Sermon February 16 2025 Paradigm Shift (Luke 5:1-11)       Rev. Betsy Hogan

Have you ever paused to consider all those left-behind fishing nets? The fishing nets of Peter and James and John. Which are alluded to in the reading that we heard earlier from the gospel of Luke.

Because it’s a waterfront encounter, the events of this reading, between Peter – who already knows Jesus, Jesus has already met him, has been in his house, in fact cured Peter’s mother-in-law of a fever and then she hopped up and gave everyone supper – so it’s a waterfront encounter between Jesus and Peter, and then also James and John the sons of Zebedee.

And all three of them are fishermen. They’re business partners, apparently. They fish together and then presumably pool their efforts in order to get by. And at the time of the events of this reading, the three men have been fishing all night – the linen nets they use are apparently visible to fish during the day, so most fishing was done at night – but it has not been a good night.

They’ve caught nothing. So when Jesus arrives on the shore and needs to borrow Peter’s boat to sail out a bit so as to have a good spot from which to preach to the great crowds that are already following him, this is no problem, says Peter. Jesus is most welcome, he hasn’t any fish-cleaning to do from the night before, might as well be helpful.

And that’s where the story would end, if it were really just about Peter being helpful and Jesus preaching to the crowd. But of course it’s not. Because once the preaching is done, Jesus turns to Peter and says to him, “cast out your nets”.

It’s kind of amusing to imagine Peter’s face at that moment. Because on the one hand, as he’s already mentioned, he’d been fishing all night the night before and he didn’t catch a thing. So it seems like casting the nets out yet again would be at best a wasted effort.

But on the other hand, this IS Jesus. And it hasn’t been too long since he miraculously healed Peter’s mother-in-law.

So out go the nets. And sure enough – more fish than Peter’s ever caught before. So many fish that the net starts to tear. So many fish they could actually cause the boat to capsize, so he needs James and John to bring their boat up too, and take some of them too, and even then the nets are tearing and the boats are over-laden. 

And then what? They all limp back to shore, with the best catch of fish they’ve ever made EVER – and they lay it all down and they walk away. Because come on now, Jesus says to them, and I will make you fish for people. And they’re inspired!

Bring it on! Bring on the amazing transitional moment when Peter and James and John with epic symbolic perfection first cast OUT their nets – like they’ve done night after night after night their whole adult lives –

And then cast DOWN their nets. Dramatically turning their backs on everything that’s gone before, on every familiar pattern and path and routine they’ve ever known, and making a completely new start. Following Jesus on the way. 

It’s really quite breathtaking. To imagine making that dramatic a change in our whole way of being. And does it matter that Peter and James and John actually chose this huge change in their living? When some of ours are not so much chosen as thrust upon us? Of course it does.

There’s an enormous difference between the sense of feeling in control of making a major change in our living, as Peter and James and John are, and effectively feeling forced to do so by circumstance, because it’ll be better or it’ll be wiser or it’s how we’re going to manage or survive or even DEAL with the new normal… well. Or at least as well as we can, God being our helper.

So it certainly matters that Peter and James and John choose their massive dramatic life change – but still. 

It’s meant to be a deeply inspiring moment, in Luke’s telling of these events in the life of Jesus in his gospel -- and in terms of the bigger wider story of how Jesus’ message about living a life driven by compassion and goodness and love began to be spread around and take hold, it IS a deeply inspiring moment. 

Because this is how it starts. With a handful of ordinary fishermen who cast down their nets, and go out to fish for people. Go out to BE with people. Not just speaking the message, nice words, blah blah blah, but embodying it. Watching Jesus and how he is, learning his way of compassion, learning his way of mercy, following his way of protecting the most vulnerable. And passing it along.

This is how the movement starts. With a handful of ordinary fishermen who say Yes to making a major change for themselves.

But I want to go back to those nets. Because in the latter half of this past week, and due in no small part to musings about this passage by American theologian Sarah Dylan Breuer, I kind of got obsessed by those nets.

Left behind on the beach. Torn and strained and stretched out by a catch of fish so extraordinarily epic that Peter and James and John could barely deal with it, without their boats being swamped. 

They’d fished all night, and nothing. Then Jesus told them to cast out their nets, and everything. Way more fish than they’d ever asked or imagined. And in the words of Sarah Dylan Breuer, the central question of their lives instantly changes in that moment.

Because what has it been? For Peter and James and John, they’re just ordinary Galilean fishermen. Night after night after night, they head out. And night after night after night, there’s just one central question: “will there be enough?”

“Will I catch enough fish to put food on the table? Will I catch enough fish to pay rent, to cover groceries, to fix the roof?”

For Peter and James and John, every time they cast out their nets, the central question of their lives has only ever been “will there be enough”.

And suddenly, in this moment with Jesus, when the nets are literally tearing because they’re full in an extraordinary abundance, that question’s not just ridiculous in and of itself, but it compels a NEW question:

“Can we gather enough people to haul in this abundance so it doesn’t swamp the boat?” And then another: “Can we find enough people to actually make USE of this abundance?”

And just like that, as Jesus puts it, from now on for Peter and James and John it’s about catching people. 

Instead of lives driven by the fearfulness of “will I have enough”, they’ll be living lives grounded in a new and kind of stunning awareness that what’s been poured out by God is abundance. That absolutely there’s enough. That there’s more than enough. 

They’ll be living lives in which the automatic compulsion is toward gathering others in to share in the abundance, rather than scrabbling fearfully, one eye on the competition, shoulders bent inward protectively, “will there be enough”.

I know that it sounds like just one more thing that works great in the Bible and not in real life. See also Zacchaeus the corrupt thieving malevolent cheat – and all Jesus has to do is reach out to him in welcome and friendship and ask if they can sit down to a meal together –

And suddenly there’s Zacchaeus, turning himself inside out with promises to change, and turn over a new leaf, and pay back everyone four times over, and give half what he has to the poor.

There are things like that in the Bible, and they’re lovely, and they’re aspirational, but we also know they’re miracles. Just as cast your nets out, and there was nothing, and suddenly there’s an abundance – it’s a miracle. 

But the shift it provokes in Peter and James and John – from a life driven by the central question of “will there be enough” to a life driven by the central question of “who can I find to share in this abundance” – that can be real.

But it means unbending those wary guarded shoulders, that only feel lack and limit and fearsome perpetual shortage – so we can haul in nets that if we really start looking at them… are actually unbelievably full.  

What God has poured out on us as a human family is an abundance – it’s enough and it’s more than enough. God did not create poverty and hunger and homelessness. We did. With economic models entirely shaped by self-protective fear that there’s no such thing as “enough”. That have bent our shoulders and turned us away from one another and made us forget –

What God has poured out on us is an abundance. Justice rolling down like the waters, peace like a river, righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. When God casts out God’s net of love for the human family into the waters, there’s no NEED for some to get pushed aside and excluded – it’s an insult to God to shove aside trans people, to shove aside addicts, to shove aside refugees or migrant workers or those who can’t hold down a job.

And it’s all driven by shoulders bent over in self-protection, and turned away from one another, compelled always and only by the question “will there be enough”. For me.

What Peter and James and John learn that night on the waters of the Sea of Galilee is that there is so much that they need to unbend their shoulders and go out to find people, so that it can be shared. What they’re shown is such an abundance of God’s compassion and mercy and grace and love, that “will there be enough” is just a ridiculous question. 

So Peter and James and John leave it behind. For a way following Jesus that says instead “there is so much that it has to be shared”. For a way following Jesus that can be our way too. God being our helper. Amen.