This Week: Epiphany 5C
Gospel: Luke 5:1-11
The call stories in the synoptics are familiar for their common refrain: Jesus inviting them to come fish for people. It is a great line and one so recognizably inviting. We get the point, even when we aren’t professional fishermen. We can translate it pretty easily.
Luke’s version has much more character and context than the others, however, and those of us who get bored with preaching the same thing every time may be looking for something different — and Luke has us covered in that sense.
In this week’s reflections, I’ve already covered a few parts of interest. That Jesus has already met Simon before. In fact, he’s been to his house! He healed his mother-in-law! Wait, he has a mother-in-law? Does that mean he’s married? What happens to the spouse?
We can talk about how the crowds of people have already gathered around him and are pressing on him — there is menace and danger to this kind of neediness, too. This isn’t a vision of a relationship to Jesus we often explore, but it is pregnant with possibility. Especially because there is a difference between the character of the disciples and the crowds. And Jesus differentiates between them. So therefore, what does it mean when we treat Jesus and ourselves like we’re the crowd?
And finally, I focused on the boat, the catching, and particularly Simon’s feeling of guilt and shame — unworthy of the grace of Jesus. That this isn’t like the performative we so often hear in US Protestantism (”we’re all sinful” and “I’m just a sinner in need of redeeming” we will say and then explain why we’re chosen as special and other people need to be treated as second class citizens) but a genuine sense of fear and trembling that he will truly die of the abundance of fish.
There are wider context notions to consider, too. We could discuss the idea that crowds formed before Jesus had disciples in this gospel, which is unique to Luke. Or we could consider the relationship of the visit home before this, where the crowds wanted to kill him and compare that to the crowds that want something from him or to the abundance of fish that Simon thinks will kill him.
All of these are intriguing and fantastic foundations for sermons this week. I’m not sure exactly what I’m going to do because I’m drawn to each of them. What I usually use to make this kind of decision is to read the gospel through several times and see what line or phrase sticks out — which one tugs at me like a barb or a hook that catches me. That becomes the sign of something that needs direct attention.
Another option is to see what connects to the moment out in the world. Not necessarily a direct one-to-one correlation to an event, but to something people are feeling or are frustrated by. Something we all are noticing. These days, ideas of isolation and participation are alive in the public consciousness — of how expensive things are, what it means to be afraid, or that feeling of hopelessness. In this way, it might be worth digging into that sense of the crowd pressing on Jesus. It would be a novel approach to the question of discipleship and the church.
It is always timely, I suspect, to talk about discipleship, especially if it isn’t a word people use in your context. What does it mean to be student-followers of Jesus? How are they different from the crowds? What does fishing for people actually entail?
The hard question here for nearly every Christian, denomination, and priest/pastor is if Jesus is inviting Simon to follow him to fish for crowds or disciples? The crowds pressing on Jesus in massive numbers and threatening the mission? Or the disciples who just witnessed the miraculous abundance that threatened their lives? In short, is the attractional approach to Christianity, of bringing people in and making them feel Christian without expecting them to be different from US culture in any way reflect what is dangerous to Jesus?
Are we prepared to consider the idea that big churches and universal Christianity actually prevents discipleship and maybe worse, prevents Jesus from healing and saving? And that our culture of individual need and expectation is tantamount to anti-Christlike behavior?
OK, the classic take here is probably easier and won’t get anyone crucified. But the disturbing nature of the gospel convinces me that we’re probably avoiding the truth of it.