University Presbyterian Church - Chapel Hill, NC

CALLED

Isaiah 6:1-8, Luke 5:1-11

A Communion Meditation by Robert E. Dunham

University Presbyterian Church

Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time   February 4, 2007

            This story from Luke about the amazing catch of fish is a miracle story, although we may miss the real miracle if we are not keenly observant. (More on that in a few minutes.)  It is also a story of the calling of the first disciples, of the moment when Jesus summons them and invites them to leave much behind and to follow him.  If we hear it rightly, by extension it is also a story that still calls, summons and invites us to discipleship all these centuries later.

            But it is an odd story.  A pastor friend says that this story is so familiar in the church’s teaching that we may forget how ludicrous its internal logic is.

Jesus and the disciples, with Peter occupying the foreground, are out in boats because the crowds following Jesus have essentially pressed him to the edge of the lakeshore, and the only option he has is to teach them from a seat in Peter’s boat. When the teaching is over and the crowd is presumably shuffling away, Jesus gives Peter some fishing advice.  Peter, with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek, does what Jesus says – he puts out the nets for another try.  What he expects is a validation of his expert opinion that today’s fishing is lousy, but the catch is so great as to risk sinking the boats and drowning all who are in them.  This prompts Peter, having recognized Jesus’ power, to fall on his knees (which means, probably, to fall knee-deep in the smelly fish still flopping around on board) and to beg Jesus to depart from him.  Does he really mean that?  He’s sinking, nobody’s wearing life-jackets, and if anybody has the power to fix that immediate situation, it’s the One whom he has just asked to go away! Ignoring Peter’s entreaty and taking little note of the imminent danger they’re all in, Jesus soothingly says, “Do not be afraid; from now on you’ll be catching people.”  As if to say, “Sure, this situation is tough, at least in the short run, what with all these fish and these leaky boats; but don’t worry – the job I’m about to give you is a piece of cake.”  The job he’s about to give Peter is that of netting a church.  And to that overwhelming prospect he says, “Do not be afraid.”

Is he crazy? …If we think about this story for even a little while, the apparent coherence of it that comes from having heard it so often starts to unravel, and a question fairly shouts itself: Why shouldn’t Peter be afraid? Why shouldn’t anybody be afraid of being given such a task?[1]

            Indeed, if we get a glimpse of what Jesus has in mind, this is fairly radical stuff that he is asking Peter to undertake. This is a call to a new life and a new way of life shaped by Jesus’ teaching.  The text ends with a rather dramatic note that “When they had brought their boats to the shore, they left everything and followed him.” Moments after their greatest professional success ever,[2] they walked away from it all to follow Jesus.  Think of everything to which we cling.  From start to finish in Luke’s Gospel we will see the disciples wrestling with what it means to relinquish in order to follow.

            Fundamentally this is a story about vocation.  It is not so much about our jobs or our studies; it is more about the orientation of our hearts and the dispositions of our minds, about those things which we are willing to let go and those to which we cling so tightly.  It is a story about being startled by God’s amazing and abundant grace and recognizing the claim that grace puts on our lives.  It is about leaving behind our preoccupations and following One who brings such grace to us… a call to following not because we have to, but because we realize that following is where our heart is.

            A friend commented to me a while back that he would have loved to have been present to hear Jesus’ summons first-hand.  He wondered aloud if it might have been more compelling, more persuasive than reading about it in the Bible.  He was being very honest, and he added that it wasn’t all that easy to discern Christ’s call today… that there are so many competing voices and our hearts are easily swayed.  “What am I supposed to leave behind?” he asked. “What am I supposed to do?”  How does anyone know one is following His lead?  How does one hear such a call anyway?”

            They’re good questions.  We hope we hear such a call here, of course, in the regular rhythms, challenges and grace of worship. We hope we discern Christ’s guidance in prayer and in the study of Scripture, in the daily practice of life in the community of faith, in learning what it means to be stewards rather than owners, in reaching out to sisters and brothers in need, where Christ promised we would encounter Him.  Those are good places to start… and each of them involves a certain discipline, and a conscious decision to put ourselves in a place and a posture of openness to hear.

One thing I know: hearing and responding is only rarely a single-moment, single-encounter kind of experience.  That’s not to say such dramatic moments don’t happen from time to time; they do.  But more often hearing and responding to God’s call involves a lifetime of disciplined discernment, and years of weighing our attachments and counting the costs of discipleship.  I dearly love the sentiment of Isaiah’s response to God’s call: “Here am I, send me.”  For most of us, however, it is not all that dramatic a moment.  Our discipleship is best built upon a deep recognition of need and a long experience of grace… and a willingness to relinquish our fears. 

            “Don’t be afraid,” Jesus said to Simon, but apart from Jesus’ promise, there was still much to fear.  Jesus didn’t say, “There’s nothing to fear.”  He said, “Don’t be afraid… come, follow me.” Deciding to do so can take time.  Even being able to hear the invitation may take time. Most of the time, we are too distracted to hear it well.

I think of the story a friend shared some years ago about his then six-year-old daughter, whose name is Claire. She is now in her teens, but my friend remembers when she was five… one Saturday morning when Claire came home from a sleepover with a friend, carrying with her a borrowed transistor radio.

I was upstairs when she came in the back door that morning, but the blaring music of [our city’s] pre-eminent country music station was what signaled to me that Claire was home.  She was fascinated with that radio!  She took it everywhere for a day or two.  You would have thought that she had never seen or heard such a thing… that she had never noticed the Walkman television set in the kitchen with which we often catch the evening news while we’re preparing supper… that she had never danced upstairs with her older sister and her mother to the music of [Broadway] show-tunes or the pulsating rap [beat of this or that artist]… that she had never ridden in the car with me when “All Things Considered” played in the background.  Music and news have always been staples in our home, in our lives; but on this day it was as if she had never noticed any of it.

Later, while I was sitting in the living room, Claire came bounding in excitedly.  “Dad!” she said, “Cold weather is coming our way from Canada!” as if she were letting me in on some hot tip about an impending blitzkrieg.  And still later, when [her mother] came home from… the grocery store, Claire ran to meet her with urgent shouts: “Mom, Blockbuster is having a two-for-one sale and – guess what! – we were just at Blockbuster yesterday!”

All of that news had apparently just been background noise for her all her life – until now.  But now – at the hands of the bright yellow hand-held portable radio – its power and urgency had finally broken through to her consciousness, and connections were finally being made.

Then my friend said,

Something like this happens to us, and people like us, all the time.  A drumbeat of heavenly assurance that has been going on for ages now finally breaks through into our consciousness.  The One who has meant the world to hosts of others pokes His way into our frame of reference, and, before we have time to kneel in the midst of whatever it is that surrounds us up to our necks, he bestows an unbelievable [gift].  “Do not be afraid,” he says.  And then, as always, next comes the miracle.[3]

            I told you this was a miracle story.  But what was the miracle? Well, there was that fishing thing, when suddenly a bad day on the lake turned into the most amazing catch of fish.  There was that, the obvious miracle in the story.  But there was another miracle, less obvious… and that was that Jesus invited Peter to share his life, to live his life with him, to relinquish all that had given his life substance and meaning in order to claim a new substance and a new meaning tied up in this matter called gospel.  It was amazing that Jesus would pick a simple fisherman for such a task. It was a miracle.

And, of course, there was a third miracle here, and that was that Peter said yes. And because he did, and because others after him did the same, we are gathered here today.  It is a miracle, I believe, a miracle no less amazing than a boatload of fish on a bad fishing day.

In the years since that day on the lake most everything has changed.  Life is much less physically demanding now, and apparently we are all more obese.  We know so much more about the world than did Peter and his contemporaries.  The pace of life has quickened to a degree those fishermen on Gennesaret could never have imagined.  The demands and the distractions and the stuff have all multiplied exponentially.

But this much has not changed. The challenge of Jesus is still before us, and by him we are called to relinquish all that would hold us back, called to taste the amazing goodness of God’s abundant grace and called to take that bold step of following him.  You see, now he turns to us… now beckons us to step away from all the distractions and to follow him.  Don’t be afraid, he says.  Don’t be afraid… and you know what could happen next, for as we all know, miracles do happen.