For Sunday
Epiphany 5C
Collect
Set us free, O God, from the bondage of our sins, and give us the liberty of that abundant life which you have made known to us in your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
Amen.
Reading
Reflection
This scene of Jesus and the miraculous catch was set up in the previous chapter. There Jesus starts preaching and teaching in the area around his hometown. His work attracts attention, for sure. And he attends one family in particular, a fisherman named Simon, whose mother-in-law, who was suffering from a high fever, and it says that Jesus “rebuked the fever, and it left her.”
When Jesus is overwhelmed by the crowds and looks for safety in a boat, he finds himself in whose boat? Simon’s.
Is this a coincidence or intentional? I’m not sure it really matters because it is a thing that happens. And something else for us is this means Jesus isn’t a stranger to them — an unknown. He’s a healer who helped Simon. This is a man of consequence and some true power. Then Jesus unleashes a new power they don’t see coming at all. He can seemingly persuade fish to swim into their nets like Aquaman. Or else he can multiply the meager collection of fish they are gathering from the sea. Perhaps it is even something else entirely: a kind of conjuration that manifests fish within the net for them. I don’t think the happenstance matters much either, as the results are the same.
Simon and company don’t account for this new abundance as an absolute good. It is easy to call it too much as their boat begins to sink. And Peter’s response is to suggest Jesus reject him: “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”
I’m not sure we are all in Peter’s proverbial boat. Many of us are so focused on counting up the fish in that net that we miss that Peter is afraid and feeling unworthy. Not because he was taught to be performatively humble, but because he genuinely believes it.
Even after witnessing the miraculous, it takes assurance that this is the point that gets Simon to follow Jesus. The same sort of assurance we’re offered. That we, too, are good enough for this work.