Catching
Luke 5:1-11

February 4, 2007


Jesus looked at all these bewildered fishermen and told them from now on they would not be limited to fish, but would be fishing for people. There were no lakes in my first pastoral charge, just coal mines, and dead coal mines for that matter. Fishing was not an occupation for anyone, just a beloved avocation. Jesus was inspiring people whose business it was to fish, so how would it sound if he converted fish talk into the language and culture of coal mining?

The mine would become the equivalent of the Sea of Galilee, full of fruits and dangers. Lakes have storms, coal mines have collapses and toxic fires and both happen when one is least expecting it and lives are snatched away and families changed. My first funeral as a minister was for a man in his 60’s with “black lung.”

By the time we arrived all the mines had been closed. The small village we lived in was called Eckhart Mines, the only literal evidence of this former way of life, except for the sink holes on the roads and the occasional steam coming up from old mines issuing forth their spent heat. And don’t forget the bare torn up landscape from the strip mining. But there was one noticeable remnant of the old mines - the little communities that had been built around the mines - Eckhart Mines, Allegany, Vale Summit and Carlos, Lonaconing. Now they worked in factories producing paint, tires and glass products. No black coal dust lined the sides of roads or darkened the white wash left hung out to dry. People had largely forgotten the mines and there were no attempts being organized to reopen the mines.

What would it be like if the fish mines dried up? How would the fishers of people describe their vocation without fish? We know this has happened in Newfoundland and other places in the world. In a microcosm, this is where we enter, in a short compact event off the shore of Lake Gennesaret, when the fish ran out.

Jesus is pressed to teach the word of God, the first instance that phrase is used, and that’s nice considering last week his teaching came close to dropping him off a cliff. Still, Jesus was being pressed physically, so he improvises and gets into a temporarily vacated fishing boat, and sits down to teach as all good ancient teachers did. The boat he had picked turned out to be Simon’s and Simon never leaves the foreground of the narrative.

When teaching time was over, Jesus figured it was fishing time, so he asked Simon to go out and give it a try, an innocent enough request. Simon had a lot of respect for Jesus, but now knew that Jesus was no fisherman. He gently attempted to say the obvious, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing!” Jesus didn’t seem to get it, so Simon probably sighed inwardly, “If you say so, we’ll try.” You didn’t fish in broad daylight in that region - especially after having failed to catch anything the night before. As far as Simon and the other fishers were concerned, they were on an idiot’s errand. Must have been some Canadian blood in there somewhere, because they went ahead anyway just to be painfully nice.

Jesus doesn’t know a darn thing about fishing except when and where to find too many fish. Their nets were breaking, their boats were sinking under the load - an embarrassment of riches. Simon Peter was embarrassed and overwhelmed, “Get away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful person.” Jesus just wasn’t a master, now he was Lord, but this was too much holiness, too much miracle for Simon to handle. It is easier to settle for defeat, than to have to manage victory. It is a lot easier to settle for what we humanly have not been able to do than to cope with the almost divine possibilities and potentials open to us. Defeat is safer, more secure than success and triumph.

Jesus responds, “Do not be afraid.” These are words spoken too early for their time, because this is what the resurrected Christ says to his startled and stunned disciples on the Third Day. It’s too early in this Gospel for Easter, or is it? Nothing wrong with a bit of resurrection to recognize that life is not going to keep on moping along in defeat. Easter morning dawned after the tragedy of Good Friday; the night before Simon and friends caught nothing, now on the morning they catch everything and it is almost too much.

“Come on, from now on you’ll be catching people!” That is a radical shift. It is a change not only in direction, but a change in the way one thinks and lives. Once they brought their boats back to shore, they left everything, including all that fish, and followed him. They were caught.

This is the best of all the accounts of Jesus recruiting and selecting his disciples. The others, frankly, were rather humdrum and boring. Here something unexpected happens: defeat is defeated. How do you and I become authentically and genuinely Christian? Is it something you learn, learn by listening to a sound, complete intellectual argument? Do you go somewhere for a proper training course to learn all the ropes and appropriate behaviours of a Christian? I suppose none of these hurt, but basically you catch Christianity; or rather, it catches you.

That is what happens to you in just about every important realm of life. Just as you don’t actively attempt to contract a disease or virus, it catches you and takes you under its control, so also you are caught by the culture of the Canadian way of life, perhaps even the Saskatchewan culture. If you don’t watch where you are going, you might get caught by a less desirable, even criminal culture.

I hope that everyone of you has had the experience of a school, a team, a workplace, a church in which there is a way of living, of working, of thinking, of caring, of loving in the air that captures your being and soul before you can reflect upon the fact. It is seldom precise enough, tangible enough to articulate to any degree of satisfaction. How do you catch a cold? - by being around other people who have the bug. It’s nothing you are intentional about, but it’s nothing you can avoid if you are in the right place.

When a person dares to enter our sanctuary of holiness, what does he or she find? People talking animatedly to everyone but her? Other people coming right up to you and inviting you to take part in our worship and listening to your questions? Another person introducing you to still others and including you in on the coffee time downstairs? One way or another, when such a person finally leaves the church building he has caught something: either caught something terminal or caught something infectious which will bring him new life and new relationships to fruition.

You and I can know all the sophisticated research about the culture of younger generations in our culture, but unless your faith is catching, unless your concern to include people in our way of life, all others will catch from you is a cold. In fact, we have had as one our mottos, “We Want to Be Part of You,” so that you and I must be willing to be included in another family’s or individual’s perspective and way of life. It is the only way that human beings can understand and be at harmony with one another. It is the only way when someone else is hurting that you can effectively help them by including yourself in their pain.

All right, you catch faith, you are not taught it. It happens amazingly not because of interesting new curriculum or well written colourful guides, but through the humble power of a person’s humanity. Jesus looked at Simon Peter and the other fishermen and told them happily, “Don’t worry, from now on you’ll be catching people!” We need catchers in this church.

When I was in Grade 11, for some reason I came back after a couple of years’ sabbatical from my home church. It was a big downtown church with just as few teenagers prowling the premises as here, but a Sunday School class was being taught by an older businessman for the 3 or 4 teenagers still around. There was nothing remarkable about him personally or physically, but he was enthusiastic about the new “situation ethics” approach to decision making. He drew us into a fascinating circle in which real sticky problems were handled with passion and empathy for all sides. I was excited by religious faith again. I was caught, I was hooked to keep the fishing metaphor going. I did not jump up and down and shout that I was saved or anything. But I was infected, and in the delirium of his infectious faith my mind started thinking strange things until six years later I found myself in seminary. And you know what? I don’t remember his name. Years later I was the associate minister in that same church and asked a long time lay leader, who was that guy? He replied, “Oh, that must have been so-and-so. He died a few years ago.” I am a little ashamed that even then my mind could not retain his name.

But all I know is that he caught me and I was infected. I don’t remember anything he taught me, but that he taught me and it was catching. God knows who he is and has credited him with at least one catch. That’s why you are meant to be here, to catch people, by hook, by crook, by love.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan