the Kingdom of God, to the wonder of communion with the Master of the Universe.
We are fishers of men, seeking to catch them up into the joy and peace of the life in Christ, without whom we toil all night, indeed all our lives and catch nothing.